Speech development in a child up to 3 years old. How to develop a child's speech

One of the most complex physiological and mental processes is the acquisition of speech skills, which occurs differently for each person. It consists not only in developing the ability to pronounce words, but also in understanding their meaning, expressing one’s own emotions, thoughts and desires using the speech apparatus. The development of speech in a child is influenced by the state of health, the environment, and the characteristics of upbringing in the family or educational institution. In this article we will tell you what stages are distinguished in the development of speech in children, what deviations in speech formation there are, and also give simple tips to parents that will help facilitate this process.

Features of speech formation

One of the most important conditions for the development of a child’s personality is the complete and timely acquisition of speech skills. As a rule, these skills begin to develop in childhood and preschool age. Ideally, at the end of the first year of life, the baby should be able to pronounce simple words, and by the age of 3-4 years, his vocabulary should consist of approximately 1000 words.

In theory, at the age of 4 years, a child can already retell a simple fairy tale, describe his actions, and analyze the actions of his parents. However, a different situation is increasingly encountered in practice. That is why pediatricians, child psychologists and speech therapists try to blur clear boundaries, since each child is unique and the process of speech development can proceed in its own way.

For the early development of a child’s speech, it is necessary to create ideal conditions in which the baby:

• physically develops in accordance with age;

• does not suffer from neurological diseases;

• actively communicates with others;

• willingly repeats words spoken by relatives and friends;

• speaks out his desires;

• listens to adult speech;

• tries to pronounce words correctly.

In reality, creating such conditions can be problematic. The reason for this may be mental retardation, previous illnesses, neurological pathologies, or an unfavorable social environment.

In some cases, we can talk about delayed speech development if the child:

• repeats heard words or phrases without much desire;

• does not respond or deliberately clenches his teeth when asked to repeat a spoken word or phrase;

• independently solves everyday problems, deliberately without turning to adults for help;

• pronounces non-existent words;

• does not pay attention to the fact that his speech is incomprehensible to others;

• speaks worse than his peers.

It is believed that girls pronounce their first word before boys. However, they can master phrase speech later, and with age they try to speak in an adult manner. In boys, on the contrary, their grammatical structure is first formed. At the same time, they master adult speech later, replacing it with “their” vocabulary.

Norms of speech development in a preschooler from 3 to 7 years old

The results of studies of the speech of preschoolers make it possible to establish average indicators. Let's consider what levels of speech development are expected at each age stage - for younger, middle and older preschoolers. For convenience, we present the data in a table.

Table. Approximate norms for speech development of preschool children

What influences speech development?

The following factors influence the development of speech in a child:

1. Auditory attention

. If speech hearing develops rapidly, this usually slows down the development of auditory sensitivity. Meanwhile, the rate of development of phonemic hearing is influenced by musical, in particular, sound-frequency hearing. That is why it is important for parents not only to talk to their baby, but also to sing for them or play music in the background.

2. Motor development

. There is a direct connection between language and motor development. Therefore, in order to speed up the process of forming one, it is necessary to develop the other. Children master speech skills much faster in games that use all the senses and muscles of the body. It is important to ensure that they control muscle movements, especially small ones.

3. Intellectual growth

. If a child utters words or phrases that seem stupid to parents, this should not be assessed as a low level of intelligence. With the help of “their” vocabulary, young children express thoughts, desires, associations, and views on the world. By correcting mistakes, adults thereby prevent the speech apparatus from developing.

4. Emotional development

. The speed of development of speech functions largely depends on the child’s emotional contact with adults. Feeling a connection with his parents, he strives to repeat their words or actions. Children who do not have this contact or who have experienced emotional stress have a much more difficult time speaking early.

5. Communication

. To develop speech, a child must have a desire to communicate with others. After all, speech skills are needed not only to express your emotions and thoughts. It is by communicating with adults that children expand their vocabulary and develop speech functions.

Age stages of speech development

Experts identify several stages of speech development in children. These periods last differently, but every child goes through them.

