Rozumienie dyrektyw przez dzieci przedszkolne

Pre-school children’s understanding of instructionsIn spite of the large amount of research on children’s speech development, we still do not have a system of developmental norms which would describe changes in the area of communicative competence. There has also been insufficient research on the development of pragmatic aspects of communication. In regard to this situation, the purpose of our research was to determine a basic developmental model relating to certain communicative skills, in particular the understanding of instructions by young children. Through the research, an effort was made to determine at which age children begin to understand indirect requests; in which situational or social contexts they interpret utterances as requests, and in which as questions of possibilities. The study examined when children begin to understand the intentions conveyed in expressions such as ‘I wonder…’ and ‘I would be glad if…’The research group consisted of 68 children (42 boys and 26 girls) at ages ranging from 3.5 years to 6.5 years old. The researcher used a technique in which the child’s task was to interpret the words of a toy space-alien. The data collected may allow one to state that it is around the age of five that children begin to understand indirect instructions