Speech Pathology Embracing Telecommunications Technology

“Speech-pathology” is one of the many medical fields with plenty of job openings available. And as more students graduate and start looking for relevant jobs, a good percentage of those graduates are being made aware of a new technological development which is now helping this unique technique to reach even more people. The technology itself is nothing new, but implementing it for purposes of speech therapy is. It is known as “telepracticing.”

Telepracticing for this voice-pathology is defined by the American-Speech-Language-Hearing-Association (ASLHA) as “the application of telecommunications technology to delivery of professional services at a distance by linking clinician to client, or clinician to clinician, for assessment, intervention, and/or consultation.” Simply put, it means using telecommunications options such as the telephone and Internet to deliver speech pathology services.

Telepractice has been used pretty extensively for some time as a tool for teaching English as a second language, otherwise known as ESL. By extension, it should prove to have at least some benefit in this new technology.

Meeting the Demand

While telepracticing is not the standard when it comes to today’s speech-pathology-jobs, it is gaining popularity as a way to meet the ever-growing demand for new industry workers. A single speech pathologist in an institution using telepracticing could conceivably serve more clients in a given day, especially in rural areas, then a clinician who lived in the area where the patients were. This opens up the door to small American communities with limited resources as well as needy cultures around the world. Read the rest of this entry »

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Speech Development – Does Your Child Have a Speech Delay?

Do you ever wonder if your child’s speech skills are normal? We don’t expect a three year old to have perfect speech, but we do expect near-perfect articulation from a ten year old. Here are a few questions to help you determine whether your child is developing articulation skills at a normal pace or whether you should be concerned. These are just general guidelines. If you have concerns, you may want to have your child evaluated by a speech pathologist, who might suggest therapy or assure you that your child is developing normally.

Can your three-year-old be understood by people outside the family? Three-year-olds have usually not mastered all of the speech sounds yet, but strangers should be able to understand much of what they say. If a child has so many errors that he is difficult to understand, this probably indicates that his articulation skills are delayed and that he would benefit from speech therapy. It can be very frustrating for a child when others cannot understand his speech.

Is your five-year old easy to understand? Five-year-olds may still have 3 or 4 “tough sounds,” but these sound errors should not be interfering significantly with their intelligibility.

What do others say about your child’s speech? Often parents are so accustomed to their children’s speech patterns that they do not even notice that little Johnny says “th” instead of “s” or leaves “r” off the ends of his words. I have met ten or twelve-year olds whose parents seem not to notice that their children have difficulty with some sounds even though everyone else does notice! It is very unlikely that a child over age nine will self-correct or outgrow any articulation errors on his own.

This is a list of the approximate ages at which children should have mastered different sounds. Of course all children develop differently and may not master sounds in this exact order. There are also other factors that a speech-language-pathologist would consider in determining whether a child’s speech patterns are within normal limits or delayed. For example substituting “th” for “s” at age 6 is normal, but omitting “s” entirely or substituting “t” for “s” would be a concern (and impacts intelligibility much more). Read the rest of this entry »

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Speech Therapy – An Effective Way to Correct Disorder of Speech

Speech therapy is a therapy that is intended to correct a disorder of speech or you may simply say the treatment to help someone who is suffering from the problem of communicating verbally. The main focus is on expressive language, or the ability to express yourself in words, and on receptive language, i.e. the ability to understand words which are spoken to you.

Many health services may provide a speech and language therapy treatment for the correction of a speech impairment which resulted from birth, or from disease, injury, or prior medical treatment, having communication difficulties. There are different types of communication which includes speech (or you may say articulation, intensity, voice, fluency, etc.), language (syntax, semantics, phonology, pragmatics, etc.), both receptive and expressive language (including reading and writing), and non-verbal communication such as facial expressions, body postures and different types of gestures.

A person having speech defect such as lisping and stuttering may take therapeutic treatment. This therapy is being used to improve communication skills which may include teaching sign language or using a communication device. The main aim of speech therapy is to help those people who are having a speech or language disorder or problem to restore basic communication skills, including listening and writing skills, and their ability to think, swallow, and problem solve. Read the rest of this entry »

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