March 27, 2015

Kate Crowe new Associate Editor for The Volta Review

Congratulations to Dr Kate Crowe, who has been appointed Associate Editor for AG Bell’s The Volta Review, a long-standing and well-recognised journal within the field of deafness and particularly early intervention for hearing loss. Kate will be involved in managing the review process for submitted manuscripts and providing guidance to authors and reviewers: http://www.listeningandspokenlanguage.org/
Source: RIPPLE Relay, March 2015

March 26, 2015

Ben meets the mayor

This week my PhD student Ben Pham was welcomed to Bathurst by the Mayor. There were 22 new residents from across Australia with two families who have moved internationally from Pakistan and Vietnam. Bathurst is 200 years old this year, so she was invited to join the city's celebrations.

March 24, 2015

Skating Kate

Kate Crowe is a postdoctoral scholar leading the Sound Start Study (ARC Discovery Grant DP130102545). In her spare time she has been the Australian Team Manager for the Fire on Ice Senior Synchronized Skating Team that competed at the French Cup in January 2015 in Rouen, France. Here is a photo of Kate in the Macquarie Ice Rink Artistic (MIRA) competition during 2014.We are very fortunate to have such a multi-talented colleague!

March 23, 2015

NSW/ACT Young Achievers Award for Science Leadership

This weekend Sarah Verdon learned that she has won the NSW/ACT Young Achievers Award for Science Leadership for 2014! The CSU media release is here. Here is the description of Sarah's achievement as a finalist on the Young Achievers' website:
Sarah Verdon, 27 of The Rock is a dynamic speech pathologist and educator who is passionate about creating equality and embracing diversity. A PhD student at Charles Sturt University Sarah’s doctoral research is entitled Embracing Diversity, Creating Equality. The research supports the speech, language and communication of culturally and linguistically diverse children. Her thesis contains five different research projects (both quantitative and qualitative) resulting in nine research papers and multiple oral presentations at international conferences. Sarah also received the 2015 Endeavour Research Fellowship to undertake a project she designed to support the speech, language and literacy development of children in Fiji… Congratulations Sarah Verdon.

March 21, 2015

Introduction to Speech, Language, and Literacy - Oxford University Press

Today Jane McCormack and I submitted the final version of Introduction to Speech, Language, and Literacy to Oxford University Press - ready for publication. Here is the chapter line-up:

Chapter 1: What is speech, language, and literacy?
Sharynne McLeod and Jane McCormack
Chapter 2: Sociolinguistic environments of speech, language, and literacy
Catherine Easton and Jane McCormack
Chapter 3: Speech: Phonetics
 Felicity Cox and Sharynne McLeod
Chapter 4: Speech: Phonology
Sarah Masso and Elise Baker
Chapter 5: Language: Semantics
Natalie Munro and Karla McGregor
Chapter 6: Language: Morphology
Katherine Demuth, Kelly Miles, Sithembinkosi Dube, and Ekaterina Tomas
Chapter 7: Language: Syntax
Rosalind Thornton
Chapter 8: Language: Discourse and pragmatics
Alison Ferguson and Elizabeth Spencer
Chapter 9: Literacy: Reading
Sarah H. McDonagh
Chapter 10: Literacy: Writing
Noella M. Mackenzie and Janet Scull
Chapter 11: Cognitive basis for speech, language, and literacy
Karen Smith-Lock and Lyndsey Nickels
Chapter 12: Neurobiological basis for speech, language, and literacy
Angela Morgan and Frédérique J. Liégeois
Chapter 13: Interaction between speech, language, and literacy
Suze Leitão
Professor Alison Ferguson (chapter 8) and Sharynne
discussing the submission of the book

March 16, 2015

Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals - 5

I have been invited to review the US version of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals - 5 to determine its suitability for children in Australia and New Zealand. It has been an interesting exercise, particularly thinking of the relevance to the Indigenous and multilingual people in our countries, compared with those in the US.

March 12, 2015

Professorial representative on Academic Senate

I have just been appointed one of the professorial representatives on Academic Senate for Charles Sturt University until mid 2016. The Academic Senate is the principal academic body of the University "advising the Council and Vice-Chancellor on all matters relating to teaching, scholarship and research and ensuring the high quality of teaching and learning and research within the University by developing and implementing appropriate policies". More information is here. It will be an honour to serve in this role.

