What is Speech Therapy?
What is a Speech Pathologist?
Speech and language pathologists diagnose and treat children and adults with communication disorders, including difficulties with:
Producing the sounds needed for speech
Using language to express ideas, wants and needs
Understanding spoken language
Literacy skills (written expression and reading comprehension)
Using social language to connect with the world around us
Reading non-verbal communication
Higher level language skills (reasoning and inferencing)
Emotional regulation skills
What is Communication?
Communication consists of non-verbal communication (e.g. eye gaze and gesture), speech, receptive language, expressive language, and pragmatic language.
What is Language?
Receptive language
Receptive language refers to your child’s ability to understand when people speak to him/her. Children with receptive language difficulties may have trouble understanding longer, more complex sentences, listening and attending to conversation, following instructions appropriately at home and in the classroom, and responding appropriately to questions. Receptive language difficulties may be misinterpreted as poor attention when in fact the child does not understand what is expected of him/her. This can lead to frustration and possible behavioural difficulties.
Expressive language
Expressive language refers to your child’s ability to talk. This involves his/her ability to join words to make sentences using the correct vocabulary and grammar. Some signs that your child may be having difficulties with expressive language may include speaking in short sentences, trouble finding the ‘right’ words, and difficulty with retelling a story. This can result in your child having trouble getting their message across to other people, which can be frustrating.
What are speech sounds?
Speech involves the sounds your child makes when communicating. Difficulties producing the sounds necessary for intelligible speech may be the result of articulation errors (i.e. inability to produce the ‘s’ sound resulting in a lisp) and phonological errors (i.e. producing ‘w’ for ‘r’ such as ‘wed’ for ‘red’).
What are Literacy Skills?
Literacy skills include all the skills necessary for reading and writing. Speech pathologists can support children in the areas of reading, to develop their phonological awareness skills, phonics knowledge, vocabulary, fluency and reading comprehension, as well as in the area of writing, including spelling using code knowledge, strengthening their ability to organise/structure their ideas and written content, and use appropriate mechanics such as punctuation.
Speech pathologists are equipped with a deep understanding of the mechanics of language , vocabulary, and speech sounds. For students with specific learning difficulties and differences, a speech pathologist uses specialised programs to support their learning styles and needs, as well as supporting those in the wider community (such as school) to help implement specific accomodations and strategies that allow a student to reach their full potential.
