ASHA 2015

ASHA 2014 has just finished, but we have already been planning ASHA 2015. I have been invited to co-chair the Cultural and Linguistic Considerations Across the Discipline committee again for 2015, so while in Florida I met my co-chair, Mirza Lugo and next year's conference chairs (Julie Noel and Jeanane Ferre) to finalize our committee, plan for invited speakers, and organize reviewing of submissions.

Sharynne, Julie Noel, Jeanane Ferra, Mirza Lugo

Jamaican children's speech and language research continues

At the ASHA convention, I co-authored two presentations about our research in Jamaica

• Washington, K. N., McLeod, S., McFarland, A., Weisbarth, J. (2014).  Jamaican Creole-speaking children’s expressive language, emergent literacy & communicative-participation: SLP, parent, and teacher evaluations. Technical paper.
• Weisbath, J., Washington, K. N., McLeod, S., Samms-Vaughan, M., & Devonish, H. (2014, November). Print concept development in English: Comparing Jamaican preschoolers to US ELL and monolingual English-speaking preschoolers. Poster. 

 After the ASHA convention, Karla Washington and I met to plan grants, papers, and data analysis.

Sharynne, Karla Washington and Jamie Weisbath

Karla and Sharynne meeting after the ASHA convention

ASHA: Harry Belafonte, Annie and John Glenn, the Geists, and Harry Potter World

The ASHA convention is the biggest speech pathology convention in the world. This year over 12,000 people attended. It also involves big names, and big events. Here are some of the events that occurred this year:

• Opening speakers: Harry Belafonte (singer), his daughter and granddaughter 
• Awards: Annie and John Glenn (astronaut and senator)
• Awardees: Bill and Willie Geist (Today Show host)(see mention on the Today Show 8 minutes into this clip http://www.today.com/video/today/56488912#56488912)
• Closing party: Harry Potter World

At Harry Potter World: Lynn Williams (ASHA convenor), Hogwarts train conductor, Sharynne, Elise Baker

Combining PROPH+ and PHON

Sarah Masso and I have been collaborating with Yvan Rose and Brian MacWhinney to to create a computerized speech analysis system that is useful for speech pathologists by combining the features of PROPH+ with PHON. We used the time at ASHA to advance the project further.

Sharynne with Brian MacWhinney

Friends and collaborators at the ASHA convention in Florida

One of the best parts of attending the American Speech-Language-Hearing Convention each year is meeting up with friends and collaborators. We do a lot of work throughout the year on email - but lots more gets done face-to-face. Here are a few people I enjoyed speaking with this year.

ABOVE: Brian Goldstein (US), Lemmietta McNeilly (ASHA), Sharynne

BELOW: Larry Shriberg, Gregg Loff, Sharynne, Peter Flipsen

Françoise Brosseau-Lapré (US), Arlene Pietranton (CEO, ASHA), Gina Olwoch (ASHA), Sharynne

Sharynne, Carol To (Hong Kong), Elise Baker (Australia)

Bilingual SLI assessments - European Union project presented at ASHA

One of the invited sessions at ASHA was
"A European Union project to develop assessments for language impairments in multilingual societies". It was presented by:

• Sharon Armon-Lotem (Israel)
• Seyhun Topbas (Turkey)
• Helen Grech (Malta)
• Carol Westby (US)

Here is the abstract:

This session was developed by the Convention Program Committee to share outcomes of the COST/ IS0804 EU networking and collaboration project from 30 countries conducted to develop assessments for mono/bilingual children with SLI. We will address the work carried out which shed light on the problem of identifying minority populations.

The website for the Bi-SLI project is  http://bi-sli.org/

Carol Westby (US), Sharon Armon-Lotem (Israel), Seyhun Topbas (Turkey), Helen Grech (Malta)

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention in Orlando, FL

This week I am attending the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention in Orlando, Florida, USA. 

Brian Goldstein and I were invited to Co-chair the  Cultural and Linguistic Considerations Across the Discipline committee and it is great to see the outcome of the past year of work to review/prepare/allocate 44 hours of presentations on this topic.

SLP Conference chair Lynn Williams announcing the topic co-chairs at the opening session

While at the convention my colleagues, students and I are presenting the following papers:

• Hopf, S. C. & McLeod, S.  Cross-cultural competencies for working with children with speech and language disorders from Fiji. Invited presentation.
• McLeod, S. & Crowe, K.When are speech sounds learned? A cross-linguistic systematic review. Technical paper.
• McLeod, S. (chair) (2014, November). Beyond Spanish II: Competencies for SLPs working with children from diverse cultures. 1 hour seminar.
• McLeod, S., Harrison, L. J., Whiteford, C., & Walker, S. (2014, November). The impact of being multilingual when 4-5 years on academic and social-emotional outcomes at 8-9 years. Technical paper
• Washington, K. N., McLeod, S., McFarland, A., Weisbarth, J. (2014).  Jamaican Creole-speaking children’s expressive language, emergent literacy & communicative-participation: SLP, parent, and teacher evaluations. Technical paper.
• Weisbath, J., Washington, K. N., McLeod, S., Samms-Vaughan, M., & Devonish, H. (2014, November). Print concept development in English: Comparing Jamaican preschoolers to US ELL and monolingual English-speaking preschoolers. Poster. 



Presenters in the Beyond Spanish session: Giang Pham (Vietnamese), Christina Gildersleeve-Neumann (Russian), Seyhun Topbas (Turkish), Sharynne McLeod (Fijian - with Suzanne Hopf)