Educator use of dialect in the Styrian kindergartens

Preschool teachers tell and read age appropriate fairytales, stories, riddles, songs and also perform puppet shows for the children in nursery schools. In this manner they enable children, already in this preschool period, to get in contact with the literary language (spoken and written) and at the same time this enables them to get familiar with the literary genre of the language with the help of dialect and spoken language. During my studies and the practical pedagogical education in kindergarten, I noticed several times, how often kids use words in their own dialect. The purpose of my degree paper was to find out how often the teachers themselves use dialect words, what are the cirucumstances for the teacher's use of dialect in nursery schools and how the teachers in term, encourage the children to use literary language. This degree paper has the title Vzgojiteljeva raba narečja v štajerskih vrtcih (The teacher's use of dialect in Styria's nursery schools) is composed of a theoretical and empirical part. In the theoretical part I presented the slovenian language, its roles and functions. Special emphasis was put on the social genres of slovenian language. I presented 7 slovenian dialect groups and I described in detail the Styria dialect. I presented the area of language in the Curriculum for Nursery schools and put emphasis on reading in nursery schools. I also touched the role of teachers in encouraging the linguistic capabilities in nursery schools and the importance of education of the technical staff for their professional developement. In the empirical part I used a questionnaire to unveil the teacher's standpoints in regard toward literary language and also how the teachers encourage children to use literary language and in term to discover whether or not the usage of the dialect is more common in nursery schools in the village or in the city