Didactical strategies for speech development in hard of hearing children

Speech is a bridge to every aspect of a child's life, therefore I think it is important to understand how it develops. Children are naturally eager, willing and able to acquire speech and language and in the first six years of life acquire the basics of communication that will benefit them for life. It is known that children produce as much speech as they hear it. This means that a child who only hears and adopts partially and deformed sounds, also speaks less and worse. During the study my interest has deepened in Speech and Language Therapy, in addition to that I got inspired for my dissertation from my father, who is hard of hearing. We raise and educate hard of hearing child so that he will be able to find knowledge and use it in life. We must trust in him, his development and his abilities. This is the foundation so we are able to empathize with the child and encourage him. We offer a professional and personal willingness so with the reflection of our own work can help the child in its development. For this, there is only one way, namely practice. Therefore, in my Bachelor's degree I explored how teachers and teacher assistants encourage speech, language and communication in hard of hearing and hearing children. The research involved fifty teachers and teacher assistants from three Slovenian nursery schools. Aforementioned teachers and teacher assistants responded to the questionnaire on the use of activities in the curriculum area of language, frequency of use of speech games and exercises, how to implement them, the evaluation of the importance of influencing speech games and exercises and they spoke about the importance of games and exercises for hard of hearing and hearing children. I analysed date on the basis of two groups of participants in the survey, namely teachers and teacher assistants who have experience with hard of hearing children and teachers and teacher assistants who do not have experience with hard of hearing children. I found out that most of teachers and teacher assistants, regardless of whether they have experience with hard of hearing children or not, use all language activities listed from the curriculum. In addition, the groups unify in influencing games and exercises, since they most want to influence on child's articulation and their opinion is that the speech exercises and games are important for hard of hearing as well as hearing children