The Influence Of Teachers' Different Speech Styles On The Speech Comprehension Of Early School-age Children

According to the New Speech Act Theory,the content described by the speakers can also be understood by the listeners or even spectators who are exposed to the conversation,it has formed the Pattern of Speaker-Listener-Spectator.In the past,the researchers who deepen this topic mostly focused on adults as the subjects,thus,the development of speech comprehension during the process of speech learning of children is often ignored.In order to research the development of speech comprehension of school-aged children provoked by their teachers’actions of speech,this research created different speech conditions to investigate reactions children subjects to their teachers’descriptions towards a series of graphic patterns produced by tangrams.The study has been designed as two experiments,which allowed children to play the roles of listeners and spectators respectively,to investigate the influences on the speech comprehension of school-aged children caused by their teachers’various speeches in the teaching scenarios.The first experiment set the listeners as the main research subjects based on the Pattern of Speaker-Listener-Spectators presented by the New Speech Act Theory.It discussed the effects on the speech comprehension of school-aged children imposed by their teachers’different speeches in the condition of children played the role of listeners.The experiment was 2~xFactorial Design(The 2 refers to two kinds of speech conditions:monologue-generation condition or dialogue-generation condition.The refers to speech rounds:1 time to 8 times).It was found that the children who were exposed to more speech rounds would have higher accuracies of speech comprehension,and it could be seen on a increment trend.Another result also showed the higher accuracies in dialogue-generation compared to monologue-generation condition.The second experiment set the spectators as the main research subjects based on the Pattern of Speaker-Listener-Spectators presented by the New Speech Act Theory.It discussed the influences on the speech comprehension of school-aged children imposed by their teachers’a variety of speech actions in the circumstance of children played the role of spectators.The experiment was 3×3×3 Factorial Design(The first 3 refers to three kinds of speech conditions:monologue-generation condition,full-dialogue-generation condition or half-dialogue-generation condition.The second 3 refers to the age:7,9 or 11 years old.The third 3 refers to rounds:2,3 or 7times).As the results showed,the accuracies of speech comprehension of school-aged children were the lowest in monologue-generation condition.Additionally,the tests in full-dialogue-generation condition or half-dialogue-generation condition showed that there were insignificant differences in degree of speech comprehension among children subjects who were under the age of 9.Nevertheless,those children who were older than 9 years old reached higher accuracies in understanding their teachers’words in full-dialogue-generation condition.In conclusion:Children could better comprehend their teachers’descriptions generated in dialogue generation condition,whether school-aged children played the roles of listeners or spectators in terms of the New Speech Act Theory.Children who were younger than 9-year-old reached similar level in understanding their teachers’speech in dialogue-generation condition,whether teachers provided feedback or not.Meanwhile,the speech comprehension of children after 9 years old in full-dialogue-generation condition reach the highest degree compared with the other conditions.