A Study on Effect of Family Articulation Games for Children Aged 3-4

As one of the most basic evaluations of children’s oral expression development, speech intelligibility isn’t taken seriously like Vocabulary, sentence length, sentence pattern and structure in Chinese preschool education.... [ view full abstract ]

As one of the most basic evaluations of children’s oral expression development, speech intelligibility isn’t taken seriously like Vocabulary, sentence length, sentence pattern and structure in Chinese preschool education. This study examined the effect of family articulation games on speech intelligibility through experiments. Twenty-two children, aged3-4 and non-hearing-impairment, were randomly selected as subjects in a kindergarten in Shanghai. Before experiments, all the 22 children were tested for MPT (Maximum Phonation Time) and DR (Diadochokinetic Rate), confirming that there were no differences in respiratory support and vocal function among them. In addition, they also received the evaluation for The Chinese Mandarin Pronunciation Test by Daniel Huang, which showed that there were no differences in the phonation of vowels, consonants and tones of Chinese Mandarin. Afterwards, 22 children were randomly assigned to an experimental group (n = 11) and a control group (n = 11). The children in the experimental group received family articulation games, 20 minutes a day for 45 days. At the end of the experiment, MPT, DR and The Chinese Mandarin Pronunciation Test were used to evaluate speech intelligibility and the results showed the speech intelligibility of the children in the experimental group was significantly higher than of the children in the control group, which proved that family articulation games can effectively improve the speech intelligibility of children aged 3-4.