Impairment of language due to an injury or damage caused to parts of the brain dealing with communication is called aphasia. Aphasia, affecting millions worldwide, prevents people from communicating with other people while their intelligence remains intact. Word finding problems have a great impact on their quality of life. Lately, researchers of applied linguistics contributed greatly to the success of speech therapy by developing protocols like Famous People Protocol, Cinderella Story, Melodic Intonation Therapy, etc. and compiling databases like Aphasia Bank or MAPPD available online. They are used in assessing and treating language impairments at phonological, lexical, grammatical, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic linguistic levels. A speech-language pathologist may identify language disorders with the help of these protocols, but he might not acknowledge the magnitude of the injury the patient has suffered. For a successful therapeutic outcome, the speech-language pathologist needs the clinician’s help and vice versa. However, a lot has been discussed and written about these protocols for some strange reason, there are still countries in which clinicians and speech-language pathologists have not adopted and used them in the evaluation and treatment of aphasic patients. In this study, I would like to highlight the importance of translating and using these protocols by both clinicians and speech-language pathologists in the therapy of people with aphasia all over the world.
Biography
Kutasi Reka teaches English for Medical Purposes (EMP) at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy Tirgu Mures, Romania as well as Romanian for foreign students. She is s PhD student at “Lucian Blaga” University from Sibiu, Romania being interested in aphasia which actually represents her main research field. Her main aim is to translate the protocols used in treating aphasia into Romanian and adapt them on the Romanian population. She is also an accredited STANDEM (Standardized Language System for Medical Purposes) examiner being a valuable member of the examination team
