Evaluation of Phonological Assessment Practices of Children with Suspected Speech Sound Difficulties Conducted By Speech-Language Pathologists in Pakistan

JRCRS-2015; 3(1): 36-44

Abstract

Background:

Speech sound is a phonetically distinct unit of speech. There are twenty four consonant speech sounds in English language and twenty vowel speech sounds (there are 26 letters of the alphabet with 21 consonants and 5 vowels). These sounds are called as phonemes. Each phoneme or speech sound has a symbolic representation. Many children develop speech sounds with the passage of time but those who fail to develop often need the services of SLP's in order to learn correct speech sounds.

Objective:

To evaluate the phonological assessment practices conducted by speech-language pathologists in Pakistan with the speech sound disorders.

Methodology:

It was a cross sectional survey study, prospective in nature which included 32 SLPsworking with children in special education schools, government or private hospitals and clinical settings of Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Lahore in Pakistan, through convenient sampling technique.Phonological assessment questionnaire with sub-scales A, B, C, and D were used for data collection. Analysis of data was conducted by using version 20.0 of Statistical Package for Social Sciences.

Results:

The results revealed that the data consisted of 32 total cases. The phonological component sub­ scale C included 18 variables having 27 valid cases with a mean of 33.22, the phonological assessment timing sub-scale D included 3 variables with 30 valid cases having 10.06 mean score and the standard tests for phonological assessment.

Conclusion:

The present study concluded that SLPs do not follow proper assessment guidelines. It was also concluded that SLPs do not conduct comprehensive phonological assessment including standard and non-standard assessment.

Keywords:

Phonology, phonological assessment, articulation, speech, speech sound disorder