ARTICULATION OF SPEECH SOUNDS OF SERBIAN LANGUAGE IN CHILDREN AGED SIX TO EIGHT

Phonetic and phonological system of the healthy members of one linguistic community is fully formed around 8 yedrs of age. The auditory and articulatory habits are established with age and tend to be more difficult to be upgraded and completed later.

The research was done as a cross-sectional study, conducted at the preschool institution "Radosno detinjstvo" and primary school "Branko Radičević" in Novi Sad. It included 66 children of both genders, aged 6 to 8. The quality of articulation was determined according to the Global Articulation Test by working with each child individually.

In each individual vowel, plosive, nasal, lateral and fricative, the quality of articulation was statistically significantly better in the first graders compared to the preschool children (p<0.01). In each affricate, except for the sound /ć/, the quality of articulation was statistically significantly better in the first graders than in the preschool children (p<0.01). The quality of articulation of all speech sounds was statistically significantly better in the first graders than in the preschool children (p<0.01).

The most common disorder of articulation is distortion, while only substitution and substitution associated with distortion are less common. Omission does not occur in children from 6 to 8 years of age. Girls have slightly better quality of articulation. The articulatory disorders are more common in preschool children than in children who are in the first grade of primary school. The most commonly mispronounced sounds belong to the group of affricates and fricatives.