초등 3-4학년 다문화가정 언어발달지연아동의 설명담화 유형에 따른 구문 특성: 비교/대조와 원인/결과 유형을 중심으로

Abstract

After entering school, children have encountered frequently expository discourses in academic curriculum. Previous studies have demonstrated that children were more likely to experience difficulty to understand and express on expository discourses, compared to narrative or conversational discourses. Children with language delay showed poor performance on vocabulary, morphosyntax, and discourses, so there difficulties might influence negatively on comprehension and production of expository discourses. Therefore, this study was examined to whether children with language delay from multicultural families have difficulties in syntactic complexity on retelling expository discourses. In addition, expository discourses are composed of various types, so we studied between causation and comparison types of expository discourses which have been frequently provided in curriculum.

The following are the specific research questions: (1) Are there significant differences in number of total T-units for three groups according to expository discourse types (2) Are there significant differences in number of morphemes per T-units for three groups according to expository discourse types? (3) Are there significant differences in number of subordinate clauses for three groups expository discourse types?

Total 45 children from grade 3 to 4 were participated in this study. There were 15 students for each group. First group were children with language delay from multicultural families, second groups were children with typical language development from multicultural families, and last group were children with typical language development from single-cultural families. All children should obtain nonverbal intelligence quotient score of 80 or higher at K-CTONI-2, and had no history of neurological or emotional problems. Children from multicultural families have international mothers and Korean fathers, and home language is Korean only. Children with language delay from multicultural families showed standard deviation of -1.25 or below on expressive and receptive tests of Receptive & Expressive Vocabulary Test (REVT). Children with typical language development both in multicultural families and single-cultural families showed standard deviation of -1 or higher on receptive and expressive vocabulary tests of REVT. In this study, participants were to ask to retell expository stories after listening to the story with pictures. All speech samples were transcribed and analyzed those into total number of T-unit, number of morpheme per T-unit, number of subordinate clauses per T-unit. The results showed there were no significant differences between three groups and two different expository types on total number of T-units. First reason which children with language delay were comparable with typically developing children would be explained by the task in this study. Children were asked to retell the story with pictures, so it could be helpful for children with language delay because it could be required to less language and cognitive demand. For the number of morpheme per T-unit, children with language delay from multicultural families were significantly poorer than those with typical language developing from single cultural families. Children with language delay used significantly less number of morphemes per T-unit because they used shorter and simpler sentences than those with typical language development did. Children with language delay would have difficulty to acquire and produce morphemes. As well, complicated discourse types might influence production of complex sentence structure. There were significant differences in number of morphemes per unit between the two types of expository discourses, with having more morphemes in causation than comparison types. This result demonstrated that causation types might be more complicated, so children produced more morepheme per T-units than comparison. Finally, there were significant differences between three groups, with showing children with language delay from multicultural families performed worst than two groups with typical language development. This would be explained by complicated sentences structures and lack of expository structure knowledge. There were significant differences in number of morphemes per T-unit between the expository discourse types. Causation type has significantly more number of subordinate clauses than comparison type does. This can be explained by the differences in type. In summary, children with language delay from multicultural families showed no significant differences in syntactic production, when compared to two typical developing children. But in terms of complexity, children with language delay seem to have more difficulties than those with typically developing children. Last, the more complex the structure of expository discourse is, the more complex syntactic characteristic is produced.