Foundations for Clinical Practice: Analyzing the Speech System

This is the second course in a three-course series designed to increase your clinical knowledge and skills in evaluating and treating individuals with speech sound disorders. In this course, you will learn how to analyze a phonetically transcribed speech sample to evaluate the individual’s segmental and suprasegmental skills. Speech-language pathologists frequently complete a thorough analysis of an individual’s speech errors and error patterns, while paying little attention, if any at all, to the individual’s phonetic and suprasegmental inventories—information that often is needed for differential diagnosis and goal setting. We will phonetically transcribe a brief speech sample from a teen with severe speech sound disorder characterized as childhood apraxia of speech, and then analyze his speech to derive his phonetic, error, and suprasegmental inventories. We then will use this information to develop goals for this young man that address all three components of the speech system. We also will apply our knowledge of the three components of the speech system to develop additional goals that we could use with other individuals with speech sound disorders.