The purposes of the current study are to examine changes in linguistic interactions of 5-year old children among peers, and to observe changes in children and teachers' recognition and attitudes toward a cooperative story creation activity by performi...
The purposes of the current study are to examine changes in linguistic interactions of 5-year old children among peers, and to observe changes in children and teachers' recognition and attitudes toward a cooperative story creation activity by performing the cooperative story creation activity using a literature work containing a text. The meaning of the study is to find pedagogical suggestions about effective language education at early childhood educational institutes through the results. Research problems established for the study purposes are as follows.
1. How do linguistic interactions of 5-year old children among peers change through a cooperative story creation activity?
2. How do children and teachers' recognition and attitudes change through the cooperative story creation activity?
Subjects of the current study are 25 5-year old children (15 boys and 10 girls) attending a kindergarten attached to Y Elementary School in Yongin, Gyeonggi-do. The study period was 6 weeks from March 16, 1010 to April 22, 2010, and cooperative story creation activities were performed 12 times in total, twice a week. Test tools to examine linguistic interactions among peers was a linguistic interaction analyzing tool made by Park Ji-seon(2000), while time sampling method observing 30 times in total, every 20 seconds for 10 minutes, was used to analyze each child. For changes in children and teachers' recognition and attitudes through the cooperative story creation activity, anecdotes and activities were recorded, and the recorded data and teachers' journals were used to analyze.
The study results are summarized as follows. First of all, there were changes in linguistic interaction among 5-year old peers through the cooperative story creation activity. It was observed that frequency of linguistic interactions steadily increased through the cooperative story creation activity. As for subordinate categories to see concrete changes in linguistic interactions, the proportion of 'empathy' increased while the proportions of 'questions and answers' and 'explanation' maintained similarly. In addition, the proportion of 'adjustment' increased as the activity was performed while the proportion of 'command' decreased.
Secondly, it was found that the cooperative story creation activity positively changed the children's recognition and attitude toward cooperative activities. The children came to actively participate in cooperative activities and gradually understand the meaning of cooperative activities through the cooperative story creation activity. In addition, there were changes in the children's communication attitude through the cooperative story creation activity. Also it was observed that the cooperative story creation activity changed the teachers' recognition and attitude toward cooperative activities. They came to recognize the importance of cooperative activity and changed their role from showing direct modeling to indirect leading and assisting during cooperative activity. In addition, they came to analyze individual children and make an attempt for appropriate individual interactions while recording anecdotes steadily, an observation note and a teacher's journal. Lastly, the teachers formed a habit of consistent reflection through the cooperative story creation activity.
In conclusion, it was found that the cooperative story creation activity was effective in changing linguistic interactions among 5-year old peers so that they can respect different opinions and adjust ideas. In addition, the cooperative story creation activity positively changed the children and the teachers' recognition and attitude toward cooperative activity. Accordingly, it is suggested that the cooperative story creation activity shall be actively used in the early childhood education field because it can be an effective language education method for changing linguistic interaction among peers.