Speech therapists commonly known as the speech pathologists are required for helping people who have a difficulty in basic aspect of speech. The reasons for the speech impairment can vary from physical problems to the cognitive impairment in the children.
A speech therapist can help a child in dealing with most of the inabilities in his speech. The basic requirements or qualifications in becoming a speech therapist can vary depending on the credentials and work experience required.
But most of the speech therapists require a minimum of a master’s degree.
Let’s look into the courses and the basic degree’s required for becoming a speech therapist:
A bachelors degree:
A bachelors degree can give a overall view of basic communication disorders experienced in children. It also deals with the basic language development and articulation disorders. The next level would be for learning of the physiology of speech and hearing along with phonetics and anatomy.
Master’s degree:
The masters degree deals with the same course that are dealt at a level of under graduation that is at the bachelors level. But here these subject are dealt in a greater depth and are explore into the practical situations. There are other course that are offered at the masters degree such as rehabilitation and fluency development. The various others factors such as swallowing disorders, acquired language disorders and motor speech disorder are also studied.
Credentials:
For becoming a licensed therapist a person has to go through the national examination on speech language pathology by praxis series of educational testing services. By passing on this examination a therapist receives a certificate of clinical competence from American speech language hearing association.
