This summarizes an intervention plan for a second grade student named Nick who has an expressive language disorder and speech production errors. The speech language pathologist will address Nick's word finding difficulties, speech errors, reluctance to communicate, and lack of motivation through individual therapy sessions. Therapies will include word finding exercises, speech production drills, and strategies to improve self-efficacy and motivation through gamification and social goals. Progress will be monitored through assessments and collaboration with Nick's teachers to holistically address his communication challenges and academic engagement.

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Core Psychological Concepts Paper
Speech Language Pathology Interventions in a School
Sarah Conry
EDPS 457
Markeya Pertanetz

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The Problem
I am a speech language pathologist in a public grade school. I have just recently been
assigned to help a new student, a 2nd grade boy named Nick, who struggles with word finding
and speech production errors. Nick has a diagnosed expressive language disorder and his
speech production errors are non-developmental. The student's family has moved to different
cities rather frequently in the past and because of this, Nick has had to attend various schools
and has never had an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) although his speech and language
disorders have already been identified. In his everyday life, he is reluctant to engage in
conversation because it takes him so long to form a sentence when talking with peers or to
respond to a question from a teacher. Socially, Nick has not yet made any friends at school and
tends to isolate himself because he does not feel comfortable enough to initiate conversations
with his peers. When he has spoken up to his teachers and peers at school, he has had so much
difficulty communicating that some of his peers have teased him about his speech. He is now
feeling frustrated and generally demotivated in school, though he does not act out, the student
consistently refuses to participate in class activities and dialogue. However, he always turns in
and consistently performs well on his homework assignments. Because he has been previously
screened but has not yet received any sort of therapy or accommodations, an Individualized
Education Plan will be implemented that involves a team consisting of a speech language
pathologist, the client's main teacher and other teachers that interact with him daily, and a
special education teacher at the school. The three main goals discussed on the client's IEP are to
improve his everyday conversational skills, improve his reading and writing skills, and to work
on his social and pragmatic skills.

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This problem that I will be hypothetically working through is a very realistic and fairly
common occurrence for speech language pathologists in the school systems. In this scenario I
will be looking more closely at the relatedness of problem solving, self efficacy and motivation
and how they play into my problem. I chose these three principles of educational psychology
because I believe that they are the most pertinent items to this specific case.
The reason that I believe problem solving to be a key concept is because I think that it's
an aspect to every speech-language problem for a student. No two individuals are alike in terms
of how they can accomplish a task or solve a problem. The client's problem is ill-defined,
meaning that there is not just one correct way to find the answer (Moreno, 2010). The
complexity of the problem, along with the psychological aspects that play into the client's
unwillingness to try in school as well as with communication make this a difficult problem to
solve but not in the least unsolvable. By means of uncovering every component of the problem
and making it clear how necessary it is to fix speech problems to Nick himself, there's a high
chance that the client would become more willing to work with me, the speech pathologist, to
improve his communication.
The reason that self efficacy comes into play is because it is defined by Bandura (1993)
as, "...the belief about one's capability to perform or achieve a certain goal" (as cited in Moreno,
2010, p. 284). Self efficacy is an important piece of the learning process and especially beneficial
in terms of speech language pathology because without some sort of belief in one's ability to
improve, no improvement can be made. By creating a growth mindset on ability, the student can
accomplish more by simply having a positive idea of his ability to communicate. Nick must use
the skills and strategies that the speech language pathologist gives him; with them he must not
only use it for his speech but transfer and generalize that knowledge into all areas of education.

