Young Children's Word Awareness Development at Preschool

This study describes the children‟s way of developing their word awareness from their
teachers and peers at school. The data were obtained from 30 young children, aged 5-6,
of a class in a preschool in Banda Aceh. The instruments used to collect data were
observations and documents from teachers‟ anecdotal records and children‟s language
achievement reports. The observations were conducted for one semester of about 5
months. The results show that the teachers use the motherese register to speak with the
children. They speak more slowly, clearly, with a higher pitch, and with exaggerated
intonation. Children develop their word awareness from teachers with facilitation from
the multimedia, things around them and social environment at the school. These
assistances support the children‟s phonological and semantic awareness by
highlighting their teachers as models. Meanwhile, the children‟s interaction with their
peers tends to produce some errors in words usage and pronunciation. The paper
further provides discussions on the results.