Preparatory stage (0-1 year)

This period lasts from birth to 1 year. Conventionally, it can be divided into three more stages:

1. Scream

. In the first days and weeks of life, the only way the baby interacts with the outside world is to cry. With its help, he not only notifies of discomfort, but also develops breathing, articulation, and voice.

2. Booming

. Until about 6 months, the baby communicates by pronouncing certain sounds. At this stage, he can be compared to a master tuning a musical instrument.

3. Babbling

. Closer to one year, the child begins to develop full-fledged speech. Instead of incomprehensible sounds, he clearly pronounces “ma”, “pa”, “ba”, “dai”.

Pre-school stage (1-3 years)

At approximately 1 year, when the first words appear in the baby’s vocabulary, the preschool stage of speech formation begins, which lasts approximately up to 3 years.

If at this time he utters any words, they are of a generalized nature. For example, when declaring his desire, asking for something, or begging for a specific item, a baby can say the same word - “give.” Only those closest to him can figure out what exactly he wants.

At about 1.5-2 years old, whole words appear in the child’s vocabulary, from which he can put together short phrases, such as “let me drink,” “mom to drink,” etc. Closer to 3 years, he learns to ask questions “Where?”, “When?”, “Where?”. Some children enrich their speech with prepositions and coordinate words by cases, genders and numbers.

Preschool stage

This stage lasts from 3 to 7 years. It is characterized by the expansion of passive and active vocabulary.

At 4 years old, a child can speak in simple sentences; at 5 years old, he can actively use complex and complex sentences. Closer to 7 years old, he can competently construct sentences, pronounce sounds, and gradually expands his horizons.

Characteristics of the stages of speech development in children; consultation on speech therapy on the topic

Characteristics of the stages of speech development in children

A child is born without the ability to speak. In the process of his development, he must master the language spoken by the adults around him. This is a very difficult task. A child has to master in a few years all the richness of the language, which was created by the people over thousands of years. In its development, children's speech goes through a number of stages that are qualitatively different from each other.

Researchers identify a different number of stages in the development of children’s speech, call them differently, indicate their different age boundaries (Gvozdev A. N., Zhinkin N. I., Leontiev A. N., Rosengard-Pupko G. L. et al. ).

We will consider the stages of speech development as defined by A.I. Maksakov.

In the first year of life, a child undergoes intensive development of the brain, hearing, and speech organs. The brain is the main regulator of the body's activities. In a newborn, it is still underdeveloped, has less mass and a less complex structure compared to an adult. Simultaneously with the development of the brain, the baby develops physical and phonemic hearing. Hearing plays a leading role in the acquisition of speech, since the possibility of its occurrence and further development depend, first of all, on the state of hearing.

Simultaneously with the development of hearing, the baby exhibits vocal reactions and produces a variety of sound combinations. Imitating the speech of adults, the baby tries to independently pronounce individual sounds, syllables, and, by the end of the year, words. The active pronunciation of words is preceded by the development of speech understanding. The time at which words appear in the first year of life varies from child to child: some begin to speak at 8–9 months, others at 1 year 2 months, and some even later. A one-year-old child’s vocabulary is also not the same, and it ranges from two or three words to 15 – 20. By the end of the year, the child pronounces mainly sounds that are simple in articulation; vowels a, y, and, some consonants m, p, b, n, t, d, k, g, . Moreover, some children pronounce a greater number of sounds and more clearly, others less and less clearly. The quality of pronounced sounds depends on the condition and mobility of the articulatory apparatus, which is just beginning to actively function, so the role of babbling in its development is of great importance.

So, the first year of a child’s life is, as it were, a preparatory stage for mastering speech. During this period, the baby develops visual and auditory concentration, the understanding of speech develops, and in the process of humming and babbling, the articulatory apparatus is intensively developing. Communication between a child and an adult is built mainly on an emotional basis, and with the appearance of the first meaningful words, through speech.

