THE EFFECT OF EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION ON SPEECH DEVELOPMENT OF PRIMARY SCHOOL CHILDREN IN JOS NORTH LGA OF PLATEAU STATE

1.1 Introduction

Early childhood education is the term commonly used to describe the formal teaching and care of young children by people other than their family or in settings outside of the home. According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) the developmental definition of early childhood education, spans the human life from birth to age eight. However, typically early childhood education covers the period from birth to when a child starts school and this can be as early as five years of age. Early childhood development and education is the overall development of the child socially, physically and intellectually. It encompasses the care, development and education of children below the age of six years Maduewesi, in Osakwe (2009).

As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Research hypothesis and questions, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.

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1.2 Background of Study

Early childhood education involvement according to Barnard (2001) positively affects home and school participation in education at the long run. A child who fails to acquire early education may suffer emotionally, socially, intellectually and even physically if he or she is trusted into the primary school without a sustainable early childhood education involvement that will give him a solid foundation in the primary school. Infact, for the effective and efficient unfolding and development of a child’s latent abilities, attitudes and other forms of behaviour of positive values in the society in which he lives, early childhood education becomes very imminent. This is of utmost importance because researches on early childhood education have shown that early childhood education involvement have great impact on every facet of a child’s development and had suggested that the first teacher is an extremely important person in the child’s life, hence he becomes a role- model to the child.

Anderson (2002) is of the view that when children are exposed to early childhood education, they develop superior communication skills, necessary physical ability and social unity needed in adult life and an increased cognitive and effective educational balance. Researchers in the field and early childhood educators both view the parents as an integral part of the early childhood process. Early childhood education takes many forms depending on the beliefs of the educator or parent. In today’s world, parents and families contribute as much as teachers, students and administrators to the educational process or even more. More than any other time in history, involving community players represents a high priority of most school settings. The measured and researched positive effect of parent involvement on student academic achievement pushes this area into focus of most school district and early childhood programme goals.

Nwagbara (2000) is of the opinion that the vocabulary acquisition during early childhood spans from 12 months with an average number of 3 words to 72 months with an average number of 2562 (two thousand, five hundred and sixty two) words. So, children to speak without any deliberate instruction needed to read or write. Much of what they say, have their own rules and often not the same as in adult and speech. Research in this area supports theory that children do not acquire grammar through practice or imitation like adults do. They have their own rules of grammar. For example, “it does not run”, becomes “not run”. This conforms to their idea of negative statement or sentence. Even when adults give past tense of eat as ate, children will add ‘ed’ to it saying ‘eated’ and stick to it.

Therefore, in Jos North LGA of Plateau State where the research was carried out, the activities that was conducted is to know the Effect of Early Childhood Education on Speech Development of Primary School Children.

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1.3 Statement of Problems

Language acquisition is of paramount importance in the life of a child. This is because any child with one form of language or the other in the society, cannot be expected to be a normal child.

Often times, most parents, especially mothers who are supposed to be the first teachers of their children fail to inculcate the habit of reading story books by their young ones so as to acquire the use of words fast and accurately. No wonder children of these days instead of learning good spoken words from their parents and significant others, rather learn bad languages from their peers due to the fact that they were not taught the proper and appropriate language use and or application.

Many children fail to develop the appropriate language skill may be because their teachers in the school, their parents at home have lost the focus and have failed to see the need in assisting the child to develop his/her linguistic prowess or skills which is very important in human life. As children were not taught by those who are in position to teach how to develop appropriate language skills, these children grow up loosing the grip of either their mother tongue or the English Language which is the second official language of instruction to the child.

Children do not know or master speeches due to the fact that the teachers who teach them at the primary school do not have the mastery content or the methods with which to teach these children and develop their speech. For the fact that children’s speeches are not developed at the grassroots, it affected them even at the adult age. This is why many adults find it difficult to speak fluently either in the private or public arenas.

At the primary stage of development in the lives of most children, they were not taught or directed by older persons or the significant others in the society or at the school, and by their teachers on the appropriate way to develop their language for later life in adolescence and adulthood. The poor language − teaching and poor speech development among primary children is therefore, the issue that gave rise to the investigation of this study.

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1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study

The aim of the study is to scrutinize the Effect of Early Childhood Education on Speech Development of Primary School Children in Jos North LGA of Plateau State. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:

1. To examine whether there is relationship between Early Childhood school education and speech development among children in schools.
2. To investigate whether there is a difference between Early Childhood school education and speech development among children in schools.
3. To differentiate between the speech development of children who were taught by their parents and those who were taught by teachers.
4. To investigate whether there is general difference in the speech development of children who had Early Childhood education and those who did not.

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1.5 Research Questions

The study came up with research questions so as to be able to ascertain the above stated objectives. The specific research questions for the study are stated below as follows:

• Is there any relationship between pre-primary school education and speech development among children in schools?
• To what extent can there be any difference between pre-primary school education and speech development among children in schools?
• How can we differentiate between the speech development of children who were taught by their parents and those who were taught by their teachers?
• How can we investigate whether there is general difference in the speech development of children who had pre-primary education and those who did not?

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1.6 Research Hypothesis

In order to pursue the objective of this study, the following generalized statements have been designed to guide and aids in obtaining the result for the experiment to be conducted. For this work, the null hypothesis will be represented with H0 while the alternative hypothesis will be represented with hypothesis H1.

• H₀1: There will be no significant relationship between pre-primary school education and speech development among children in schools.
• H₀2: There will be no significant difference between pre-primary school education and children’s school achievement in schools.
• H₀3: There will be no significant difference between the speech development of children who were taught by their parents and those who were taught by teachers.
• H₀4: There will no significant gender difference in the speech development of children due to pre-primary education.

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1.7 Significance of Study

The study will be of great benefit to the following individuals:

1. Children will benefit from the findings and recommendations of this study because it will help their teachers and parents to be in good positions to help in teaching or instructing them on the appropriate language to be learned in their communities.
2. With the recommendation of this study, teachers would be exposed to know how best to go about teaching or handling children at the lower level of our school system, the primary school. Not only that, they would be exposed to the appropriate methods to be used in teaching language to the child in school, especially at the primary school system.
3. Parents would have a better insight on the essence of teaching the child to gain mastery of the language of his/her environment. Most parents do not know that they are the first teachers of the child at home. This study will expose them to the knowledge that they should be the first people to impact knowledge to the child, especially concerning children’s language development. With this study and its recommendations, parents would be able to know the best techniques to be always used in teaching language to the children.
4. The society will be exposed to the proper knowledge of language acquisition to the child in the society. With the recommendations, the society will be able to know how best to assist the child in the area of acquisition and mastery of language.

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1.8 Scope of Study

The study focuses on the Effect of Early Childhood Education on Speech Development of Primary School Children in Jos North LGA of Plateau State.

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1.9 Limitations of the Study

During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:

1. Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
2. Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
3. Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
4. Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet, questionnaire and interview).

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1.10 Definition of Terms

Pre-primary: Pre-primary education as defined by Omozeghian (1995) is the education meant for children between the ages of 3 to 6 years.

Early childhood education: It is the term commonly used to describe the formal teaching and care of young children by people other than their family or in settings outside of the home.