Written by Kim Woodland, Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education for the June 2011 RIPPLE Update
Sharynne has commenced the second year of her Commonwealth-sponsored Future Fellowship, and we look forward to hearing about another busy and exciting twelve months of research into international speech acquisition in Australia. She began the year by collaborating with other researchers on a range of Fellowship-related research and publication projects, including Gail Fuller (CSU), Rebekah Lockart (Macquarie University), Elise Baker (University of Sydney), Yvonne Wren (University of West England), Sue Roulstone (University of West England), and Helen Grech (University of Malta). In late February, Sharynne delivered an aptly-titled presentation—‘International speech acquisition: A world tour’—at a one-day workshop in Sydney for Speech Pathology Australia. She then continued her research collaboration during March, receiving a visit at CSU Bathurst from Carol Kit Sum To (University of Hong Kong), with whom she is preparing a range of publications, presentations, and a grant. April then saw Sharynne working with Bill Hardcastle (Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh), on a co-authored book about electropalatography. This year, progress has also been made on a prototype computer program being developed in the United States, which will support the International Speech Assessment (ISA)—one of the outputs of Sharynne’s Fellowship. Finally, during May, Sharynne travelled to Vietnam to teach students in the Speech Therapy Training program at the Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine. In late May, she presented a workshop to speech therapists for the Hong Kong Association of Speech Therapists.