Children's speech is formed under the influence of a variety of circumstances and factors. Whether a child will speak well by 3-4 years of age also depends on whether he has a physiologically normal hearing from birth, how often they talk to him, whether he has motivation to try to repeat what he heard. The state of phonemic hearing is also important.
What it is?
Phonemic hearing is the ability to pick up individual elements of native speech - phonemes (sounds). Such hearing allows the child to recognize familiar phonemes from the general sound of others, compare them, repeat them, that is, reproduce sounds. Phonemic hearing is a unique natural given, a gift from nature to man. It effectively complements physiological hearing (the ability to pick up sounds and analyze them).
If a child speaks poorly, first of all, his physiological hearing is checked, and if there are no problems with him, they proceed to the diagnosis of phonemic hearing. It is he who gives the child the opportunity to distinguish the components of speech from the whole variety of sounding worlds.
If the perception of phonemes is impaired, this necessarily affects the speech of the baby, who simply cannot distinguish certain sounds (phonemes) or cannot recognize them. Accordingly, the baby finds it difficult to reproduce, repeat what he heard.
Often, children with phonemic hearing impairments incorrectly place sounds in places in the word, distort their sound, and therefore it can be difficult for babies to understand not only strangers, but also their own relatives.
Why is it important to develop this kind of hearing? Yes, because small problems of a small child can turn into big problems for a student - children who have not received speech therapy assistance in a timely manner, make a large number of mistakes when writing and learn much worse.
There are a huge number of games, exercises that will help develop children's phonemic hearing and improve phonemic perception. This perception helps the child to identify the sound construction of words. If it is violated, then the child can hardly analyze his own speech and repeat what he hears.
Stages of development
If the physiological ability to hear is given even before birth, and the newborn perfectly hears the world around him, then phonemic hearing develops in stages. First, children learn to find a certain sound in a word, then they recognize the last sounds in words, and later - the first.
The ability to repeat a word by sound comes after the formation of the first stages. These are short words at first. The formation of phonemic hearing is considered complete when the child can easily find the place where certain phonemes should stand in a particular word.
The initial stages occur independently, but repetition and finding sounds in a word are tasks that the little one can only cope with with the help of adults who will teach him his native speech, speaking. It is because of the lack of such participation that the so-called "Mowgli children" lack the ability to reproduce phonemes, even if they distinguish them by ear. If we consider the stages from the point of view of their temporary onset, then several important points should be noted:
- newborn - there is a reaction to sounds, but mostly only to loud and harsh, meaning and interpretation of sounds does not occur;
- 3-4 months - the child tries to repeat, reproduce his first sounds (humming);
- after 6 months the child begins to identify not only the familiar and familiar to him the main ones, but also to catch the rhythmic pattern of the words he heard;
- at the age of 1 year the word for the baby becomes indivisible, this is a unit of speech, and when familiar words sound, associative identification occurs (one or another object is presented);
- Age from 1 to 1.5 years- the period of the most rapid and active development of phonemic hearing and perception. It is during this period that it is very important to talk a lot and clearly with the baby, to repeat unfamiliar words and names for him.
- Period from 1.5 to 2 years - this is the time for improving the acquired skills, but the speech still remains illegible, and you should not be afraid of this - the speech apparatus is not yet strong enough to reproduce everything as it should.
- Age 2-3 years - the age of gaining clarity of pronunciation, intelligibility. If at 3 years old speech remains illegible, "crumpled", this is a reason to suspect a violation of phonemic hearing.
Violations can be varied. Most often, the test of phonemic hearing with a speech therapist should be carried out in situations when:
- a baby at 3-4 years old cannot pronounce or finds it difficult to pronounce words whose length exceeds 2-3 syllables;
- the baby systematically allows the replacement of sounds with consonant ones, changes the places of the syllables (shop - gamazine, dog - basaka, etc.);
- a child of 4-5 years old does not clearly pronounce all the sounds, cannot accurately reproduce any of them;
- after 3 years there is no speech or the child communicates in syllables.