In the second year of life, the child’s ability to imitate the speech of adults sharply increases, understanding of speech and active speech intensively develop. From the first months of the second year of life, the baby increasingly begins to independently use meaningful words. However, until one and a half years old, the words spoken by a child do not always reflect the real name of the object. Until the age of one and a half years, children do not have phrasal speech; this function is performed by a word-sentence. Such word-sentences, depending on the situation, can express different meanings, and they appear in children between 1 year 3 months and 1 year 8 months.

From the second half of the second year, the child increasingly begins to use two-word sentences, and at 1 year 10 months he uses two- and four-word sentences, but the words in such sentences are not yet grammatically related to each other.

A child's active vocabulary plays a crucial role in mastering phrasal speech. Phrases appear only when the active dictionary reaches a certain number of words (40–60). The vocabulary grows especially quickly in the last months of the second year of life. The number of spoken words that a child uses by the end of the second year varies from 100 to 300 words for different children. The volume of the dictionary depends on the conditions of the child’s upbringing, on the frequency of his communication with adults, and the quality depends on what words adults use more often in their speech, how often they indicate to the baby what actions can be performed with toys and objects, how the child himself acts , indicate signs of surrounding objects (large, white cup).

By the age of two, some children develop grammatical relationships between words: agreement of a noun with a verb, change in the case ending of a noun. However, there are no prepositions or conjunctions in the sentence yet. At this age stage, the child’s vocal apparatus is not yet strong enough, speech exhalation is very weak, as a result of which the baby’s voice is not yet loud enough. It is possible to replace voiced consonants with voiceless consonants (“pam-pam” instead of “bam-bam”). Children are already able to change the intonation of their voice, for example, expressing their request in a demanding tone.

So, for a two-year-old child, imperfections in the pronunciation aspect of speech are quite natural: incorrect pronunciation of most sounds of the native language, softening of individual consonants, unclear pronunciation of words with the omission of individual sounds, inability to accurately preserve the syllabic structure of a word (especially in polysyllabic words). Some children, as an individual feature of speech, have a weak, quiet voice and slurred pronunciation of words.

The need of a child of the third year of life to communicate with adults and peers increases. When talking with adults, the baby begins to understand simple questions: “Where is the bunny?”, “Where did you put the car?” Interest in surrounding objects prompts him to turn to adults with questions: “What is this?”, “Why?”, “Where?”, “When?” and so on.

The child's understanding of speech increases. Vocabulary increases by 3–4 times compared to the previous age. The child knows the names of many objects: toys, dishes, clothes, etc., i.e., mainly those objects that are in his immediate environment. In the third year of life, the child begins to use verbs more widely. But still, nouns predominate in the baby’s vocabulary (60%), then verbs (25–27%) and adjectives least of all (only 10–12%). (A. A. Lyublinskaya.)

Thus, in the speech of a child of the third year of life there are almost all parts of speech, with the exception of numerals, participles and gerunds. The child knows many names of objects well (he quickly finds the right ones among different things of the same group), they are in his passive dictionary, but in active speech he does not always use them.

In the third year of life, the child is able to recognize and name familiar objects depicted in the picture, name the actions performed by this or that animal (“the dog is sleeping”), but, as a rule, he still does not construct detailed phrases. In grammatical terms, a child’s speech is still far from always correct, although a child at this age certainly connects words into sentences, coordinates them in gender and number, often making mistakes in case endings. Children also use complex sentences, first complex, and by the end of the year, complex sentences, although they still use the latter very rarely.

Another achievement of a child of the third year of life: he is able to perceive simple short fairy tales, stories that are close to his life experience, and can answer some questions based on their content. Despite all the achievements in the development of speech in children of the third year of life, they still do not pronounce many words clearly and correctly, which is why speech as a whole is not always understandable to others and is difficult to perceive, especially by young interlocutors.

In the third year of life, although the mobility of the articulatory apparatus (muscles of the tongue, lips, lower jaw) improves significantly, children’s pronunciation is still far from normal. Articulation difficulties continue to inhibit the acquisition of sounds. Children continue to experience difficulties in pronouncing polysyllabic words: they cannot always maintain the syllabic structure of the word (they shorten words), rearrange syllables, replace or omit individual sounds.

