Naslov
Analysis of Croatian corpus of child language (age 7 to 12) and its usage in teaching

Autori
Aladrović Slovaček, Katarina ; Ivanković, Melita

Izvornik
Prace filologiczne (0138-0567) 63 (2012); 13-23

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Radovi u časopisima, članak, znanstveni

Ključne riječi
corpus linguistic; language learning; aquisition of language

Sažetak
Language as an abstract system of signs has its two realizations: oral and written. A child utters syllables first, then words, phrases and then sentences. The process of voice articulation, together with one of the phases in language learning, is finished by the age of 6. In this phase a child whose language development is proper is capable to compose a sentence consisting of five, six or seven words (Pavličević-Franić, 2005). Vocabulary of a seven-year-old contains around 10 000 words (Pavličević- Franić, Gazdić- Alerić, 2010). Institutional learning of the Croatian language as a mother tongue starts in the kindergarten and it happens through different communicational language games. However, when starting school (at the age of 6 or 7), a child starts to learn language systematically. Since the Croatian language, as a Slavic language, is morphologically rich, language learning often presents a real problem to children. They are afraid of learning language and they don't like it (Pavličević- Franić, Aladrović, 2009). This fact shows the necessity to change language teaching, especially in primary school which according to Croatian educational system lasts eight years. Those changes require the usage of communicative- functional approach in language teaching (Miljević- Riđički and others, 2004). Croatian National Educational Corpus has over a hundred million basic words (www.hnk.ffzg.hr, June 2010). A base of Croatian child language, which includes a period till the age of six, was created within a CHILDES base. But, the corpus of Croatian child language during primary school is not registered in the mentioned bases, so the purpose of this research is to analyze the corpus of child language from the age of seven to twelve, the period when children are in the concrete operational stage (Piaget, 1969). The corpus has around 1500 written works collected while doing a research in 30 primary schools in all the regions of Croatia, and it contains around 30 000 words. The corpus will be coded and afterwards analyzed on morphological, syntactical and lexical level. The research will also try to answer the question of how to use the corpus while learning the mother tongue in primary school and help children to start loving their language and to learn it happily.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

Napomena
Rad je kao predavanje porezentiran na skupu Slavicorp 2010, održanom od 22.-23.11.2010., Varšava, Poljska ; objavljen u Knjizi sažetaka.

POVEZANOST RADA