Semantic Structure and Communicative Sufficiency of Monologue of Mentally Retarded Children in Different Communicative Situations

The article presents the results of semantic analysis of 120 monologues produced by children with mild mental retardation. The author describes the interrelation between such semantic characteristics as seman tic structure and communicative sufficiency and communicative situation. It was found that at the end of primary school mentally retarded children in most cases are able to accept and accomplish a speech task demanding to produce a text, but half of children’s texts are insufficient for communication. If the communicative significance of speech situation is reinforced, most mentally retarded pupils can be encouraged to produce more detailed and comprehensive texts with a more complex semantic structure. Thus, the hypothesis was confirmed that by varying the communicative situation it is possible to detect such conditions in which semantic characteristics of mentally retarded children’s texts improve due to the involvement of motivational mechanisms.

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