Speech-Language Pathology: Clinical Practice and Procedure

Case study 1

The diagnosis for the client is voice disorder. It is because the teacher manifests all the symptoms of the disorder in that her voice is now hoarse, and her vocal quality is also breathy (Beitchman & Brownlie, 2014). Moreover, she has a history of projecting her voice above her maximum vocal intensity and also speaks a lot which are risk factors for the voice disorder. It is the presence of the precipitating courses coupled with the use voice history that informed the diagnosis of the teacher with the voice disorder.

One of the most appropriate assessment procedures for voice disorder is the perceptual evaluation of the voice of the individual. It involves the evaluation of the loudness of the voice in that assessing the ability to go loud or soft. There is also the assessment of the pitch of the individual while stepping or gliding up and down the scale of the voice. The number of words said per breath is also noted to assess the fatiguability of the voice of the individual and also the quality of the voice of the patient (Beitchman & Brownlie, 2014).

The major therapy target that is a client-specific strategy to be used is the Vocal Function. The approach used is the Vocal Function Exercises, which involves three major components which are warm up, pitch glides that may be high or low and also sustained vowel phonation at the various selected pitches (Roth, 2010). The exercises will be performed at a given number of timers on a daily basis and have room to be done correctly and also incorrectly with each attempt being to make it better than the previous time. The main aim is to produce the phonemes in a flow mode of phonation or rather with a resonant voice is the main aim of the exercises. It is the continued exercising that is bound to result in the strengthening of thyroarytenoid muscle that is the body of the vocal folds and hence improve the coordination of the various muscles of the larynx that need to be coordinated to achieve coherent speech (Roth, 2010).

Case study 2

Joseph is suffering from Aphasia. It is because his medical history indicates that he experienced a left CVA and also sustained a lesion of the frontal lobe which is a major risk factor for language disorders more so Aphasia because he has difficulty with his speech in that he cannot construct sentences that make sense and hence cannot be understood (McGowan, 2012).

The assessment procedure that may be efficient in the case of Joseph is the static method whereby it uses the procedures that are designed to give a good description of the functioning at relevant domains. It entails the documentation of the relevant case history that includes education, medical history, occupation, cultural factors and also the linguistic background of the patient (McGowan, 2012). There is then a review of the sense of the individual. The patient is then reviewed for their auditory comprehension of language, the verbal expression, reading and writing and then their functional communication to pinpoint all the areas that they have difficulty in at the time.

The ideal therapy target is the reengagement of the patient in life. It aims at ensuring that the individual can fit back in society regarding communication so as to ensure that they return to active, healthy life endeavors (McGowan, 2012). The best approach or method to take the intervention is the "life participation approach to aphasia" (LPAA) that is a client-specific strategy that involves offering support to the patients of Aphasia to enable them achieves their immediate and also long term goals (Beitchman & Brownlie, 2014). The concern of the life of the patients is at the center of decision-making in this model or therapy technique. It, therefore, helps the client to select and also actively participate in the recovery process and hence have the potential for reducing the consequences of the disease and also injury.

Case study 3

Jessica is suffering from a language disorder since she has slowed developmental milestones in her written and spoken language. She has not made the required developmental milestones that she should have made at her age of 10 whereby her spoken language should be better formed and her ability to use morphemes should also be enhanced to the level of the other children (Roth, 2010).

The appropriate assessment procedure for the language disorder is the dynamic assessment which is the method of conducting language assessment seeking to identify the skills that the individual may have and also sharing their learning potential (Roth, 2010). It emphasizes the learning process and also takes into account for the amount and nature of the investment of the examiner. It is a process oriented approach and also highly interactive.

The targeted therapy is for the phonology of the child. The phonological approach aims at helping the child internalize the rules of phonology and also generalize the rules for the other sounds that are within the pattern (Roth, 2010). The use of distinctive feature therapy will further focus on the elements of the phonemes that may be lacking for the child and is used majorly among the children whose primary substitute one sound for another just as the case with Jessica. It involves the use of tasks comparing the phonetic elements and features to the targeted sound with those that substitute it or in some cases some contrasts in sound. With time, the patterns that are within the features of the phonemes can be identified and also targeted hence producing one contrast often generalizing to other sounds that happen to share the target feature at the particular time (Roth, 2010).