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A plan to develop a learning material of language treatment for children of multi-cultural families

Jang Mi-yeong 1

1전주대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to grope for the direction of the content and structure of the learning material for ‘language treatment’ which will be used as an ‘education’ and ‘treatment’ for the children of multi-cultural families with language disorder. Language treatment for children of multi-cultural families will be a part of more systematic and effective Korean language education considering correction of language disorder as well as language development which is different from language treatment for normal children. The result will be fluent Korean language and improvement of learning ability. Language disorder of the children of multi-cultural families comes from a defect in the course of a linguistic development. The language environment in the childhood which causes lack of spoken language contact due to the mothers without fluent Korean leads to the basic problem with pronunciation, accent and vocabularies of Korean language. The learning material for language treatment has to consider and recover the lack of experience of spoken language. Spoken language needs the training of pronunciation and accent as well as suprasegmental features such as strength, tone quality, rhythm, length. It is important to find the point place of articulation in the pronunciation training. Besides, it would not be possible for children to express their feelings until they recognize the strength adjustment from whispers to shout, the change the tone quality from husky, rough to a nasal, the length control of vowels and accent such as high or low tone. It aims at fluency in Korean language to learn the strength of words and paragraphs or to learn various patterns of rhythm in the sentences. The process of language treatment of phonology above mentioned is followed by that of lexicology which focuses on understanding the relationship between words and sounds and learning the meaning. This needs a balanced approach connecting repeated sentences with expected pictures. It is important for the balanced approach to make learning materials to connect the sense of sight with that of hearing such as looking for the same sound of one's first name by watching a picture, words having the same sound at the end or words sounding funny and looking unusual etc. The next step is the language treatment of semantics associated with elementary level of Korean language reading. It is to learn categorized vocabularies and related words based on the similarity or common function of things, for example, pencil and paper, toothpaste and toothbrush, spoon and chopsticks, book and note, go and come, here and there, inside and outside, up and down. The language treatment of pragmatics is the next. Pragmatics is the functional side of language understanding or expressing the language according to the context. It is categorized as a high level of language treatment by teaching children how to use words properly considering the purpose and context and how to understand other people's intention. As I mentioned above, the language treatments based on phonology, lexicology, semantics and pragmatics lead to the study of speaking and hearing in the elementary Korean language. Therefore it will be desirable to make a material for the language treatment containing contexts which are connected to a fairy tale, a traditional tale or a folk tale and further to the expressions used in the elementary school classroom. The contents of the material for language treatment should be decided on the initiative of children. It doesn't mean that the speech therapist has to play a passive role. We are just cautious of the situation putting the relationship between the speech therapist and children to that of question-answer or order-obey. If children play an active role, most of them easily achieve sensitivity to various feelings and ability to express it. It makes generalization more easily and facilitates their role as communicators. Looking at a child's initial language learning stage, one may realize the communication between the child and his mother who brings up him influences a lot on the language skill. A child is satisfied with his mother playing with him and reading a book for him regardless of the level of the mothers' fluency in Korean language. It is preferable for a mother to be with the child in the language treatment for him. In this case, the mother plays a counter actor, ie., to response, tell or listen to the child rather than just an observer beside him. As children of language disorder normally don't understand that the teller and the listener take turns talking, it is essential to make a material for the language treatment containing the counter actor. The ultimate purpose of language treatment is a perfect communication. For doing this, it is necessary to make teaching contents and strategy of the subject combination by using a real thing, picture, poster to fully understand the subject expressed with a word or sometimes by connecting culture, a fairy tale, mathematics, science, music and art with the subject to understand the concept. We have to find something academic leading to consistency or connecting with the contents of the material in order to make the material with the subject-oriented contents. It would not be easy to practice Korean language education in parallel with language treatment against the children of language disorder. The longer the period of disorder, the deeper the disorder itself and of course the longer the treatment needed. To establish the advanced multi-cultural society, we have to provide the social minority with the customized service. There is a story of 'invitation for a meal between a fox and a crane' in Aesop's fables. It points out of the necessity of the customized service considering not only materials of the meal but also the container. Children of the international marriage families will be the main engine of the next generation of Korean society. Their problem will become Korean society's problem and their disorder will directly lead to the barrier preventing from the progress of Korean society. How deeply we can consider the children of international marriage with a language disorder in order to treat them is closely related to the depth of our lives.

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