Lester Said:

what major for speech language pathology or audiology?

We Answered:

Go to a college that offers speech path and/or audiology as a graduate program. At my old school, there was a major called Communication Disorders that prepared students for either of the graduate programs. Since the program is extremely competitve at the graduate level, you might want to consider taking courses that would edge your way into a special education or biology teacher's program or a medical type program. You will need to pay the bills one way or another if you have to wait a year or two until you are admitted.

Jeffrey Said:

Speech-language pathology degree?

We Answered:

Biology isn't required, though anatomy and physiology of the respiratory tract and central nervous system certainly are.
If you have questions regarding the program requirements at Texas Tech, call the speech pathology department and speak to a graduate advisor.
You can major in anything at the bachelor's level. The most useful major(s): psycholinguistics, human development, linguistics, foreign language (particularly Spanish), developmental or educational psychology, kinesiology, neuropsychology, zoology, or neuroscience.
Regardless of what you major in, you'll need to take roughly a year of prerequisites in order to be considered for the master's program, including, at the very least: hearing science, voice and articulation, phonetics, speech development and disorders, language development and disorders, and fluency disorders.
I took motor learning and development as an elective and found it to be one of the most important and relevant courses I ever took.
Go to asha.org for more info on SLP.

Alicia Said:

I am interested in information about speech pathology.?

We Answered:

Well, speech language pathology is pretty much amazing!!! Haha, actually I am a grad student studying to become an SLP. If you are looking for more information about the field, your best bet would be to look around on the American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA) website. They have a ton of information and materials.
If you have specific questions, just post another question and I can try to answer.

Joanne Said:

Speech-language pathology questions?

We Answered:

The reason more and more schools are doing away with the speech-path undergraduate major is because you can't practice without the master's any more. (In some states you can still work as a speech assistant with a bachelor's, but not as an SLP.) But the only disadvantage you'll face compared to someone coming out of a speech undergrad program is that you'll have more clinical hours to complete in order to finish your master's.Otherwise, you're in great shape!

A psych major with a linguistics minor is an ideal path to a master's program these days. (Linguistics with a psych minor would be OK, too but I think the psych major is slightly advantageous because it forces you to take stats.) The courses that you should absolutely take (and might not be required for the psych major) are Conditioning (sometimes called Conditioning and Learning), Physiological Psych, and Psycholinguistics. But you should opt for anything related to language, cognition, development:
General Cognition
Language Acquisition
Memory
Infant/Child Development (if you plan to work with kids)
Development through the Lifespan (if you plan to work with adults)
Less important but also good would be a course in Decision-Making.

As for linguistics... as long as you take the basic syntax, morphology and phonetics/phonology courses you'll be fine. I would strongly suggest a course in sociolinguistics. Sentential semantics doesn't really come up much in day-to-day practice but if your school offers a course in lexical semantics - and you have an interest in that - it wouldn't hurt. Same with discourse analysis; nice if you can fit it in but not essential.

My only other suggestion is that you see someone in the speech-path department early in your undergraduate career. In order to maintain their accreditation, Comm Sci and Disorders departments have to make sure their incoming master's students have taken certain courses (the details of which I don't remember... sorry). Those are usually met by any good college's distribution requirements, but you don't want to get to grad school only to find out you've been admitted with a deficiency. Run your proposed courses by someone in speech path early on to make sure you'll have everything you need.

Good luck... and welcome to the profession!

Audrey Said:

What type of schooling do you need for speech pathology?

We Answered:

Actually, most places REQUIRE a Master's degree to be an SLP because that is the standard by ASHA (The American Speech Language Hearing Association). A good place to get general info on becoming an SLP is in the Occupational Outlook Handbook (the book the govt. publishes about multiple U.S. jobs). Here is the link:
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos099.htm

A good source for specific info, is ASHA's website:
http://asha.org
Search around the site and you can find the average hourly and annual salaries for SLP's across the country and various other demographic info, what qualifications different states require, information on accredited SLP programs, and much more.