When two or three consonants are combined, even those sounds that are easily pronounced in simple one- or two-syllable words (“pigin” instead of penguin) are often dropped. The voice apparatus of children in their third year of life is not yet strong enough. At this age, the child does not yet have sufficient attention to the speech of adults; he can often be distracted.

So, by the age of 3, the pronunciation aspect of speech in children is not yet sufficiently formed. There remain some imperfections in the pronunciation of sounds, polysyllabic words, words with a combination of several consonants. The absence of most sounds affects the pronunciation of words, which is why children’s speech is not yet clear and intelligible. Children of this age cannot always use their vocal apparatus correctly; for example, they cannot answer an adult’s questions loudly enough and at the same time speak quietly when the situation requires it when preparing for bed or while eating. In the third year of life, the child intensively accumulates vocabulary. The number of called household items increases, not only those that the baby often (but not constantly) uses; in his statements he uses almost all parts of speech; masters the elementary grammatical structure of his native language (learns case endings, some forms of verbs from the age of 2.5), begins to coordinate adjectives with nouns, lengthens simple sentences, uses non-conjunct compound sentences and situational speech. Simultaneously with the development of speech, the child’s thinking, memory, and imagination develop. At this age, children have a great tendency to imitate, which is a favorable factor for the development of a child’s active speech. By repeating words and phrases after an adult, the baby not only remembers them; By practicing the correct pronunciation of sounds and words, he strengthens the articulatory apparatus.

The fourth year of life is marked by new achievements in the development of the child. He begins to express the simplest judgments about objects and phenomena of the reality around him, make conclusions about them, and establish relationships between them.

In the fourth year of life, children usually freely come into contact not only with loved ones, but also with strangers. Increasingly, the initiative for communication comes from the child. The need to expand their horizons and the desire to understand the world around them more deeply force the child to turn more and more often to adults with a wide variety of questions. He understands well that every object, action performed by himself or an adult has its own name, that is, it is denoted by a word. However, it should be remembered that children of the fourth year of life do not yet have sufficiently stable attention and therefore they cannot always listen to the full answers of adults.

By the end of the fourth year of life, a child's vocabulary reaches approximately 1,500–2,000 words. The vocabulary is also becoming more diverse in terms of quality. In the speech of children of this age, in addition to nouns and verbs, other parts of speech are increasingly found: pronouns, adverbs, numerals appear (one, two), adjectives indicating abstract signs and qualities of objects (cold, hot, hard, good, bad) . The child begins to use function words (prepositions, conjunctions) more widely. By the end of the year, he often uses possessive pronouns (my, yours) and possessive adjectives (daddy's chair, mommy's cup) in his speech.

The active vocabulary that a child has at this age stage gives him the opportunity to freely communicate with others. But he often experiences difficulties due to the insufficiency and poverty of the vocabulary, when he needs to convey the content of someone else’s speech, retell a fairy tale, a story, convey an event in which he himself was a participant. Here he often makes inaccuracies. Simultaneously with the enrichment of the vocabulary, the child more intensively masters the grammatical structure of the language. His speech is dominated by simple common sentences, but complex sentences also appear (complex and complex sentences). Children of this age still make grammatical errors: they incorrectly agree words, especially neuter nouns with adjectives; Case endings are used incorrectly. At this age, the child is not yet able to consistently, logically, coherently and clearly for others to independently talk about the events he witnessed; he cannot intelligently retell the content of a fairy tale or story read to him. Speech is still situational in nature. The child’s utterances contain short, common sentences, often only distantly related in content; It is not always possible to understand their content without additional questions; there is still no such development in the statement that is characteristic of monologue speech. A child of four years of age also cannot independently reveal or describe the content of a plot picture. He only names objects, characters or lists the actions they perform (jumping, washing himself). Having a good memory, a child is able to remember and reproduce short poems, nursery rhymes, and riddles; when repeatedly reading the same fairy tale, he can convey the content almost word for word, often without understanding the meaning of the words.

