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Gold Coast
Session1
Session1

Unit Summary

Unit type

UG Coursework Unit

Credit points

12

AQF level

7

Level of learning

Intermediate

Former School/College

Former School of Health and Human Sciences

Pre-requisites

SPT10002 - Phonetics and Linguistics for Speech Pathology

Co-requisites

SPT20002 - Child Speech: Theory and Practice

Unit aim

Students learn about communication development and changes across the lifespan in relation to range of practice areas: speech, language, voice, fluency and swallowing.  In addition to lectures and tutorials students conduct an experiential activity to observe these phenomena in children and adults via case studies.  Knowledge of typical communication enables students to contrast atypical communication in subsequent units to inform assessment and diagnosis for speech pathology practice.

Unit content

This unit covers content in three areas:

  1. Communication development from infancy and childhood through to healthy adulthood and ageing and to the end of life.
  2. Observation, interviewing, documentation and presentation skills in speech pathology.
  3. Principles and protocols for speech and language sampling and basic analysis of components of communication.

Learning outcomes

Unit Learning Outcomes express learning achievement in terms of what a student should know, understand and be able to do on completion of a unit. These outcomes are aligned with the graduate attributes. The unit learning outcomes and graduate attributes are also the basis of evaluating prior learning.

GA1: , GA2: , GA3: , GA4: , GA5: , GA6: , GA7:
On completion of this unit, students should be able to: GA1 GA2 GA3 GA4 GA5 GA6 GA7
1 explain aspects of communication and social development in typical childhood development
2 record, analyse and report observations of communicative behaviours drawing on developmental norms and appropriate principles and frameworks
3 identify and evaluate a range of methods to to interview and to elicit a child language sample for the purpose of analysis and interpretation
4 prepare a transcript of typical child language for the purpose of speech pathology analysis and interpretation.

On completion of this unit, students should be able to:

  1. explain aspects of communication and social development in typical childhood development
    • GA4:
    • GA5:
  2. record, analyse and report observations of communicative behaviours drawing on developmental norms and appropriate principles and frameworks
    • GA4:
  3. identify and evaluate a range of methods to to interview and to elicit a child language sample for the purpose of analysis and interpretation
    • GA1:
    • GA4:
  4. prepare a transcript of typical child language for the purpose of speech pathology analysis and interpretation.
    • GA4:

Prescribed texts

  • McLeod, S & McCormack, J, 2015, An Introduction to Speech, Language and Literacy, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, Australia. ISBN: 95527926.
  • Note that an eBook version is also available: Peterson, C, 2013, Looking forward through the lifespan: Developmental psychology, 6th edn, Pearson Australia. ISBN: 9781442556508.
Prescribed texts may change in future teaching periods.