An efficient therapy can be planned only if based on qualitative speech therapy diagnostics and constant monitoring of child's progress. Therefore, it is of utter importance to evaluate child's communicative skills. There are several techniques available and speech therapy experts are expected to use them effectively. One of the techniques is analysing speech in story narration. In Slovenia, there is no unanimous system according to which speech therapists could evaluate child's speech and language development. Evaluating speech and language skills is important for different groups of children, one of them being hearing children of deaf parents, known as CODA. Speech and language development of hearing children born to deaf parents is somewhat more specific than that of their peers. The difference is due to exposure to both oral and sign language in early childhood. It has been established that different authors are not completely unanimous whether development and type of communication of CODA in comparison to other children is affected by their environment or not.
In the theoretical part, the paper presents some basic concepts typical for speech and language development and difficulties that might occur. Next, the paper focuses predominantly on the connection between the worlds of the deaf and the hearing, the communication and interaction of the deaf with the hearing. The emphasis is on some experience of the hearing, whose mother tongue is sign language. Furthermore, there are detailed presentations of some peculiarities of CODA and guidance for working with them.
Different authors claim that narration offers important information about child's linguistic and pragmatic knowledge. Therefore, a standardised test for narration of the stories The Mitten and The Frog King was used to analyse child's language skills. According to the girl's age at the time of the testing a suitable material was chosen. Thus, pragmatic skills of the girl were analysed according to the standards in the manual, which are based on the narration of the peers. In continuation, narration of both stories were analysed according to additionally set criteria. These criteria serve as a useful tool for speech therapists when gaining information about child's speech and language status based on story narration, focused on speech production and expression.
The aim of analysis was to present the course of speech and language development of a hearing child raised by deaf parents and to monitor progress that occured in the period of two years. During these two years, the girl entered primary school and received profession support (speech therapist, defectologist) which resulted in her self-esteem and speech.
Research showed that the girl's strong area is empathising with the characters of the story. She showed empathy and supported her narration of both stories with non-verbal communication. She experienced the most difficulties with the structure of sentences, such as weak use of auxiliary verbs and somewhat incorrect word formation and accentuation of some words. According to the criteria, the girl's range of vocabulary is average, however, the quality of these words is different than expected at her age. The use of words was sometimes inadequate and there were occasional difficulties in articulation.
When communicating, the girl differentiates between talking to their parents, by using mainly sign language and talking to the hearing, by using speech and occasionally some gestures of sign language. Her non-verbal communication is strongly expressed and gestures indicating certain behaviour are frequently used.
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