Selecting the correct career path is a crucial decision with far-reaching implications. It is a choice that will shape your future, underscoring the importance of making an informed decision.
Over the next few weeks, The African Reporter will engage with business people, professionals, and other role players, focusing on a specific career field every week.
Through this, we aim to provide valuable guidance to our younger readers navigating their career choices. This week we give a platform to the speech therapist and audiologist’s career. Katlego ‘Rainbow’ Mogapi has been a speech therapist and audiologist for the past six years.
“I will always preach that my career choice was guided by divine intervention. Initially, I dreamed of becoming a pilot or an aeronautical engineer. However, the cost of flight school was beyond my parents’ means, and I didn’t meet the criteria for engineering.
“Speech-language therapy was my third option—a field I knew nothing about until my first year of study. Thankfully, I was fortunate enough to fall in love with it from the moment I began,” said Mogapi.
What is speech therapy?
Speech therapy is a field that involves diagnosing and treating people’s ability to communicate, understand others, and express themselves.
What is a speech therapist and what do they do?
A speech-language therapist/pathologist is a communication expert who assesses diagnoses and treats disorders in individuals of all ages.
Disorders include:
• Speech disorders
• Language disorders
• Social communication disorders
• Literacy and cognitive development, and swallowing disorders
Where can I study to become a speech therapist? Which course?
One can study to be a speech therapist at different universities such as:
• The University of the Witwatersrand
• University of Pretoria
• University of Cape Town
• University of Fort Hare
• Stellenbosch University
• Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University.
Previously, the universities offered it as a dual degree to study both speech-language therapy and audiology. Now, they are separate programs.