In the fourth year of life, the articulatory apparatus is further strengthened: the movements of the muscles involved in the formation of sounds (tongue, lips, lower jaw) become more coordinated. At this age, a child cannot always control his vocal apparatus, change the volume, pitch of his voice, or rate of speech. The child's speech hearing is improved. By the end of the fourth year of life, children's pronunciation improves significantly, the correct pronunciation of whistling sounds is consolidated, and hissing sounds begin to appear. In four-year-old children, individual differences in the formation of the pronunciation side of speech are especially pronounced: in some children, speech is clear, with the correct pronunciation of almost all sounds, in others it may not yet be clear enough, with incorrect pronunciation of a large number of sounds, with softening of hard consonants, etc. n. The teacher should pay special attention to such children, identify the reasons for the delay in speech development and, together with the parents, take measures to eliminate the deficiencies.

So, in the fourth year of life, children experience a noticeable improvement in pronunciation, speech becomes more distinct. Children know well and correctly name objects in their immediate environment: the names of toys, dishes, clothes, furniture. In addition to nouns and verbs, other parts of speech are beginning to be used more widely: adjectives, adverbs, prepositions. The beginnings of monologue speech appear. In speech, simple but already common sentences predominate; children use complex and complex sentences, but very rarely. The initiative to communicate more and more often comes from the child. Four-year-old children cannot independently isolate the sounds in a word, but they easily notice inaccuracies in the sound of words in the speech of their peers. Children's speech is mainly situational in nature, it is not yet precise enough in vocabulary and perfect in grammatical terms, and in terms of pronunciation it is not yet pure and correct enough.

A four-year-old child shows significant progress in mental and speech development. The baby begins to identify and name the most significant features and qualities of objects, establish the simplest connections and accurately reflect them in speech. His speech becomes more varied, more precise and richer in content. The stability of attention to the speech of others increases, he is able to listen to the answers of adults to the end. The older a child gets, the greater the impact on his speech development that family and public education has.

An increase in the active vocabulary (from 2,500 to 3,000 words by the end of the year) creates the opportunity for the child to construct his statements more fully and express his thoughts more accurately. In the speech of children of this age, adjectives increasingly appear, which they use to denote the characteristics and qualities of objects, reflecting temporal and spatial relationships; to determine the color, in addition to the main ones, additional ones are called (blue, dark, orange), possessive adjectives begin to appear (fox tail, hare hut), words indicating the properties of objects, qualities, the material from which they are made (iron key). The child increasingly uses adverbs, personal pronouns (the latter often act as subjects), complex prepositions (from under, about, etc.), collective nouns appear (dishes, clothes, furniture, vegetables, fruits), but the child still uses them very rarely. A four-year-old child constructs his statement from two or three or more simple common sentences; he uses complex and complex sentences more often than at the previous age stage, but still not enough. The growth of a child’s vocabulary and the use of more structurally complex sentences often leads to the fact that children begin to make grammatical errors more often: they incorrectly change verbs (“want” instead of want), do not agree words (for example, verbs and nouns in number, adjectives and nouns in kind), allow violations in the structure of sentences.

At this age, children begin to master monologue speech. In their speech, sentences with homogeneous circumstances appear for the first time.

Four-year-old children's interest in the sound design of words increases sharply. At this age, children are highly attracted to rhyme. Playing with words, some people rhyme them, creating their own little couplets. This desire is natural; it contributes to the child’s development of attention to the sound side of speech, develops speech hearing and requires all kinds of encouragement from adults.

In the fifth year of life, sufficient mobility of the muscles of the articulatory apparatus allows the child to carry out more precise movements of the tongue and lips; clear and correct movement and position are necessary for pronouncing complex sounds. At this age, children's sound pronunciation improves significantly: softened pronunciation of consonants completely disappears, omission of sounds and syllables is rarely observed. In the fifth year of life, a child is able to recognize by ear the presence of a particular sound in a word, and select words for a given sound.