March 10, 2015

Sound Start Study meeting

Today our Sound Start Study team met via Skype. We linked  7 people across 5 sites, 4 cities (Bristol, UK, Sydney, Albury, Bathurst) and 2 countries. This is the third and final year of the Sound Start Study - and by the end of the year we will learn whether the computerised intervention for children with speech sound disorders (Phoneme Factory Sound Sorter) has been successful. We have to continue to blind the data from our randomised controlled trial until the end of this year - so are looking forward to finding out the result.

Intelligibility in Context Scale: A parent-report screening tool translated into 60 languages

The following invited article has just been published

McLeod, S. (2015). Intelligibility in Context Scale: A parent-report screening tool translated into 60 languages. Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology, 17(1), 7-12.
 Here is the abstract:
The Intelligibility in Context Scale (ICS) is a free parent-report screening tool that has been translated into more than 60 languages. The creation of the 7-item scale was informed by the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (WHO, 2007). Translation and back translation into 60 languages has been undertaken internationally by speech pathologists, linguists and translators. Since the creation of the ICS, it has been validated on 120 English-speaking children in Australia and 74 Cantonese-speaking children from Hong Kong. The ICS has been normed on 804 Australian English-speaking children and additional validation, norming, and clinical studies have been conducted or are underway in countries including: Brazil, Croatia, Fiji, Iceland, Iran, Israel, Jamaica, Germany, New Zealand, Slovenia, South Africa, and Sweden. The ICS is a promising screening measure for speech pathologists to use to consider parental perceptions of children’s intelligibility with different communicative partners.

March 6, 2015

Congratulations Sarah - PhD Submission

Today Sarah Verdon submitted her PhD titled "Embracing Diversity – Creating Equality: Supporting the speech, language, and communication of culturally and linguistically diverse children". Her PhD comprises a series of 9 papers and an exegesis:
Lisa McLean (Faculty of Education Research and Graduate Studies Office) receiving Sarah's PhD

  1. Paper 1: Verdon, S., McLeod, S., & Winsler, A. (2014). Linguistic diversity among Australian children in the first five years of life. Speech, Language, and Hearing, 17(4), 196203. doi: 10.1179/2050572814Y.0000000038
  2. Paper 2: Verdon, S., McLeod, S., & Winsler, A. (2014). Language maintenance and loss in a population study of young Australian children. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 29(2), 168–181. doi: 10.1016/j.ecresq.2013.12.003
  3. Paper 3: Verdon, S., & McLeod, S. (2015, early online). Indigenous language learning and maintenance among young Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. International Journal of Early Childhood, 47(1). doi: 10.1007/s13158-015-0131-3
  4. Paper 4: Verdon, S., McLeod, S., & McDonald, S. (2014). A geographical analysis of speech-language pathology services to support multilingual children. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 16(3), 304316. doi:10.3109/17549507.2013.868036
  5. Paper 5: Verdon, S., McLeod, S., & Wong, S. (2015). Reconceptualising practice with multilingual children with speech sound disorders: People, practicalities and policy. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 50(1), 4862. doi: 10.1111/1460-6984.12112
  6. Paper 6: Verdon, S. (2014). Understanding the world through ethnography: The experience of speech-language pathology practice in culturally and linguistically diverse settings. Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology 16(3), 110116.
  7. Paper 7: Verdon, S., McLeod, S., & Wong, S. (2014). Supporting culturally and linguistically diverse children with speech, language, and communication needs: Overarching principles, individual approaches. Manuscript in submission December 2014.
  8. Paper 8: Verdon, S., Wong, S., & McLeod, S. (2015). Shared knowledge and mutual respect: The importance of collaboration when engaging with culturally and linguistically diverse families.
  9. Paper 9: Verdon, S. (2015, in press). Enhancing practice with culturally and linguistically diverse families: Six key principles from the field. Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology, 17(1).
Sharynne and Sarah with her PhD.
Sarah's cheer squad and fellow PhD students: Wei Dong, Helen Blake, Ben Pham and Minh