Defining Speech and Language Disorders

According to Alberta Education, Speech and Language disorders fall into two categories: receptive and expressive. Clicking either of the links in the previous sentence will take you to the Alberta Education definition for the corresponding type of disorder. According to the latest coding criteria, speech and language disorders fall under code 30 (for ECS), 57 (for mild to moderate cases), or 47 (for severe cases). Codes 30 and 47 are applicable only to ECS students. In some cases, such as with auditory processing disorders (APD), code 54 also can apply, depending on the extent of impact.

In the general literature, "speech and language disorders" fall under the umbrella of communication disorders along with hearing disorders and deafness, and physical disabilities affecting speech as outlined in the diagram above.

Below, you will find brief definitions of various types of disorders, and corresponding video clips which provide further information as well as feature speakers with a given disorder. This list is not meant to be exhaustive, but will provide some insight into the wide variety of speech and language disorders that teachers may encounter.

Receptive Language Disorders: Any disorders which affect someone's ability to make sense of or identify sounds and words. These are commonly referred to as "receptive language" and "Auditory Processing" disorders. 

One examples of this are "Processing Disorders" in which the person has difficulty recognizing what is being said to them, making sense of what is making sense to them, and repeating back what they have heard. These people will often have to guess what they have heard to fill in gaps between segments of properly understood speech. 

Noise filtering disorder makes it difficult for people afflicted with it to distinguish between ambient noise (including other voices) and the voice they are listening to.


<--This video describes auditory processing disorder (APD) in detail

Aphasia is an example of an Expressive Language Disorder. With this type of disorder, people have difficulty forming and relaying phrases and whole thoughts from their brain to their vocal tracts, though their hearing and auditory processing is normal. They may also experience difficulty with writing/reading, as word retrieval and recognition difficulties also occur. There are several types of aphasia. 



This video shows an aphasia patient trying to follow simple instructions -->

Expressive Speech Disorders refer to difficulties forming sounds, words, and phrases due to neurological reasons.

Fluency disorders such as cluttering or stuttering are disorders which affect the ability to speak in a fluid and clear way.

Speech-sound disorders are difficulties making specific sounds, where there is no physical reason for the disorder. An example of this would be speaking with a lisp.


<--This video examines cluttering and shows an actual speech therapy session with a grade 5 student who has cluttering.

There are also some physical disorders which cause problems with speech. These can be oral-muscular disorders, which mean that the muscles which control speech are impaired, injured, or developmentally abnormal.

One type of oral-muscular disorder are voice disorders are caused by size/orientation/development of the anatomical features of the voice. Examples include esophageal voice and dysphonia.


The video to the right explains dysphonia-->


The video below shows a conversation with a man who has esophageal voice

The other type of oral-muscular voice disorders are neuromuscular. These are disorders in which the nerves which control the muscles involved in speech production inhibit the production of sound. Unlike with expressive speech disorders, the speech production centers of people with this type of disorder function normally. Examples include:

-Dysarthria: Refers to motor planning disorder, in which the ability to execute movements involved in speech is impaired, resulting in inarticulate or unclear phoneme (sound) production.

<-- the video to the left shows what speech may sound like for someone with dysarthria.

-Apraxia: Refers to motor planning disorder, in which the ability to coordinate speech movements is impaired. This is common in children. 

This video demonstrates apraxia-->

-Mutism: The muscles are not able to move, and the person can not physically produce speech. This is not to be confused with selective mutism, in which someone is voluntarily silent.