A child’s speech hearing gives him the opportunity to distinguish in the speech of adults (of course, if given in comparison) the increase and decrease in voice volume, to notice the acceleration and deceleration of the rate of speech, to catch various intonation means of expressiveness used by adults, conveying in fairy-tale situations how this or that animal speaks - affectionately, rudely, in a low or high tone. By the end of the fifth year of life, many children correctly pronounce all the sounds of their native language, but some of them still incorrectly pronounce hissing sounds, the sound r.

So, by the age of five, there is a sharp improvement in the pronunciation side of children’s speech; most of them have completed the process of mastering sounds. Speech in general becomes clearer and more distinct. Children’s speech activity is increasing, they are asking adults questions more and more often. Children begin to master monologue speech. The growth of an active vocabulary and the use of sentences of a more complex structure (five-year-old children can use sentences consisting of 10 or more words) are often one of the reasons for the increase in the number of grammatical errors. Children begin to pay attention to the sound design of words and point out the presence of a familiar sound in words.

In older preschool age, children at this stage of life continue to improve all aspects of the child’s speech. The pronunciation becomes clearer, the phrases, or rather the statements, become more detailed. The child not only identifies essential features in objects and phenomena, but also begins to establish cause-and-effect relationships between them, temporal and other relationships. Having sufficiently developed active speech, the preschooler tries to tell and answer questions so that the listeners around him can clearly and understand what he wants to tell them.

Simultaneously with the development of a self-critical attitude towards his own statement, the child also develops a more critical attitude towards the speech of his peers. When describing objects and phenomena, he makes attempts to convey his emotional attitude towards them. The enrichment and expansion of the vocabulary is carried out not only through familiarization with new objects, their properties and qualities, new words denoting actions, but also through the names of individual parts, details of objects, through the use of new suffixes and prefixes, which children begin to use widely. Increasingly, generalizing nouns and adjectives appear in a child’s speech, denoting the material, properties, and state of objects. Over the course of a year, the vocabulary increases by 1000–1200 words (compared to the previous age), although in practice it is very difficult to establish the exact number of words learned during a given period. By the end of the sixth year of life, the child more subtly differentiates generalizing nouns, for example, not only calls the word animal, but can also indicate that a fox, bear, wolf are wild animals, and a cow, horse, cat are domestic animals. Children use abstract nouns, adjectives, and verbs in their speech. Many words from the passive vocabulary move into the active vocabulary.

Improving coherent speech is impossible without mastering grammatically correct speech. In the sixth year, the child masters the grammatical structure and uses it quite freely. However, grammatical errors still occur in children's speech. The grammatical correctness of a child’s speech largely depends on how often adults pay attention to their children’s mistakes, correct them, and give the correct example. A child of the sixth year of life improves monologue speech. He can, without the help of an adult, convey the content of a short fairy tale, story, cartoon, or describe certain events that he witnessed. At this age, the child is already able to independently reveal the content of the picture if it depicts objects that are familiar to him. In the sixth year of life, the muscles of the articulatory apparatus have become sufficiently strong and children are able to correctly pronounce all the sounds of their native language. However, some children at this age are just finishing the correct assimilation of hissing sounds, sounds l, r. With their assimilation, they begin to clearly and distinctly pronounce words of varying complexity.

A five-year-old child has a fairly developed phonemic hearing. He not only hears sounds well, but is also able to perform various tasks related to isolating syllables or words with a given sound from a group of other syllables or words, selecting words for certain sounds, and performing other more complex tasks.

The pronunciation of six-year-old children is not much different from the speech of adults; difficulties are noted only in those cases when the speech contains new words that are difficult to pronounce or words that are rich in combinations of sounds, which, while pronouncing, they do not yet differentiate clearly enough. But by the age of seven, provided they systematically work on sound pronunciation, children cope quite well with this.

So, by the end of the sixth year, the child reaches a fairly high level in speech development. He correctly pronounces all the sounds of his native language, reproduces words clearly and clearly, has the vocabulary necessary for free communication, correctly uses many grammatical forms and categories, his statements become more meaningful, expressive and more accurate.

