Valodniecības pētījumu nozīmīgums logopēda profesijā

The study has been carried out within the subproject No. 8 “Latvian Language Acquisition” framework of the National Research Programme “Latvian Language”. The aim of the study is to research and describe the importance of linguistic research results to speech and language therapists. In the course of studying children’s speech in 2019 and 2020 in different cities of Latvia, it was found that children of pre-school age, regardless of their mother tongue, have widespread sound pronunciation disorders, e.g. elision of the sound r (bukāns, tīs) or substitution of the sound with another sound (klāsas, klūze, gjiež). However, minority children speaking in Latvian have additional difficulties pronouncing the sounds that are not present in their native Russian. Frequently, long vowels are pronounced as short vowels, e.g. when asked what it is/they are? (ābols, krūze, šķēres, grāmata, burkāns) and what it does/they do? (ēd) the children answer abols, kruze, šķeres, gramata, burkans ed, etc., because, in their native language, there are only short vowels. The substitution of broad vowel e [ae] with the narrow e, e.g. ed [ed], is caused by the same reason. Pronunciation of the diphthong o [uo] as a long vowel has also been observed, e.g. pōgas (pogas). When children are not sure of the proper ending of a word, they do not pronounce it, e.g. abol (ābols), putn (putni), žiraf (žirafe). The speech studies of minority children also showed a large number of grammatical and vocabulary errors, which affect the development of their language and may, in the future, lead to difficulties and disruptions in the learning of the language, which, in more severe cases, lead to a disruption in the learning of subjects at school. The study results showed that in Latvia, the bilingualism of the minority pre-school children is relative. In general, only children whose families are bilingual or who attend the pre-school education groups with Latvian as the communication language speak well both their native language and Latvian. Observations during the National Research Programme show that speech therapists increasingly face the demand for minority children to learn Latvian as the second language; however, speech therapists do not have information about implementing corrections in such cases. Therefore, research on the characteristics of bilingualism and results of language studies are useful for speech therapists in diagnosing, correcting, and preventing disorders. The speaking and language skills of many minority children of pre-school age are still insufficient to continue successful learning in Latvian or bilingually. There are many phonetical and grammatical errors in their speech, while a poor vocabulary interferes with expressing thoughts and engaging in conversation. Both teachers and speech therapists need modern theoretical and practical training to raise their qualifications and implement a common understanding of the problems. The lessons learned from this project are incorporated into the bachelor’s theses of Marta Jakušina, Valērija Krasovska, and Alise Valtere.