The effect of free play in preschoolers´ language improvement: a systematic review

Abstract

The main purpose was twofold: systematically gather and analyze the existing research literature in order to synthesize and critically evaluate the available evidence to determine the extent to which free play interventions contribute to improving language skills in preschool-aged children, and provide recommendations for practitioners and policymakers regarding the potential benefits of incorporating free play interventions into early childhood education programs to support language development. A systematic review of relevant articles was carried out using two electronic databases until October 1, 2022. From 674 studies, 8 were included in the qualitative synthesis. Most studies were observational and video observation or recording-based. Free play resulted effective for language development. Self-talk resulted both particularly relevant to develop language skills and age-dependent. Teachers should consider free-play settings for fueling language improvements. For improving these results, teacher should consider self-selected activities than alone, free-play than structured play, and during complex non-verbal cooperation contexts.