Introduction to Speech, Language, and Literacy is written for Australian and New Zealand students studying education, speech pathology and linguistics; fields with a strong focus on communication. The book provides readers with a theoretical understanding of speech, language and literacy acquisition, and the ability to apply this understanding to individuals of different ages and developmental stages, including those who are developing typically and those with speech, language and literacy difficulties. Within most chapters, Indigenous people and languages of Australia and New Zealand are included as well as people from other cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

The book uses a lifespan approach to consider communication skills from childhood, to adolescence and adulthood. Typical acquisition is described throughout the book and many chapters provide tables of typical milestones or developmental sequences. Readers are provided with descriptions of difficulties people may have acquiring speech, language and literacy skills and strategies are provided for educators, speech pathologists and linguists to support speech, language and literacy.

The inclusion of case studies is a key feature of this book, used to demonstrate the development and use of speech, language and literacy by different people in different contexts. The book comes with access to 10 video case studies. The videos are of Australian children, university students, and a retired teacher. These people have been videoed talking, playing, drawing, reading and writing. The people in the case studies are introduced in chapter 1 and the chapter authors draw on these videos to demonstrate features of speech, language, and literacy. In addition, authors draw on their professional practice to describe other cases that are illustrative of the chapter content and its real-world application.