Speech and Language Evaluation–What to Expect
Posted by Debbie under speech therapy | Permalink | | Leave A Comment | 5 Comments
What can you expect if you take your child for speech and language testing? Speech and language evaluations will vary depending on the speech-language pathologist and the child’s age and abilities. Typically, this is what will happen:
1. Hearing screening–Because hearing is so critical to speech and language abilities, a hearing screening will probably occur first. This is not likely to be a thorough hearing test (which is generally performed by an audiologist), but a quick check that the child can hear a 20 or 25dB tone at about 4 different frequencies. If the child fails the test, a more complete hearing test may be warranted.
2. Oral-peripheral exam– The speech-language pathologist (SLP) will look inside the child’s mouth for any physical differences that might contribute to speech difficulties, such as a tongue-tie, abnormally high palate, signs of a partial or sub-mucous cleft palate and an abnormal bite. Additionally, he or she may do some tests of tongue coordination or strength.
3. An articulation test–The child will name pictures that assess all speech sounds in all word positions. The SLP will also listen to the child in conversational speech to listen for additional errors and overall intelligibility.
4. Language tests–These can be quite lengthy and will assess vocabulary, syntax (sentence structure and grammar), comprehension, and appropriate use of language. Both receptive language (understanding) and expressive language (production) will be assessed.
5. Conversation samples will be taken and evaluated for articulation language abilities and possibly for voice disorders or stuttering, if these are a concern.
It can take quite a bit of time to score the tests and evaluate the language samples, so you will probably wait until another day to find out the results. If the only concern is articulation, voice, or stuttering, however, the SLP may be ready to discuss results and make recommendations right away.
Has your child had a speech or language evaluation? I’d love t0 hear about your experiences.
2:06 am, 15 August 2010
Found this site from the Knowledge Quest giveaway and so glad I did!! My 3 year old just started speech therapy, but we will be traveling for 3 months in the near future, so her SLP and I have been discussing how I will help her continue with her progress while we’re gone. My daughter is the first one in our entire family to have any speech issues, so this has all been brand new to us. Her evaluation went pretty much exactly as you listed. She was willing to talk to the SLP, so the articulation test went well (well, her results were absolutely miserable, but we got a good evaluation) and once the attention was off of her, she started talking to her sister, so that helped the SLP hear her typical conversation. I haven’t looked around much yet, but I’m excited by what I see here! We’re making great progress on her F and V sounds and just started a little work on S at her last session.
9:40 am, 31 August 2010
Glad I found your site too! My four-year-old son has an “s blend” problem: spoon, slide, anything with s+another letter.
6:05 pm, 6 September 2010
I’m so glad I found your site! We are having such an issue right now getting my 3 1/2 year old the therapy he needs for his articulation disorder. Insurance doesn’t want to cover it and the school district doesn’t seem to think he has a big enough problem to qualify for services (and yet suggests very strongly we seek private therapy even though it will be 100% out of pocket for us). I’m going to look more into your resources.
I’m nervous to try and do it on my own though because he just doesn’t respond to me “teaching” as well as he does a therapist or a teacher. Any tips on that?
7:07 pm, 6 September 2010
Heather,
That seems to be a common dilemma–kids not qualifying for public school services and, of course, private therapy can be expensive. Insurance seldom if ever covers typical developmental speech problems like articulation. If you are fortunate enough to have a college nearby with a speech pathology program, that can be a source of inexpensive therapy.
As for getting your child to “work” with you at home, speech work is something that can often be done in 5-10 minute increments in a playful manner so that the child sees it as fun instead of “Mommy is making me do something I don’t want to do.” Maybe looking at it that way will help!
8:02 pm, 6 September 2010
I never thought about checking out the local college. We actually live minutes from U of H. I need to check into that.
Thanks so much for responding to me both here and by email. I really appreciate it!!!