When I test a child, I do a battery of formal tests and a spontaneous language sample. For an spontaneous language sample, I audiotape a conversational sample of a child’s speech (50 to 100 utterances) and analyze it. It offers a lot information about grammar, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and and overall conversational skills.
Archive for the ‘Speech and Language Evaluation’ Category
Spontaneous language sample: the speech pathologists stethoscope
Saturday, August 29th, 2009Speech and Language Testing
Friday, May 16th, 2008A speech and language evaluation can take 1 1/2 hours or longer, depending on the age and behavior of the child. As a rule, the younger the child the less time testing takes. It takes longer to test a child who is poorly behaved.
When I do battery of speech and language tests, the core tests I give are: a test of articulation, a receptive vocabulary test, an expressive vocabulary test, and a comprehensive language test that test a child’s understanding of language and expressive communication. Finally, I audiotape the child’s conversation and analyze it.
Once all the test are scored, I invite the parents to return to go over the test results. I offer my recommendations based on my findings. Because parents are their child’s most important advocates it is important that they feel comfortable asking questions. Hopefully, the information they get will help them decide how they can best help their child.
Will my child outgrow his speech problem?
Monday, May 12th, 2008Not long ago I spoke with the father of one of the children I am working with in the public school. His son is eight-years-old and is very difficult to understand. He asked me if his child will “outgrow” this problem. My answer, “Definitely not.
Did somebody give him erroneous imformation about children outgrowing speech problems? Or, did he wish to believe his child would “outgrow” it? Whatever the case, his child is now paying the steep price. That begs the question, “At what age should parents be concerned and seek professional help?”
It is in the child’s best interest to identify speech and language problems early and definitely before the child begins academics. Children who are difficult to understand should be seen by a speech pathologist when they are three years old. Waiting until the child is four-years-old can have serious social and psychological consequences. Children may ignore him because they do not understand him. The child may become easily frustrated, angry, refuse to talk or become withdrawn. Waiting until the child is five-years-old means that academics will now compound the problems.
Next blog: What is a speech and language evaluation like? What tests are given? How long does it take?
Expressive Vocabulary Test
Thursday, May 1st, 2008The Expressive Vocabulary Test (AGS, 1997) is one I like very much.
The EVT is a measure of expressive vocabulary and word retrieval. The test takes about 15 to 20 minutes to administer. It can be administered to children from the age of 2 years 6 months to adults. The test is conormed with the PPVT III so that direct comparisons can be made between receptive and expressive vocabularies.
The EVT is far better than the Expressive One Word Vocabulary Test. I find the EVT norms to be more accurate. Long ago I had given up on using the EOWPVT because I found that it consistently scored children higher than their chronological age or ability. I am happy to say that the EVT does not do that. As a result it is much easier to compare the scores of the EVT and PPVT, something I was unable to do with the EOWVT. For those clinicians who use the PPVT III, the two tests have been conormed for accurate comparison.
The EVT test pictures are large and clear. The instructions for the presentation of test items face the tester as the pictures face the child. This is important because the tester has to periodically “teach” the examinee to ensure that the examinee comprehends the task and has to “prompt” when certain responses are given. When I administer tests I like he test to flow. I do not like to stay on an item trying to get a scorable response. Sometimes it is unavoidable because of the nature of the examinee’s response. That is where “prompting” for this test comes in. The prompt feature requires the examiner to say, “Tell me another word,” if a child’s response is not quite on target and this is standard for each test item. As a result there can be a lot of unnecessary repetition of test items for responses that I felt could have been considered correct or incorrect. Besides, with most of the children I tested, the same response was given, after the prompt, and thus were marked incorrect anyhow.