Speech Therapy Help & Guidance

Glossary

  • SLCN: Speech, Language & Communication Needs
  • Attention and listening: ability to listen and concentrate on information, acting as the foundation on which communication and learning are built
  • Auditory memory: your ability to remember what you have heard, keeping it in the correct order, ready to process that information
  • Receptive language: understanding of the words used around you
  • Expressive language: how you use language to convey your needs and thoughts
  • Semantics: related to receptive and expressive skills, semantics is your vocabulary and knowledge of how words are linked by meaning
  • Grammar: related to receptive and expressive skills, grammar is the rules we use to show meaning in our sentences
  • Syntax: related to receptive and expressive language, syntax is the order of our words in phrases and sentences
  • Discourse: related to receptive and expressive language, discourse is how we are able to understand and use language overall to describe, narrate and retell information in a concise and sequenced manner
  • Pragmatics: how we use language and interact with those around us
  • Speech: sounds made by the mouth to make words and to convey meaning
  • Phonology: skills linked to discriminating, contrasting, storing and production of speech sounds
  • Dyspraxia: difficulties coordinating the movements needed in speech
  • Dysarthria: difficulties linked to muscle weakness
  • Articulation: the formation of speech sounds in the mouth
  • Orofacial anatomy: speech production when linked to the structure of the mouth
  • DLD: Developmental Language Disorder, previously references as Specific Language Impairment
  • Delay: following typical patterns of development, but at a slower rate than expected
  • Disorder: following atypical patterns of development