Language and speech development is an indicator of a child's development (Grilc, 2014). Children develop very quickly, and developmental scales indicate when most children reach speech and language milestones in their mother tongue. In addition, the child is expected to have reached milestones for a specific age group as he or she progresses into the next age group (Asha, b. d.). Receptive and expressive language is used in the context of speech and language developmental scales. In speech therapy, a combination of different approaches is used to assess speech and language, combining the analysis of spontaneous speech, the use of standardized scales and the assessment of parents and/or educators of children. In the assessment of speech and language screening, tests are also used, which are designed to obtain a quick assessment of many children's speech and language development and are therefore especially used in preschool. When choosing the appropriate screening test, we need to consider different variables, such as the language areas that are in the test and the time required to evaluate the test results. The screening test should cover receptive and expressive language tasks and be time-efficient, so it usually takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete.
Speech therapy is still being developed in Slovenia, so the range of diagnostic aids, including screening tests, is inadequate. In my master's thesis, I presented the Teddy Talk screening test. On a sample of sixteen children between the ages of four and five years, I determined whether the test provides representative data on a child's speech and language development. For the purpose of my master's thesis, I designed a questionnaire for parents, which provided information on parents' education, parents' mother tongue, gender of the child and the language that parents speak with their child. Furthermore, I looked for parallels of the child's score on the screening test. This master's thesis aimed to determine whether a foreign language test can be adapted to the Slovene-speaking environment with little change and thus expand the range of diagnostic aids in Slovene speech therapy.
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