If nothing is done, incorrect speech behavior will become normal for the child, then this will significantly limit his communication skills and ability to successfully study at school.
When and how to develop?
Ideally, it is necessary to engage in the development of phonemic hearing in children not when he has to go to school soon (at 6-7 years old), but earlier, and much more. As soon as your baby is born, you need to talk to him, even if he does not understand the essence of what you said. The baby perfectly hears intonation, sounding, melody of speech, and this will then greatly help him to successfully pass the further stages of speech phonemic development.
At this stage, talk to your baby any time he is asleep. And it makes no difference what you say: a fairy tale, a rhyme, or list the elements of Mendeleev's periodic table of chemical elements.
Intonation, expressiveness and clarity of pronunciation of phonemes are important. Later, when the baby begins to be actively interested in the world around him, you need to describe in words everything that he sees, what he is drawn to. And you should not use "lisp" for this: the machine should not be "bibika" out of your mouth.
For the development of speech, very the development of fine motor skills is important, and therefore, from one year on, actively use blocks, constructors, sculpt with the baby, assemble a pyramid, play finger puppet theater - this is an excellent training for phonemic hearing. If problems could not be avoided, do not wait until everything is resolved by itself - contact a speech therapist and start development together with a specialist.
Why is it important to visit a speech therapist? Because this specialist has the ability to check the current state of phonemic perception, diagnose a violation, and characterize it. Determining the level of such hearing is quite difficult for laymen. Then you will be given exercises, tables, speech therapy cards that will help develop hearing and eliminate a speech defect in your baby.
For self-study at home, you can use ready-made methods, for example, the method of Elena Kolesnikova, or you can develop your own training program, knowing the basic rules and sequential steps:
- learning to recognize non-speech sounds (made by objects, animals);
- learning the difference in timbre, pitch, voice strength;
- the study of words that are similar in sound;
- study of syllables in a word;
- teaching the separation of syllables into sounds and their recognition.
You need to develop phonemic hearing in a playful way. It will be interesting and educational for the kid. For classes you may need:
- various pictures, illustrations, drawn by yourself, printed from the Internet or cut from magazines and newspapers;
- objects that can make sounds.
At the first stage, you can play games that are aimed at recognizing sounding objects: you make a sound, holding an object behind your back, and the child guesses what sounds are made (rustling of paper, ringing of a bell, keys, ticking of a clock, gurgling of water in a bottle, etc.). The classic game of blind man's buff helps to master the first stage well - blindfolded, the kid needs to move to the sound that you will specify as the main one. For example, clap your hands. The rest of the sounds that you will make for distraction are a signal to stand still.
At the second stage, you need to find the difference in the sound of a person's speech... Record and reproduce the speech of dad, grandmother, brother and the child's own voice. The task is to guess who exactly is speaking at the moment. At this stage, read fairy tales with elements of imitation (the bear speaks in a coarse voice, and the mouse in a thin one), portray it with your own voice.
The third step is to learn to recognize words. Pictures prepared in advance will come in handy here. Show the picture and name what is depicted on it first correctly, and then with an error, substituting one sound for another (a cow is a pestilence, a dog is a tavern). The child's task is to determine when you are speaking correctly and when you are not. You need to clap your hands on the correct word, and if you sound the wrong one, stomp your feet. You can also ask the child to choose a picture with the desired image among the consonant ones (mouse-book-bear-cover).
It will be somewhat easier further. You can divide a word into syllables by clapping your hands, according to the rhythm of the word.
Only after mastering all the previous stages, you can proceed to dividing syllables into sounds, counting sounds in a word and identifying unnecessary sounds (which mother deliberately added to the word). Such games for preschool children will definitely help improve phonetic hearing.
For basic methods of developing phonemic hearing in children with disabilities using interactive content, see the following video.
