Adaptation of Preschool Children in a Foreign Language Environment

The subject of my bachaelor thesis is an adaptation and acquisition of other languages by bilingual children in the kindergarden environment. The aim of my work is to detect the most common problems, which can occur during a bilingual child´s adaptation and language development, from the parents and kindergarden teachers point of view. The bachaelor thesis is comprised of two parts, theoretical and practical. The theoretical part of my work describes general terms and recent opinions, presented in published works, which investigates problems such as speech development, language, bilingualism, bilingual education, bilingual individual and children´s adaptation to kindergarden environment. The practical part presents results of my research, which has been implemented on five different specimens. I attempt to describe, what feelings and experiences children have during adaptation, how does bilingual child´s language development proceed, what are the most common problems which accompanies child´s adaptation and what steps should the teacher take to enable the most natural, fast and smooth adaptation and language acquisition. The study will be conducted through observation and interviews. I will explore child´s behavior, temperament, participation and language development. During this study I will work closely with children´s parents, who will help me record important changes. I will observe in my study five bilingual children 3 to 6 years old living in families, whose language is different from community language. I will attempt through the help of teachers and parents to summarize, how did child adjut to the new environment, how did she/he manage the language and what were the most common bilingual children´s problems and parent´s fears