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Finally, for motivation, this concept is important because it is only through motivation
that the student can actually be successful in his therapy. As defined by Asijavičiūtė &
Ušinskienė (2014), "Motivation is a product of people’s thoughts, expectations, and goals. There
are two types of motivation..: extrinsic and intrinsic. The development of both may lead to the
productivity in the learning process" (p. 158) . Unless he wants to be helped and desires to
improve his speech, he won't be able to do so. Also, similar to self efficacy, once the client is
motivated in speaking he can generalize his motivation to all educational outlets, not just speech.
The Intervention
In my own opinion, there are multiple facets to the problem therefore, I would break
down the intervention into a few separate pieces. It is most common for a school speech
language pathologist to work one-on-one with each student who needs services. When working
with my client I would first remove him from his classroom and meet with him in my own office
at the school. In order to refrain from embarrassing or causing more social dysfunction I would
not make a big show of taking him out or even allowing the other students to know that the client
is going to speech therapy. In terms of the problem itself, I think a good starting point would be
to look at the word finding aspect of the client's difficulty. I think the best approach to take
would be to collect multiple strategies and therapies to try for the client to find the best approach.
It is important to have several options in order to find the most preferable mode of therapy. Some
such strategies that could be used for word finding would be to do specific word finding
exercises such as fill in the blank activities or word finding games such as Mad Libs. These types
of exercises would help improve the student's speech fluency. Depending on the severity of the

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child's word finding issue, this may prove to be all that he needs in order to succeed. However, if
the word finding problem is more severe, such exercises could be used as assessments.
The next aspect of the problem is speech production errors. To combat this part of the
student's speech I would first start with determining the type of speech production error he has.
For instance, Nick may have a specific problem with producing the |r| sound; perhaps he instead
can only produce a |w| sound as a substitute. This is a quite common speech problem for
children, the |w| sound replaces the |r| sound because it is easier to produce. If this is the case
some interventions that could be utilized are drills and examples of correct production via
auditory and visual mediums. For example showing the student how to place his tongue and lips
and then playing a recording of the correct production of the word (Brinton et al., 1990). The
therapy selections could also cross over for and be used for both speech problems mentioned, the
same skills that he can use for Speech production errors, he can also use for word finding skills
(Greene et al. 1993, p. 65).
Another part of the problem is that Nick is reluctant to engage in conversation because it
takes him so long to form a sentence when talking with peers or to respond to a question from a
teacher. This aspect of the problem is a continuation of the first two speech and language
difficulties and goes far deeper than simple embarrassment of his own speech. Philips (1968)
explains the reluctance to speak with a psychological, motivational and behavioral outcome:
Based on these characteristics, a reticent person may be regarded
as one who limits his choices among possible responses to
interpersonal contact. Once he discovers a method which seems to
exempt him from anxiety-producing situations, he habituates it and
extends it to other contexts. If unsuccessful in the new context,

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frustration reinforces the tendency toward inadequate
communication The reticent's response to communicative stress is
stereotyped and rigid, sometimes enabling him to resolve
immediate tension at the expense of future adjustment... Exposure
to the object of concern, in this case a speech encounter, tends to
heighten anxiety. Even successful completion of the task does not
dispel anxiety. (p. 42)
With this knowledge in mind, I think it would be beneficial to introduce strategies that the
student could use further his improvement as well as actively working on his word-finding
problems and speech production. Such strategies would come into play with promoting Nick's
motivation and self efficacy as well.
The final piece of the intervention needed is for the student's lack of motivation and
frustration to be addressed. To improve Nick's overall motivation and to help him in every aspect
of his education, his speech problems first must be attended to in order to truly help him with the
psychological effects of his problem. Some strategies to try with motivation are to change the
way in which the topics are presented to him. For instance, instead of just doing drill work,
playing a game or make it a competition of some sort to encourage the student to correctly
produce the desired sound or find a word. This would have a novelty effect which means that the
student would be engaged because of the newness of the learning experience. A way to combat
the client's alienation - isolation from a group in which one should belong (Moreno, 2010) - at
school would be to enforce prosocial goals. "Prosocial goals are those related to making and
keeping friends, being helpful to teachers and other students, and getting others in the classroom
to engage in helpful behaviors" (Moreno, 2010, p. 377). By giving the student specific goals and

