Peer Interactive Language In Role Play Situation With Children From 4 To 6 Years Old

Role play is one of the most important types of play for pre-school children.Since 1970 s,more and more researchers have paid attention to the study of interactive language in role play.Abundant research has found some characteristics and development rules about role play interactive language from partly perspective.But those studies have limitations in terms of research perspectives.And the conclusions are inconsistent,which highlights the need for a further study.The study of Chinese children's peer interactive language in role play situation is at the initial stage.Many kindergarten teachers are always confused and eagerly to know that how to observe and analyze children's play interactive language effectively and improving the quality of role play interaction? Therefore,it is necessary to conduct research of Chinese children's peer Interactive language of role play with the help of integrated research perspectives and diversified research methods.Based on the interactional linguistics research concept,this study focused on the three key question: "what did the children say?","how do children say?","why do children say that?".A total of 192 children ranging in age from 4 to 6 years old recruited from two kindergartens at Changzhou,China,participated in this study.Every four children with two boys and two girls were grouped together to participate in the role play.We combined quantitative and qualitative analysis methods,using Child Language Data Exchange System(CHILDES)and SPSS23.0,analyzed children‘s peer interactive language from three aspects: interactive language communication content,communication behavior,and interactive mode.The whole study divided into three section and comprised with nine sub-research.The first part focuses on the content of children's peer interactive language.The result revealed that:(1)symbolic content is the main content of children ' s communication in a role play;(2)increasing with age,children's symbolic and metacognitive ability,play plan ability,role consciousness and rules consciousness gradually enhanced;(3)the age of 5 is the crucial period of children's symbolic ability development;(4)children prefer to use different type of language express different play content;(5)object allocation and object identification are the main content of the children of non-symbolic language;(6)children's response ability and clarity of language expression gradually strengthened;(7)children's play theme have diversity role and plot characteristics of all ages;(8)children try to construct role identity and resolve peer conflict with the help of object allocation and irrelevant topics.Overall,the content of interactive language reveals the process of children's decentralization,socialization,and the complicated cognitive development,as well as the construction process of multiple stereoscopic peer play culture.The second part focuses on communication behavior of children's peer interactive language.The study found that:(1)to promote the play is the main aim of children's communication in a role play;(2)increasing with age,children's coordination ability enhanced obviously;(3)children express communication purposes more clearly and positively when they are talking about the symbolic content;(4)children's social interchanges,speech act,pragmatic flexible abilities increase significantly from 4 to 6 years old,and the whole three aspects are higher than other interactive situation;(5)in role play situation,children use more imaginative and negotiated communication behavior,the pragmatic flexibilities are more richness than the other situation;(6)children's communication behaviors are more complex especially during talking about the symbolic content,as well as express control play purpose;(7)the improvement of children's pragmatics ability can help children resolve them peer conflict better.In general,role play situation created an unique communication atmosphere,which is full of imagination.As such,children can express their communication purpose clearly,have stronger communication desire,improve their initiative of communication,cooperation,and the ability of solving peer conflict.The third section pays more attention on the interaction patterns of children's peer play interactive language.Findings showed that:(1)in comparison with the other situation,4 to 6 years children‘s mean length of utterance and turn taking ability are higher in role play situation;(2)children's grammar ability can be used to predict the proportion of their symbolic communication content;(3)children's conversation ability can be used to predict the flexibility of their communication behavior;(4)based on the general level of language ability,children can be cluster into four different interactive roles in their peer play activity,which as "leader","active participant" and "passive participant" and " floater";(5)different types of children have significant difference on their peer communication content and communication behavior;(6)The four types of interactive role remains stable with increasing age;(7)the features and quality of children's play interactive language has a great influence on their game skills and peer relations.Overall,children's symbolic play level and language using ability develop synchronously from age 4 to 6 years.As an important mediator variable,children's interactive language quality which influenced by the cognitive level and degree of conversation involvement,has an significant effects on the development of children's game and language ability.Based on the discussion and reflection on above conclusion,we suggest that more attention should be paid to children's peer interactive language in role play.Children's language ability can be evaluated comprehensively based on their play interactive language.Educators can try to create multiple and compound game situation for children.For observing children's role play process,educators should pay more attention to the peer conflict,seize the core structure of role play and the critical period of children's play ability development.To promote children's play interactive language quality,educational staff should begin with purposeful and targeted observation,try to intervene and guide children's play by using appropriate language,cooperate with parents and all sectors of community.Children's comprehensive play and language ability can be improved through high-quality interactive language.This research had some extension and breakthroughs on the research approach,study context and research method than the previous research.It tries to integrally describe the development regularity and characteristics of 4 to 6 years old Chinese children's peer interactive language in role play situation.It discussed the interaction process between play and language development,be affected by the play interactive language quality.This research opens up a new trend of thinking about Chinese children's play interactive language empirical and theoretical studies,enriches some new results about related research fields,and also provides a new perspective and inspiration for the education practice of observing and guiding children's role play activities.