My research question that I developed for this project is how can SLP’s help children with communication disorders over come the negative impact that public perception can have on a communication disorder? What made me want to focus on this question is the fact that often many people find themselves making fun of people with communication disorders. I do not know how many times that people will tell me a joke and the content of the joke is making fun of people who have communication disorders. When they get done telling the joke they are laughing hysterically and I am thinking that this is really sad when people actually find happiness at the expense of others. One other particular instance that pops in my head is that I know someone who is 18 years old and says w-r. I know that it is sad that an 18 year old has this problem but many people just would laugh every time he would say w for all the r- words and make fun of him to his face. Often many people would just say w for all their r- words to poke fun at the way he said his words. I think because of the way that other people view and treat people with communication disorders that it can cause them to develop a low self-esteem and a negative self-image. So I wanted to research more on how SLP’s can help children not only improve their speech problem but improve the negative impact that often goes hand in hand with a communication disorder.

After the research question was chosen the next part was to develop the MRP. For this project, I had to develop 6 genres and these genres had to be written in at least 3 different points of views. The voices that I thought would answer my essential question would be developing genres in the voice of the clinician, client, teacher, and parent. The genres that I chose to address my topic were a webliography, poem, power-point presentation, letter to the editor, journal entry, and an interview. All of the characters that I have chosen for my voices are fictional characters. I chose the webliograhy to be the voice of the clinician. I addressed this piece to the public to let readers know more about me and about my research project. Another genre that I chose was a poem in the voice of the client. This piece was intended for the public (classmates, teachers, and parents) and people who read this poem can get an idea of the way a child with a communication disorder feels about himself and about the way his classmates view him. The power point presentation was in the voice of the clinician and it was developed for parents and teachers to understand how a communication disorder can affect the life of that child. The letter to the editor is done in the voice of a parent directed to the public expressing her thoughts about what should be done because of the way her child, who has a communication disorder, gets treated. An interview was done in the voice of the clinician and teacher. This was conducted so that the teacher can gain ideas of how she can help increase student’s low self-esteem due to the negative impact that a communication disorder can have on a child. The journal entry genre is in the voice of the teacher. My research topic centers around the negative impact that public perception can have on a communication disorder and often many children will be perceived in a negative way by their peers at school. Because children spend the majority of their day at school, I thought it was important to include a teacher as one of my voices. The journal entry piece is the genre that I chose to tie all my pieces together.