Listening to children in Philadelphia, PA, USA on Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day in the USA is a day for families to get together. In Philadelphia, the day starts with a parade where children line the streets to watch teenagers and adults perform in marching bands, on floats and with giant balloons such as Big Bird and Frosty the Snowman. Just as Frosty arrived it began to snow! The first snow of the season.

I was invited to the Goldsteins' home for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a very special time to enjoy each others' company and eat well: Italian soup, turkey with all the trimmings, and pumpkin, pecan, and apple pie (as well as lots of other treats). The feast was followed by watching gridiron football and having friends come over.

For most children in the US, Thanksgiving is a time of "fs": family-food-football-fun-friends.

Multilingual Aspects of Speech Sound Disorders in Children

Brian Goldstein and I are co-editing a book titled Multilingual aspects of speech sound disorders in children to be published by Multilingual Matters in the UK. The book includes 30 chapters written by authors from 16 different countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region - China, Iceland, Israel, Malta, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Singapore, Taiwan, Turkey, UK, and USA. They address sociolinguistic issues, typical speech acquisition, perception, assessment, transcription, analysis, intervention, and literacy.


Languages and dialects mentioned in the book include: Albanian, American Sign Language, Amharic, Arabic (various dialects), Armenian, Athabaskan languages, Australian Indigenous languages, Australian Sign Language (Auslan), Austronesian languages, Basque, Bini, British Sign Language, Bulgarian, Burmese, Cantonese, Catalan, Chinese, Creole, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (various dialects), Ewe, Farsi, Finnish, Flemish, French, Fulani, Galician, German, Gilbertese, Greek, Gujarati, Haida, Hawai‘ian, Hebrew, Hindi, Hokkien, Hungarian, Icelandic, Inuit, Irish, Italian, Jalapa Mazatec, Jamaican Creole (Patois), Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Kurdish, Lahanda, Lao, Latin, Latvian, Limburg, Lithuanian, Lugandan, Malay, Maltese, Mandarin, Mayan languages, Melpa, Mirpuri, Mongolian, Navajo, Norwegian, Oto-Manguean, Pakistani heritage languages, Pawaian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian & European), Punjabi, Putonghua, Rabinian, Romanian, Rotokas, Russian, Sami, Samoan, Scottish Gaelic, Serbo-Croatian, Sindhi, Shanghainese, Singlish, Slovene, Southern Min, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Teke, Thai, Tlingit, Tok Pisin, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, Welsh, Western Pahari, Wolof, Xhosa, !Xũ, Yucatec Wolof, and Zulu.

Brian Goldstein and Sharynne McLeod

Temple University, Philadelphia, PA

This morning I taught two of Dr. Brian Goldstein's classes at Temple University:

• Foundations and Management in Phonological Disorders (postgraduate class)
• Phonetics and Phonology (undergraduate class)

It was a pleasure to teach them about speech sounds, international speech acquisition, and how to acquire an Australian accent! Thanks so much to the students who took me out to dinner and taught me a lot about studying speech-language pathology in the USA.

Temple University is honouring the diversity of its students by hanging flags representing the countries they are from in the student centre atrium. It was great to see the Australian flag, as well as flags of a number of other countries I had visited this year.

American Speech-Language-Hearing Convention, Philadelphia, PA, USA

From 18-20 November, I attended the American Speech-Language-Hearing Convention, in Philadelphia, PA along with 14,000 other delegates.

I co-presented the following papers:

• Dixon, W., Harrison, L. J., McLeod, S. (2010, November). Association between temperament and speech and language acquisition. Invited 1 hour seminar.
• Williams, A. L., McLeod, S., McCauley, R. J. et al. (2010, November). Interventions for speech sound disorders in 2010. 3 hour short course.
• McLeod, S., Harrison, L. J., McAllister, L., & McCormack, J. (2010, November). Identification, severity, and impact of SSD in the community, Technical presentation.
• Washington, K., Thomas-Stonell, N., McLeod, S., Warr-Leeper, G., (2010). Predictors of participation outcomes in children with communication disorders. Technical presentation.
• Washington, K., Thomas-Stonell, N., McLeod, S., Oddson, B., Warr-Leeper, G., (2010). Evaluating participation outcomes with intervention in pediatric speech-language pathology. Technical presentation.

In addition I chaired the executive board meeting for the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, launched Interventions for Speech Sound Disorders in Children, and have had invigorating conversations with so many colleagues from around the world.

Lynn Williams (USA), Sharynne McLeod, Rebecca McCauley (USA), Elise Baker (Australia) & Susan Rvachew (Canada)



Authors of Interventions for Speech Sound Disorders in Children and ASHA short course presenters



Karla & Kerian Washington (Canada), Sharynne, Elise Baker (Australia), Yvonne Wren (UK)



Linda Harrison and Sharynne McLeod at the Liberty Bell



Australian Research Council 2009‐10 Annual Report

The Australian Research Council 2009-1010 Annual Report has profiled the Sound Effects Study, an ARC Discovery Research project Children with speech impairment: A population study of prevalence, severity, impact and service provision, that was undertaken from 2007-2009 by Sharynne McLeod, Linda Harrison, Lindy McAllister, and Jane McCormack.
ARC Annual Report (page 116)
Sound Effects Study website