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 ‘Language Disorders’ Category
Spontaneous language sample: the speech pathologists stethoscope
Saturday, August 29th, 2009Language Therapy or Speech Therapy—which comes first?
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009Re: If the child has a language delay would you concentrate either directly or indirectly on language and leave speech till the child is older?
It is important to do a complete analysis of the child no matter what the age. What is involved in a complete analysis varies depending on the age of the child.
When starting to work with a child, I make a determination as to what I will focus on first. It might be a facet of language, or speech, or both. Factors also to be taken into consideration are the time spent with the child per session, the ability of the child to focus on the task(s), the motivation of the child, and the involvement of parent(s).