Center for Education, Research and Practice of Language and Speech Disorders

Hello, I am Professor İlknur Maviş. I am the Head of the Department of Language and Speech Therapy at Anadolu University, Faculty of Health Sciences. I am also the director of DİLKOM (Research Centre for Speech and Language Disorders). DİLKOM was established within Anadolu University in 1999 under the rectorate and is the first center opened in Turkey in the field of speech disorders. Anyone with language and speech disorders, children, families or anyone referred by health centers can receive service from this center. These services include the fields of delayed speech, developmental language disorders, speech sound disorders, stuttering, voice disorders, aphasia due to neurogenic disorders, motor speech disorders or swallowing disorders in adults. If people are diagnosed by a relevant healthcare professional, they can receive services such as evaluation, therapy, and family counseling from DİLKOM. To summarize briefly, DILKOM provides language and speech disorders assessment, family counseling and therapy services. Our senior students studying at the Language and Speech Therapy Department can practice one-on-one and face-to-face with the cases at DİLKOM. In addition, undergraduate and graduate students can collect data from the archive or existing cases regarding their thesis or research. In our center, awareness and information services can also be provided to the families, teachers, and if necessary, healthcare professionals of children with speech or language disorders. In fact, routine evaluations and therapies are carried out in our center. Patients usually come here with a doctor's diagnosis. We also have disorders that do not require a doctor's diagnosis. After the evaluations, we start the therapy sessions. Our therapies can last up to 1 year. If necessary, we can extend them. In addition to our face-to-face therapies, we also offer teletherapy (remote therapy) services. Because there may be cases from distant cities, especially for those who are aware of the quality service in DİLKOM, and cases who want to receive therapy and evaluation services from us.
DİLKOM (Research Centre for Speech and Language Disorders) is actually a large center because its scope is very wide. Evaluation and therapy services are offered to both children, adults and the elderly. That's why we have many units for various disorders for both children and adults. For example, we are currently in a group room for children with delayed speech. This is a room for delayed speech development activities and therapies for children aged 3 to 4. We have another room very similar to this. We usually use these rooms for small children. For adults, we there are units such as stuttering unit, speech sound disorders unit, aphasia unit, motor speech disorders unit, swallowing unit and developmental language disorders unit. In addition, we have rooms with the necessary devices to evaluate some of our cases. We use them as laboratories. For example, we have a sound analysis room, and there are devices in it. Using these devices, we can measure the quality and distortion of the sound. In our other 2 laboratories, the evaluation of motor speech disorders is measured with existing devices. Our center is primarily an application center. Students taking part in or contributing here are students of the Department of Language and Speech Therapy at the Faculty of Health Sciences. While 3rd graders observe, 4th graders also provide assessment and therapy services. These therapy services are carried out under the supervision of faculty members. Our students can make their observations in the related departments of ESOGÜ (Eskişehir Osmangazi University) Faculty of Medicine and they also make their observations at İÇEM (Research Centre for Education of Hearing Impaired Children) and at Research Institute for Individuals with Disabilities in our university, but we use DİLKOM as the main application area. Because, as I said before, the Research Centre for Speech and Language Disorders is one of the centers established for other disabled people in Anadolu University and it is very important for our students to have more practical experience in these centers. The more experience they have with the assessment and therapy services they do here, the more they will have the opportunity to apply these experiences in the fields, institutions and hospitals in various cities after graduation, reflecting their richness of experience to those institutions, so that the language and speech disorders in the field can be evaluated and therapies can be applied more efficiently. Especially, Anadolu University is a university that should be preferred anyway. I myself have been working at this university for 40 years and I do not even understand how 40 years have passed. That's why our students will want to benefit from this culture and this treasure when they come to Anadolu University. Also, those who choose the Department of Language and Speech Therapy will also be lucky because our department is the first department established in the field of Language and Speech Therapy in Turkey. Therefore, its staff is very experienced. Moreover, our department has been accredited for the first time in Turkey, that is, it is a department that has proven its quality. Young people, you will have the privilege of doing assessment and therapy here. That's why we welcome you to Anadolu University, Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Language and Speech Therapy, and, therefore, to DİLKOM. We wish you all success in your university exams. Good luck guys.