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Speech & Language Evaluations

We offer two distinct assessments of your child's communication skills: Comprehensive Speech & Language Evaluations and Speech Assessments. Each assessment meets the needs of different incoming parent questions or concerns.

A Comprehensive Speech & Language Evaluation will assess a child's language and speech production skills for a complete look at all aspects of communication, while a Speech Assessment looks only at speech production skills and is focused primarily on articulation and fluency.

Comprehensive Speech & Language Evaluation
A Comprehensive Speech & Language Evaluation is a "big" picture look at a child's speech and language skills to build a profile of strengths and weaknesses in the most important areas of communication development. This evaluation will look at receptive language skills (a child's ability to understand incoming language), expressive language skills (a child's ability to express his or her thoughts and ideas), pragmatic/social language skills and speech production (a child's ability to articulate sounds for effective communication). In our analysis, we will discuss the relationship between comprehension and use of language and how your child's skills in both domains integrate into a complete profile. This profile reflects a child's abilities as they compare to age, grade or developmental expectations as well as how their abilities may impact social, academic and daily living skills in everyday life.

In addition to these cardinal areas of assessment, this evaluation will also look at secondary areas or related skills that may be influenced or interrelated with communication skill development. Depending on your child's age and needs, the following additional skills may be evaluated:

  • Play
  • Phonological Awareness/Pre-reading skills
  • Writing
  • Feeding/Oral Motor Development


After the evaluation, the testing results are reviewed with you and recommendations are offered. You will receive a full written report with a detailed analysis of your child's performance including any tips for teachers, other professionals, or your family at home. Consultations for Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) and classroom accommodations or modifications may also be made upon request.


Speech Assessment
A Speech Assessment is a focused look at a child's ability to produce speech sounds in a fluent and accurate manner. For articulation concerns, the speech assessment evaluates your child's ability to produce all English speech sounds at 4 distinct levels: the sound (e.g., "sssssss..."), word (e.g.,"sun" or "toss"), and sentence level ( e.g.,"I can sing a song.") are first assessed within formal testing, followed by analysis of spontaneous speech samples. This thorough look at speech production across these different levels will allow us to clearly characterize a child's speech sound errors and further investigate how these speech patterns impact everyday speaking situations and overall speech intelligibility (or understandability).

The Speech Assessment utilizes standardized test measures, informal clinical observations, and an examination of the oral mechanism. It also may incorporate an evaluation of pitch, resonance, and speech fluency, if appropriate.

This assessment is tailored to answer incoming questions related to speech clarity, quality, and fluency.

Common parent questions/concerns include:

"I can only understand about 75% of what my son is saying; my family understands about 50%. Is this normal?"  
 
"My son can say 'tat' for 'cat.' It's cute, but is this typical?"

"My daughter seems to repeat words at the beginning of her sentences, he says 'I...I...I...want to go to the store with you.' I am concerned. Can this be addressed in therapy?"

After the assessment, the results are reviewed with you and recommendations are offered. You will receive a full written report which documents observed speech sound patterns as well as a comparison of a child's skills to expected developmental errors and developmental norms for sound acquisition.