Speech disorders, including aphasia, dysarthria, children's speech retardation, dysphonia and stuttering, have been called speech therapists or speech therapists in developed countries for more than half a century. At present, a complete education system has been formed in this field. In these countries, most people engaged in this work need to obtain a master's degree and clinical qualifications before they can get employment in the United States, Canada, Australia and other countries. Speech Therapist has been renamed Speech Language Pathologist (SLP).
Speech therapists are members of the rehabilitation group. In hospitals, most of them work closely with rehabilitation doctors, physiotherapists and occupational therapists. In developed countries, some SLPs can also work in schools or practice privately in China. Speech rehabilitation began in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and has developed rapidly in recent years. However, there are still few people engaged in this work at present. Therefore, it is one of the important tasks to develop and strengthen the team of speech therapists and continuously improve the level of practitioners. Before learning speech therapy, we must understand two concepts, speech and language, which are tools for human beings to exchange ideas. In people's daily life, speech and language are often mixed, which will not affect the understanding of meaning, but from the perspective of speech therapy, the difference is that speech is a mechanical process of the formation of phonetic language (spoken language). In order to make spoken English sound loud and clear, the nerves and muscles related to speech production need to participate in activities. When these nerves or muscles are diseased, speech difficulties or unclear pronunciation will occur. Dysarthria is a typical speech disorder, and the most common one in clinic is pseudobulbar paralysis.
Language refers to the established symbol system of human society. People use these symbols to communicate. Language includes not only the ability to use (express) and accept (understand) symbols, but also the ability to use (write) and accept (read) written language symbols, as well as the representative language barriers of sign language and sign language, namely aphasia and language delay. The main purpose of distinguishing "speech" from "language" is to enable speech therapists to correctly understand various speech and language barriers and carry out rehabilitation treatment.