The key to effective intervention is competent and thorough assessment. Students who request speech and language services/instruction at NTID do so voluntarily. SLPs support students using a collaborative adult model to develop functional goals aligned with their professional, educational, and social goals. Target selection can range across a variety of communication related skills including: 

• Articulation and phonology
• Language and vocabulary
• Grammar, syntax, and morphology
• Voice
• Reading and writing
• Executive function
• Pragmatics and social language
• Confidence, self-determination, and self-advocacy
• Professional or workplace communication

Our goal is to assess how successfully an individual communicates in educational, social, and professional contexts.

Assessment methods include: perceptual, acoustic, and linguistic analyses of spoken utterances, interviews and questionnaires, analysis of language through spoken and written language samples, dynamic assessment, criterion referenced assessment, and standardized assessment. It should be noted that standardized assessments are often not normed on Deaf individuals, and therefore results should be interpreted with caution.