Metacommunication Development Of Children Aged From Three To Six During Their Collaborative Pretend Play

Collaborative pretend play is a dominant activity of preschoolers aged from three to six, and it is most popular in preschool during the free time. Metacommunication of preschoolers during their collaborative pretend play is their negotiation on roles, materials, acts, settings, plans and rules. By metacommunication preschoolers initiate and maintain the play, thus gain development in many fields.Supported by the play theory of Vygotsky and Bateson, inspired by the problems came from relative literatures and education reality, this research analysed the metacommunication of children aged from three to six during their collaborative pretend play from aspects of function, form, contant and speech acts, discussed the impact metacommunication brings onto children's narrative, pragmatics and peers interaction. This research is both quantitive and qualitative. Cross-sectional information was collected from the video of semi-structured dyad interactions, was transcribed and code according standards of CHILDES, and analysed by CLAN and SPSS. Qualitative analysis was used to clarify the problems which derived from the quantitive analysis.The results integrally revealed the character and rules of metacommunication of preschoolers during their collaborative pretend play, proved that metacommunication develops during the play, metacommunication helps preschoolers to develop their narrative and pragmatics and metacommunication is favorable for peers interaction. At last, from aspects of observation and record, analysis and estimate, participance and instructment and so on, this research provided some suggestions to preschool teachers which are detailed and easy to perform when supporting children's collaborative pretend play.