Speech Therapy

What is a Speech Disorder?

Speech is the production of sounds, including voice quality, articulation, and rate of speech. A speech disorder may be present when a person is dysfluent (stuttering), has a vocal quality that differs from the norm (i.e. hoarse, breathy etc.) or when a person adds, deletes, distorts, or substitutes sounds in words.

What is a Language Disorder?

An impairment in the ability to understand and/or use words in context, both verbally and nonverbally. Language is a system of symbols (words, gestures, etc.) that give meaning to speech. A language disorder may be present when a person uses poor sentence structure, has a limited vocabulary, misunderstands what people say, has difficulty following directions or does not follow the social “rules” of our culture (i.e. personal space, eye contact, touch, etc.).

What is a Specific Language Impairment?

There is no specific underlying cause for the language impairment. Children are typically developing in other areas of development, demonstrating the impairment specifically to language/speech development.