Formation of speech and thinking in children 2-5 years old

At this age, the child's vocabulary grows very quickly. If at 2 years old it was about 250-300 words, then by the age of 5 it already reaches 2500 words. The child intensively masters grammatical forms, his speech becomes clearer and more coherent. In addition to nouns, verbs begin to appear in it. Sentences become more and more complex, although they remain short. By the age of 3, subordinate clauses begin to appear in the child's speech: "If I obey, then they will take me to the zoo." Communication with adults plays one of the main and even decisive roles in the development of speech. For example, research results indicate that in a family of deaf-mute parents, normal sound speech does not appear in children, even those who are not deaf-mute.

If we talk about the type of speech, then in the period from 2 to 5 years, situational speech prevails in children. That is, the child describes what is happening to him or around him. But from the age of 5, the beginnings of contextual speech begin to appear, for example, when retelling fairy tales or stories heard. At the same age, the intellectual function of speech begins to appear (that is, planning and regulating practical action), which is due to the development of intelligence.

By the age of 5, a child has practically mastered the basic rules of grammar and learns to use them in oral speech. Naturally, he masters grammar not by studying the rules, but by memorizing the speech patterns used by adults. Due to the limited thinking and a small range of knowledge and skills, the process of mastering the meaning of words is quite a difficult task for a child. But life and communication with adults and peers forces him to master these meanings - this is how a new need is formed in the child's life. But, given the specific nature of children's thinking and weak differentiation of grammatical relations, the process of mastering the meaning of words occurs in a peculiar way. The child "invents" his own words, relying on an external analogy. For example, knowing the word "mechanic", by analogy, instead of "postman" he says - "postman" (A. M. Bardian). Such "word creation" was very well described by K. I. Chukovsky in his book "From Two to Five". A well-known example from this book is when a little boy, having eaten his fill of macaroni, says: "I'm full of macaroni!" Children's word creation is the result of the child's assimilation of some widely used grammatical forms, a consequence of the fact that the child sees objects and phenomena in a special way, as well as the predominance of concrete thinking in him.

Concrete-figurative thinking also explains the fact that the child does not understand the figurative meaning of the words: "Uncle Petya was removed from the construction site" - the child understands this literally - Uncle Petya, sitting on a structure made of bricks, was removed and lowered to the ground by other workers. (A. M. Bardian).

Children of this age are characterized by active-efficient thinking. If a child is asked to get an object from an inaccessible height, he will jump, trying to grab it, but when asked to think how to get it, he will answer: "Why think, you need to get it." This type of thinking is even played out in a joke: "A student wants to pick a high-hanging apple. He starts shaking the tree, but the apple does not fall. A passerby says to him: "Why don't you think of another way?" To which the student replies: "What is there to think about - you need to shake it!"

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