In the seventh year of life, in quantitative and qualitative terms, the child’s vocabulary reaches such a level that he communicates freely with adults and peers and can carry on a conversation on almost any topic that is understandable at his age. When telling a story, he strives to accurately select words, reflect his thoughts more clearly, connecting various facts into a single whole.

In a child’s active vocabulary, a differentiated approach to naming objects is increasingly common (passenger cars and trucks, and not just a car; clothes, winter and summer shoes). He increasingly uses words indicating professional affiliation, while noting some of the actions and operations that adults perform in the process of work, and the quality of their work, and uses these words in his game. The child more often begins to use abstract concepts and complex words in his speech (long-legged giraffe), use epithets, and understand metaphors (the sea laughed). The polysemy of the use of words expands (clean shirt, clean air), the child understands and uses words with a figurative meaning in his speech, in the process of speaking he is able to quickly select synonyms (words close in meaning) that would more accurately reflect the quality, properties of objects, actions, done to them. He can accurately select words when comparing objects or phenomena, accurately noticing the similarities and differences in them (white as snow), more and more often uses complex sentences, includes participial and participial phrases. Smoothness and accuracy of speech when speaking freely is one of indicators of the child’s vocabulary and ability to use it correctly. The formation of grammatically correct speech is greatly influenced by the state of adult speech culture, the ability to correctly use various forms and categories, and correct the child’s mistakes in a timely manner.

In the seventh year of life, the child’s speech became more and more structurally accurate, sufficiently detailed, and logically consistent. When retelling and describing objects, the clarity of presentation is noted, and the completeness of the statement is felt. At this age, a child is able to independently give a description of a toy or object, reveal the content of a picture, retell the content of a short work of art, a film he watched, he can come up with a fairy tale, a story, and talk in detail about his impressions and feelings. He is able to convey the content of a picture without seeing it, only from memory, not only tell what is shown in the picture, but also imagine the events that could precede them, invent and tell how events could develop for the baby.

The pronunciation side of speech of a child of the seventh year of life reaches a fairly high level. He correctly pronounces all the sounds of his native language, clearly and distinctly pronounces phrases, speaks loudly, but depending on the situation he can speak quietly and even in a whisper, knows how to change the pace of speech taking into account the content of the statement, pronounces words clearly, taking into account the norms of literary pronunciation, uses intonation means of expression.

In preschool childhood, naturally, the process of mastering speech does not end for the child. And his speech as a whole, of course, is not always interesting, meaningful, or grammatically correct. Enrichment of vocabulary, development of grammatically correct speech, improvement of the ability to express one’s thoughts through speech, interestingly and expressively convey the content of a work of art will continue during school years and throughout life.

In order for the process of speech development to proceed in a timely and correct manner, certain conditions are necessary. In particular, the child must:

1. Be mentally and somatically healthy;

2. Have normal mental abilities;

3. Have full hearing and vision;

4. Have sufficient mental activity;

5. Have a need for verbal communication;

6. Have a complete speech environment.

So, by the time a child enters school, he has mastered the correct sound design of words, pronounces them clearly and clearly, has a certain vocabulary, mostly grammatically correct speech: he constructs sentences of different constructions, coordinates words in gender, number, case, and often conjugates accurately verbs used; fluently uses monologue speech: is able to talk about experienced events, retell the content of a fairy tale, stories, describe surrounding objects, reveal the content of a picture, some phenomena of the surrounding reality. All this allows the child to successfully master the program material upon entering school.

Rules for speech development

Of course, every child is unique.

Therefore, you should not compare him with the neighbor’s baby, who began to walk earlier and uttered his first word before he was a year old.

However, we should also not forget that speech skills are formed, among other things, under the influence of the environment. To raise a fully developed child, parents need to pay attention to speech development. In this case, you must remember the following rules:

1. It's never too early to start

. You need to talk to your child from a very early age. After all, his speech skills begin to form long before he begins to speak meaningfully. They are influenced by touch, smile, intonation and gestures. By supporting nonverbal communication, parents trigger the development of verbal speech.

