Considering studying speech therapy- advice needed

I've just got my GCSE results (8 A*'s and 5 A's) and I've been looking through university prospectuses. I'm thinking about applying to study speech and language therapy. I did speech therapy when I was little and I'd like to help people with the same problems I had.
I chose to take history, biology, maths and psychology for AS level and continue 3 of them for A level. Will these subjects be good for this career? I read that English language is good to take ( I got an A* in it for GCSE) but I don't really like it. Is it essential to take?

Also, do you need any sort of work experience? I've done a week working in a charity shop and I am hoping to get involved in a local museum's project about getting young people involved. Is there anything else I can do?

Thank you for any help

Reply 1

giella

Original post by confuzzled8

Those A levels would be fine for an application to SaLT so don't worry about not having English language. People come at this subject from all angles and yours is perfectly fine.

Doing SaLT, you find it's a blended role of medicine, psychology, counselling, and teaching. Ultimately it's a caring profession so you need to demonstrate that this is something you're interested in. Anything from volunteering in a school or old people's home would be good to demonstrate compassion. You also need to recognise that you need to have an awareness of the different groups you'll be working with. This can range from breastfeeding mothers to stroke victims to people with traumatic brain injury and to people with hearing problems, to name a few. Being able to talk on your personal statement about the insights you've gained into how SaLTs can help these different types of people and an awareness of the role you're going into will allow you to show your readiness for the role that you're stepping up to.

Having an interest in language does help. I come from a background in language teaching and that helped me stand out in a group task at interview as I actually had a working knowledge of the terminology that SaLTs use whereas even people with English language at A level didn't have this. I was able to talk about why my experiences in this area made me an ideal candidate in my personal statement as I have not only a working knowledge of terminology but an insight into the actual role an SaLT plays in helping someone recover or gain language skills and was able to demonstrate the necessary skills to be able to do it well. Not many A level candidates can do this to be fair but if you have an opportunity to do some linguistic work of any kind, that would be helpful. Maybe doing an EPQ on language and psychology would be a good idea as you could do some research and could talk this up at length on your personal statement.

You need to show leadership and enterprising skills if you can so being involved in your school community would help you a lot.

There's no set profile for a candidate and they can come from every walk of life. I know teachers who've made the transition as well as solicitors and I know people with all science A levels make the change from medicine to SLT. I've seen people talk up everything from their drama clubs to their bake offs and it generally seems to be that well rounded, grounded and balanced people tend to be the ones to make the cut. I have known quite a few people who seem to think that being a service user, ie. a patient at some time in their lives is enough to talk up in their personal statement for anything concerning medicine or the allied health professions. It's not. You need to show what you did with that motivation and how you modelled yourself on the person or people who helped you. How did you show teamwork, leadership, empathy etc. and everything that made that person who inspired you good at their job?

Reply 2

evantej

Original post by confuzzled8

Biology, English language and psychology would be the best combination of subjects to take. English language is not essential but it will stand you in good stead for the linguistics you will have to cover on the degree.

You need to have work experience. Interviewers want you to demonstrate that you know what speech and language therapy involves. This means the caring and communication side as well as who this applies to (i.e. different client groups). This does not mean you have to have direct work experience with a speech and language therapist, but work experience with their clients would be beneficial (e.g. Stroke Association).

Wright and Kersner's A Career in Speech and Language Therapy is a decent book you might want to read to get a better idea of the profession.

Considering studying speech therapy- advice needed

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