Speech and Language Therapy

Speech and Language Therapists provide speech therapy for children from birth through high school age. Children may be referred by their parents in the preschool years due to a delay in acquisition of speech or because people are unable to understand them. If people cannot understand a three year old, it is a good idea for the child to be screened by a Speech Therapist. During the school years, the teacher will typically refer the child because the child’s inability to communicate interferes with the student’s educational performance. 

• Parents who have concerns related to their child’s speech or language skills, please contact the Speech and Language Department at 284-2162, Ex. 4, or talk with your child’s teacher.

There are many areas in speech that may interfere with a child’s educational performance and disrupt their ability to communicate effectively with others. Articulation, language, and fluency (or stuttering) are three of the most common areas of concern. Working with children who have difficulty with semantics, syntax, apraxia, morphology, pragmatics, and auditory processing are other areas that may be a part of speech and language therapy.

TERMINOLOGY:

APRAXIA:

Apraxia is difficulty forming sounds into words. The term developmental apraxia is used when children have this problem.

ARTICULATION:

Articulation refers to the child’s ability to produce speech sounds to make words. Often young children may make sound errors that make their speech difficult to understand. Some of these errors may be developmental in nature. For example, young children often have difficulty with the “R” and “S” sounds. These sounds however often develop later for some children. If a child has not developed the “R” and “S” sounds by age 8 or 9 they may need to be evaluated by a speech and language therapist.

FLUENCY (OR STUTTERING):

Fluent speech refers to even, melodic, “typical” conversational rate and flow. A child may have difficulty with fluency if he/she repeats sounds or words, prolongs sounds or words, or seems to “get stuck” and “can’t get the words out”. Often times disfluent speech can occur between the ages of 3 and 7 and may be a part of normal speech development. A child may out grow “stuttering” but parents should not hesitate to contact a speech therapist for advice if they are concerned about their child’s fluency.

LANGUAGE:

Language is a child’s ability to understand and related experiences, ideas, knowledge and feelings through verbal communication. Some areas included in language are vocabulary, sentence length, and grammar. If for example a 2-year-old is not beginning to talk yet, a parent may wish to speak with a speech therapist

SEMANTICS:

The term semantics refers to understanding and usage of vocabulary and knowledge of word meanings. Examples may include antonyms (word opposites), synonyms (word with similar meanings-happy/glad), or idioms (figurative speech (ie., she is feeling blue).

SYNTAX:

The term syntax refers to the ability to use adequate or appropriate sentence length, complexity or word order.

MORPHOLOGY

The term morphology refers to grammar usage. It is the ability to understand and use words that give meaning. Some examples include: Word Endings (ed, ing, er), Verb Tenses or when an event occurred, Connecting Words or how events are linked together (is, am, are, were), and Pronouns and Possessives or who is the object of a conversation (he, she mine).

PRAGMATICS

The term pragmatics refers to the why and when of a social conversation or using language in a purposeful manner. Pragmatics is the ability to explain or give clear information, retell an event or story, give or take messages, or communicate with others non-verbally (eye contact, speaker-listener distance, and adequate volume).

AUDITORY PROCESSING

The term auditory processing refers to the ability to listen to, remember, sequence, and use (or process) verbally presented information. Auditory processing also includes the ability to recall or retrieve words at single word and conversational levels.

CENTRAL PROCESSING DISORDER

Children and adults who have a central processing disorder (CAPD) are people who have difficulty using auditory information to communicate and learn.