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making him a "helper" his teachers would be promoting an accepting atmosphere for the client
which would in turn improve his desire to do well in school. This would promote a high self
efficacy and increase motivation at least in an external sense.
In terms of the psychological concepts that must be incorporated into his therapy
intervention. I think that by making assessments and taking a deeper look into the client's
communication in other areas beyond school. By doing this I would try to find the best fitting
model of therapy to help Nick with his communication. Along that ideology, I would want to
find methods of therapy that would positively affect the client's self efficacy. Though self
efficacy is not a concept that generalizes in every respect, by increasing Nick's self efficacy in
his communication in everyday life it will increase his self efficacy in school. In turn, with a high
self efficacy, Nick will be more internally motivated as well. Thus would his ill-defined problem
be resolved in a way that not only increases his ability to function to the school system set up,
but also instilling in Nick a positive attitude about school, communication, and relationships with
others.
Conclusion
There are many possible outcomes for the intervention that I have layed out. That is the
central reason why I chose to incorporate several different therapies and strategies for the client.
In terms of the effectiveness of the word finding and speech production, it's hard to assume what
would work the best for the client before actively trying any techniques. In reality I would
determine that from assessments and experience with interacting with the client. From these
initial findings I would then implement therapy that could best serve him and continue with the
therapy intervention until he no longer needed any help. As mentioned previously, I would work
with the client one-on-one so I would refrain from disclosing the fact that he is coming to me to

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work on speech therapy unless the client chose to disclose it himself. In this way I could do my
best to make sure that the student himself feels safe in the environment I set up. To assess the
client's improvement I would be make constant progress reports to the other members of the
child's team (teachers, special education teachers, etc.) and have the client take some
measurement tests to ascertain that he is indeed improving in his word finding and speech
production. I would not have his tests set up as traditional tests nor would I inform him that I am
even tracking his improvement, it would most likely be an oral narrative sample or a
measurement of his accuracy with the sounds we practice together every session that we meet.
Those are the two specific areas that I can assess the most accurately and the best. The client's
problems with demotivation and frustration in academics are more in the area of his teachers and
his classroom. The best way that I can aid him in that regard would be to keep communicating
and working together with his classroom teachers and working toward the same goals.
It is highly important for the speech language pathologists to work together with the
client's teachers because the two forces together have the greatest impact on the child's direct
learning while at school. They are the ones who must act out and provide a safe learning
environment and the appropriate interventions to benefit the student. My problem is relevant and
important because it give a great example for how having a speech language problem can affect
all other aspects of educational life. In the problem it is stated that the student has three main
goals on his IEP and to accomplish each of them requires not only the client's cooperation, but
the entire IEP team to work together to give the boy all the tools he needs to succeed. All of the
different parts of the problem are interrelated and effect each other. By helping the student with
one of those problems I can provide aid with the client's improvement in his education as well.
This problem is a great example of the importance of school speech language pathologists.

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Resources
Asijavičiūtė, V., & Ušinskienė, O. (2014). Student motivation as decisive factor in process of esp
learning. Language In Different Contexts / Kalba Ir Kontekstai, 6(1, Part 1&2), 156-168.
Brinton, B., Damico, J., Flint-Shaw, L., LeMoine, N., Marttila, J., Prelock, P., . . . Dublinske, S.
(1990). A Model for collaborative service delivery for students with language-
learning disorders in the public schools. Retrieved December 2, 2015, from ASHA.org
Greene, J., Mcdaniel, T., Buksa, K., & Ravizza, S. (1993). Cognitive processes in the production
of multiple‐goal messages: Evidence from the temporal characteristics of speech.
Western Journal of Communication, 65-86.
Moreno, R. (2010). Educational psychology. Danvers, Massachusetts: John wiley & sons.
Phillips G. Reticence: Pathology of the normal speaker. Speech Monographs [serial
online].March 1968;35(1):39-49. Available from: Communication & Mass Media
Complete, Ipswich, MA. Accessed December 2, 2015