Preschool Children's Multimodal Meaning Making

This study investigated the effects of two different classroom contexts, sociodramatic play and a teacher led activity, on children's use of verbal and non-verbal communication. Additionally, the effect of children's gender on their use of verbal and non-verbal communicational modes was examined. Participating in the study were 24 children between the ages of 37 and 55 months old, who were attending two preschools. The data collection was completed through observation of children's play and teacher-led reading-retelling -drawing activities. Children were observed on two occasions for each activity, and the total observation time was 40 minutes per child. The observations were conducted during a three week period. Data analyses were completed by using Descriptive and Repeated measurement ANOVA statistical techniques. The study's findings, consistent with current thinking, showed that in the two preschool contexts (open and closed field) the young children used multimodal communication when interacting with their peers. The observations illustrated that children used their facial expressions to communicate their willingness or unwillingness to start or continue playing, or participating in teacher-led activities. While the pointing gestures were used to accompany requests, or direct the attention of others; the metaphoric gestures were used to supplement language when explaining. According to the findings, children use language to serve a variety of functions during different classroom activities. In the play context, language is used mostly to serve imaginative and interactional functions. In the closed-field context, where the interaction was led by the teacher, the most common language function used by the children was informative language.