Rebekah Lockart has finished her Masters thesis titled: Factors that enhance Australian speech-language pathologists’ assessment of the speech of Cantonese-speaking children. It has been an honour to supervise her project as part of her Master of Speech and Language Pathology in the Faculty of Human Sciences, Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney. Here is her thesis abstract:
The aim of this study was to investigate the ability
of 33 Australian speech-language pathology (SLP) students to identify and
transcribe typical and atypical speech in a nonnative language. Participants
completed 3 tasks in an experimental within subjects design. Task 1 involved
transcription of 5 English words to provide a baseline of their transcription
skills. In Task 2 participants transcribed a typical Cantonese-speaking adult
from an audio recording of 25 words from the Hong Kong Cantonese
Articulation Test (HKCAT). The listeners transcribed an average of 59.1%
consonants correctly. The participants’ average score was increased to 72.9%
when a transcription scoring system was applied (2=exact match, 1=common
transfer pattern, 0=incorrect). In Task 3 participants were presented with 100
audio-visual recordings of Cantonese-speaking children producing words from the
HKCAT and a phonetic transcription of each word. Participants identified
consonant speech sound errors and transcribed each word under 4 additive
conditions: 1) baseline, 2) +recording of an adult model, 3) +information about
the Cantonese phonological system, 4) all variables. In Condition 1 participants
accurately identified an average of 63.8% of children’s whole word productions
as correct or incorrect. Participants achieved an average transcription score
of 71.2%. The accuracy of speech sound error identification and transcription
was significantly improved by the provision of information about the Cantonese
phonological system (69.2%, 76.1%), and further enhanced by a recording of an
adult model (71.6%, 76.1%), and addition of both factors (72.8%, 79.8%). Accuracy was influenced by broad transcription
skill and proficiency in LOTEs, but not by musicality or confidence in working
with multilingual clients. These results indicate SLP students, with no
exposure to or specific training in Cantonese, have some ability to transcribe
the speech of Cantonese-speaking adults and children and identify speech sound
errors made by Cantonese-speaking children.
