
What is Speech and Language Therapy?

Can you imagine the struggle of not being able to communicate?
A child or adult with a communication disorder may encounter many obstacles to learning, communicating and employment. Communication is involved in much of the school day. Students need to listen, write responses, and interact with peers and teachers.
A Speech-Language Therapist assesses and treats the following:
Speech production
Remediation of misarticulated speech sounds, development of the speech sound system, planning and coordinating the oro-motor movements needed to make speech sounds
Stuttering
Fluency disorders include stuttering, a condition in which the flow of speech is interrupted by abnormal stoppages, repetitions, or prolonging sounds and syllables.
Language
- Receptive language: This is the understanding of language. Receptive disorders refer to difficulties understanding or processing language.
- Expressive language: This is the use of language. Expressive disorders include difficulty putting words together, vocabulary limitations, sentence formulation, grammar, vocabulary expansion, and verbal reasoning and storytelling/narrative skills.
- Pragmatic language: This is the ability to use language in a socially appropriate way.


Auditory Perception
This refers to the processing of heard information. This is not linked to hearing acuity. This relates to auditory memory, the ability to follow oral directions, discrimination of similar and same sounding words, understanding of information presented verbally and reasoning skills.
Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness skills refer to the ability to manipulate sounds within words, and having awareness of the phonological structure, or sound structure, of words. This is precursor for developing reading and literacy skills. This includes hearing sounds in words, segmenting sounds in a word, blending sounds together, and rhyming skills.
Voice disorders
This includes issues with the pitch, volume, or quality of the voice.