CHARACTERISTICS OF GAME ACTIVITY ORGANIZATION AND ITS INFLUENCE ON SPEECH DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN WITH MODERATE MENTAL RETARDATION

Abstract

This research aimed to explore the organizational features of play activities of children with moderate mental retardation and its impact on their speech development. The studies were conducted among 144 children with moderate mental retardation aged 7–18-year-old living in specialized orphanages and 40 educators. The research methodology was based on the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods including observation, conversation, interview, and validating scientific experiments for data collection. The use of selected data collection methods helped to observe the general activities of children and to obtain data on the specifics of their play activities both from children and the educators working with them. As a result of validating scientific experiments, patterns of play activities of children with moderate mental retardation, and their playing abilities were recorded, and the most frequently used games and their influence on the development of children were revealed. The regulation of the day, the time allotted for games during educational and speech development classes, the setting, and the reasons related to application features were also exposed. The results of the study stated, that in the list of games used during remedial and speech development activities in a specialized orphanage, such as verbal, staged, role-playing, speech therapy games and motion games were almost absent. In 5 out of 15 studied groups, 2-3 game exercises of speech therapy were used, about the same number of sports exercises and word games. It was also recorded that the tutor spent approximately 33% of the game time (1 hour) explaining each game, 17% on individual work, 28% on correcting mistakes and other corrective work, and on the game itself, it was used only 22% of the time which negatively affected the effectiveness of using games. It has been found that in insufficient conditions of the organization of game activities, the effectiveness of corrective educational work decreased, and the development of speech was delayed.