2. Get rid of eloquence

. In early childhood, when children are just mastering speech, parents should not overload them with a stream of words. It is enough to say one word more than the baby himself says. You can build simple phrases and sentences of 2-3 words. The more accessible speech is, the faster it is mastered. You should not dump on your baby a stream of eloquence, which abounds in mother’s speech. It needs to be simplified so much that the child can not only understand it, but also repeat it.

3. Demonstrate practical application of speech

. The child must learn that speech simplifies everyday life. It is necessary to show the child that the word must be followed by an action. For example, if he is interested in an object, he must ask for it, and his mother gives him this object in response. This will demonstrate the connection between speech and action.

4. Develop fine and gross motor skills

. Every speech therapist assures that speech develops in parallel with the development of fine motor skills. In fact, all-round development is important. A child needs more than just modeling, mosaics or lacing. Speech skills can be learned through dance, music, sports, or even outdoor activities. In addition, gross motor skills contribute to mental and physical development.

5. Sing

. It is easier for a child to master melodic speech. Therefore, when addressing him, chant the words. Ditties, nursery rhymes, and patty games help develop a child’s speech. And here it doesn’t matter at all whether you have hearing or musical education - what’s more important is a smooth and melodious motive.

6. Listen

. It is important not only to talk to the baby, but also to respond to his speech. A mother can spend only one hour a day with her child, entertaining him with games, fairy tales, and reading together. At the same time, her actions will be much more productive than if she spent the whole day with him, without letting go of her smartphone.

7. Fantasize

. Encourage your child's desire to create fairy tales and tell stories. Let their heroes be toys, friends from kindergarten or pets. You can ask him leading questions. For example: “what will happen if our cat learns to fly?”, “what would your toothbrush say if it could talk?” In this case, it is advisable to demonstrate your interest, smile, nod your head. You should not limit your child’s imagination, because this is the only way he will have complete freedom in self-expression.

8. Trust your intuition

. Mom is the person who spends the most time with the child. Therefore, she should be the first to pay attention to existing speech disorders. If you have any doubts, it is better to contact a speech therapist or psychologist once again. However, you should not be paranoid and demand the impossible from your baby.

9. Act consistently

. The main rule when mastering any skill is regularity. It’s better to read 1-2 pages of a fairy tale every day than to burden your child with it for half a day. Exercise a little, but every day. You can alternate between different tools - reading, logic games, mosaics, puzzles. The more the child’s senses are involved in the process, the more harmoniously his speech will develop. And remember that correct and timely development is impossible without an atmosphere of love in the family. Feel free to express your feelings for your baby, his brothers or sisters, and other close people.

What mistakes can parents make when developing their child’s speech?

Often the child is overly patronized and protected, they try to predict his desires - of course, out of love for him.
But then the baby does not develop the desire to work independently, he does not learn to express his thoughts through speech, and many processes in his development may be inhibited. • Intuition and love help loved ones understand a child literally at a glance. But communicating with unfamiliar people in unusual conditions will be difficult for him, and in the worst case, acutely uncomfortable. To prevent this from happening, as you grow older, you need to enter into conversations more often with new and new interlocutors, and then the child will simply be forced to improve his speech understanding skills.

• Some parents underestimate, while others overestimate, the requirements for the baby’s speech. In the first case, they do not demand anything from the child, all his wishes are guessed and immediately fulfilled, in the second, they constantly pester him: “Tell me!”, “Repeat!”. Sometimes in one family two extreme approaches are used at once: for example, dad demands, and grandmother takes care. This has a very adverse effect on the child’s speech development.

• Try to eliminate lisping, “baby talk,” and constant onomatopoeia when communicating with your baby. The parent's speech is a model for the child.

• Parents can speak very quickly or, conversely, too slowly, without pauses and different intonations, monotonously. It is important to use all the richness and diversity of language when developing a child’s speech.

• Do not try to speed up the baby's natural speech development. Avoid overwork from speech classes and memorization of poetry.