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| Photo Credit: Genesee Valley Speech, Language Hearing |
When I
attend a meeting with parents after a speech and language evaluation, especially those parents of
students being newly evaluated, I see their eyes glaze over with the vast
amount of information they are hearing for the first time as we review a
detailed and lengthy report.
I can so appreciate
their overwhelmed!
Parents are in a room
with multiple people, trying to absorb every word and concept said, on guard, and
concerned about what they are going to hear, particularly what might be their
child’s learning weaknesses. What they DO hear, with our technical terminology
may sound to them like word salad.
Just like the experience we have all had when
in an important “office”, be that a
physician’s, lawyer’s, accountant’s, or other,
when we leave we later think, “What did he/she say about____?” or “What was
that called?”
So since this blog is about
“
what I
would love to share”, what I would LOVE to share with my parents is a
handy, “pocket size,”
concise reference
for all that vocabulary we use to frame your child’s communication skill
performance, because we really do want to give you a complete picture of your
child’s abilities!
Here goes:
Receptive
Language: the ability to listen and understand what
is being spoken sometimes called
Auditory Processing.
Expressive
Language: the
ability to use words combined to convey a message.
Grammar: divided into Syntax , the rules
about how phrases and sentences are constructed and Morphology,
smallest meaningful unit of language, like words and word endings.
Vocabulary the meaning of words,
also called Semantics.
Articulation:
sound production skills, the ability to say sounds correctly. Incorrect sounds can be substitutions,
omissions, or distortions. Directly
relates to Intelligibility,
or the clarity of one’s speech.
Voice:
the vocal quality, which can be hoarse, hypernasal, hyponasal, harsh, breathy,
or typical.
Fluency:
the “smoothness” or “non-smoothness” (dysfluency) of speech, marked by
repetition of syllables, words, or phrase, or by prolongation or complete
blockage of syllables. Also called Stuttering.
Pragmatics: the appropriate “use” of
language for greeting, protesting, conveying, following rules of conversation,
or changing the language based on the audience/listener. Also called Social Language.
That's it! Speech -Language Pathology terminology in a nutshell!
