The Role of Speech Therapy in Academic Progress

Communication skills are really important to lead a successful life. A person cannot excel If they don’t know how to convey their words. For children, these things play an important role in their academics. 

Children are of growing age, so reading, writing, listening, speaking, and making gestures are all interconnected. And they all affect the academic performance of every child in school. A school is a learning institute, and the learning can only take place through the process of communication. Every child should have the ability to participate in interactive communication with people at the school.

Speech plays an important role in one’s life and it certainly plays a crucial role in academic progress. Without reading and writing language skills one can’t socialize properly. For children, social situations become stressful. When kids feel anxiety, they might want to skip school, which will affect their attendance in school. And when kids don’t attend school, their performance will be low in school activities. Even kids will hesitate to answer questions in the class because of stutter.

The ideal solution is to take your kids to a speech therapy center near you. The speech therapist can work on a child’s ability to speak perfectly.  

According to a therapist working in one of the prominent Chicago Speech Therapy centers, “good speech therapists can address underlying language barriers to allow your kid to achieve their fullest potential. Speech therapy mainly focuses on the correct articulation of speech sounds. It also improves grammar and syntax along with auditory comprehension and oral expression.”

Common Speech and Language Disorders

Speech and language disorders can affect children. This can affect how they talk, understand, analyze or process the information daily. The common speech disorders may include clarity of words, voice quality, or the fluency of language in a child. 

Language disorders can refer to a child's ability to say meaningful sentences and eventually a whole conversation. It also includes an understanding of others while they are speaking, problem-solving ability, and expressing thoughts by speaking something in return or by writing down some words.

Why are Speech and Language Skills so Critical for Academics?

Speech is the very foundation for reading and writing. Speech and written language have a reciprocal relationship. Each one further builds on the other and as a result, a child gets better in general language. When a child can speak and read, they will develop literacy competence and tend to make understanding for an early stage and continue through childhood into adulthood.

Signs that a Child’s Communication Disorder is Affecting Academic Performance

There could be many signs but most importantly, the parents should be observing a child’s behavior. Children with communication disorders tend to perform poorly or insufficiently on their academic level. 

They struggle with reading, writing, have difficulty understanding something and expressing their feelings in words, misunderstand social cues, poor judgment, avoiding school, and low grades in academic tests.

Learning difficulties related to listening, speaking, reading, or writing can result from problems faced in language development. Problems can arise during the comprehension and awareness of language at the syllable, sound, word, sentence, and discourse levels. Kids with reading and writing problems also may experience difficulties in strategic thinking.

Here we will be looking at some of the ways a speech therapist can help children in their academics.

Speech Therapy in the Classroom

The speech therapists are also called speech pathologists. According to them, speech therapy can happen in the classroom. You see that when children learn in school, teachers tend to repeat after them to get the correct pronunciation, grammar, and syntax. Speech therapists also sit in the classrooms and notice how kids are responding to such learning.  This is great because therapists can see how a kid is using his speech skills. And for a child to make a speech in a classroom in front of other kids is a milestone. 

Counseling During Speech Therapy

Some students need extra support from their teachers. It is hard for them to understand things in a general way. They need more counseling or more communication. These students can get counseling from the speech therapist to stay positive and focused. If a child is having trouble with their speech, it is obvious that they will get anxious and they need somebody to vent to.  However, counseling can help them refocus on academics.

Speech Therapists can Help Special Children

There could be more than one child with special needs, so speech therapists are a part of the school board. As children grow, they show different symptoms of stutter. The speech pathologists will decide if a child is normal or need special care for speech issues. These kids have to consult with psychologists as well. The kids with special needs will be put in special groups so they can receive more therapy than the other kids.

Assessment and treatment of children's communication problems will be dealt with under the supervision of parents, audiologists, psychologists, social workers, classroom teachers, special education teachers, guidance counselors, physicians, dentists, and nurses. 

It is not a small thing therefore multiple individuals evaluate a child’s speaking skill, and this also may take them a while to assess properly. Speech-language pathologists provide comprehensive language and speech assessments for children. Speech-language pathologists integrate students' communication goals with academic and social goals. 

As a result, children learn memory retraining, cognitive reorganization, language enhancement, and efforts to improve abstract thinking.  

Speech Pathologists have to Manage A lot of Paperwork

The job of a speech pathologist is not easy. Since each child has a different level of speech disorder, they need a special plan to recover to a normal speech. 

Sometimes they have to prepare a document containing more than 10 pages covering academic information, speech and language goals, and minutes of speech therapy each week, etc. Making such a plan could take weeks and even months to develop depending on a child’s ability to adapt. The plan can also change if a child doesn’t respond to a recovery plan.   

All in all, the role of speech therapy in the academic progress of children is crucial. All schools should consider having a speech pathologist on board so that kids having difficulties in speaking or listening can progress at the same pace as other children.