Launch of the WHO Rehabilitation Competency Framework (RCF)

Tonight I attended the online launch of the World Health Organization's Rehabilitation Competency Framework (RCF). I was honoured to be one of the 80 people on the Delphi panel supporting its development. Prof Pam Enderby (IALP President) was on the Technical Working Group. It was great to read in Mills, Cieza et al. (2020) about the input from speech pathologists into this important document.

Two articles have been written describing its development

Mills, J.-A., Middleton, J. W., Schafer, A., Fitzpatrick, S., Short, S., & Cieza, A. (2020). Proposing a re-conceptualisation of competency framework terminology for health: a scoping review. Human Resources for Health, 18(1), 15. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12960-019-0443-8 

Mills, J.-A., Cieza, A., Short, S. D., & Middleton, J. W. (2020). Development and validation of the WHO Rehabilitation Competency Framework: A mixed methods Study. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apmr.2020.10.129

 Here are some posts about my contribution to this work: 

• https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2020/02/contribution-to-world-health.html
• https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2019/11/world-health-organization.html
  
• https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2019/09/world-health-organization.html

Belinda's PhD team

I am on Belinda Downey's team to support the finalisation and submission of her PhD. We met today to discuss her timeline and our roles and expectations. I am really pleased to be working with Belinda, Will and Tamara on this important project.

Tamara Cumming, Will Letts, Belinda Downey, Sharynne McLeod

Farewell to CSU colleagues

Today we farewelled two colleagues from the School of Teacher Education: Dr Helen Logan and Dr Julie Lancaster. I have worked with both of them over a number of years, am grateful for their contributions to the school, university, research, and children's lives, and will miss them.

Dr Helen Logan, Dr Peter Wilson (who made the beautiful ceramic gifts),
Dr Julie Lancaster, Carol Burgess (Head of School)

Authorship guidelines for PhD students

Here are the authorship guidelines for PhD students from CSU's policy documents

https://policy.csu.edu.au/view.current.php?id=00272%20

Research students

(12)A higher degree by research (HDR) student should be listed as principal author on any multiple-authored article that is substantially based on the student’s work for the HDR award. If a supervisor meets the criteria for authorship, they should take second author status, unless the student and supervisor have agreed otherwise.

(13)Acknowledgement of a supervisor as a co-author is appropriate if the supervisor meets the criteria for authorship as stated in the Authorship: A guide supporting the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research guide and the Research Authorship Guidelines.

(14)There may be circumstances where the supervisor is the principal author, but this must be with the student's written approval. If a research supervisor and their student form a contract for their research collaboration, it must include a statement on the principles to be used to determine authorship.

Iceland: Earthquakes and northern lights

I love sharing the world with my colleagues. Today Kate Crowe, who is living in Iceland, gave a presentation to people in Belgium in the midst of earthquakes, the library was closed because of the earthquakes, then saw the northern lights - all in one day!

https://www.icelandreview.com/nature-travel/reykjanes-earthquake-swarm-magma-accumulation-suspected-eruption-a-possibility/

Venus International Women’s Award

I have just learned that I have received the following award: Venus International Foundation (https://www.venusinfo.org/) Award forDistinguished Woman Researcher in Speech and Language Acquisition. I was nominated by a colleague. Here is some information about the award program: https://viwa.info/viwa-2021.html The ceremony will be held at the Venus International Foundation 6th Annual Meeting to be held at Green Park Chennai on 6th March 2021. 

I was informed that I was unable to receive the award unless I paid USD500 to attend the ceremony (even though I was given the option and requested that I received it in absentia). So, I have declined the award.

Profiles of linguistic multi-competence in Vietnamese-English speakers

The following manuscript has just been accepted for publication. It presents work from Study 1 undertaken by our VietSpeech team:

Wang, C., Verdon, S., McLeod, S., & Tran, V. T. (2021, in press). Profiles of linguistic multi-competence in Vietnamese-English speakers. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. 

Here is the abstract 

Purpose: Speech-language pathologists work with increasing numbers of multilingual speakers; however, even when the same languages are spoken, multilingual speakers are not homogenous. Linguistic multi-competence considers competency across all languages and is associated with multiple demographic, migration, linguistic, and cultural factors.
Method: This paper examines the linguistic multi-competence of adults with Vietnamese heritage living in Australia (n = 271) and factors associated with varying profiles of multilingualism. Participants completed a self-report questionnaire (available in English and Vietnamese) regarding their language proficiency and associated factors.
Results: Participants were largely (76.6%) first generation migrants to Australia. Three distinct profiles of linguistic multi-competence were statistically identified using a cluster analysis: (1) Vietnamese Proficient (n = 81, 31%), (2) Shared Proficiency (n = 135, 52%), and (3) English Proficient (n = 43, 17%); that is, half were proficient in both languages. Multinomial logistic regression analyses compared participants profiled as Shared Proficiency with those who were more dominant in one language. Factors associated with the Vietnamese Proficient group (compared with the Shared Proficiency group): used Vietnamese much more than English with different people across different situations, were more likely to believe that maintaining Vietnamese helped them communicate in English, and earned less. Participants in the English Proficient group: used English more than Vietnamese with different people across different situations, were more likely to have lived in English-speaking countries longer, were younger in age, and were less likely to believe that maintaining Vietnamese helped improve academic study than those with Shared Proficiency.
Conclusion: Undertaking a comprehensive language profile is an important component of any multilingual assessment to enable speech-language pathologists to develop an understanding of different presentations of linguistic multi-competence, engage in culturally responsive practice, and to acknowledge that high levels of competence can be achieved across multiple languages. 

Here is the plain English summary: 

Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) work with increasing numbers of multilingual speakers. Each multilingual speaker is different, even if they speak the same language. Linguistic multi-competence considers competency across all languages and is associated with demographic, migration, linguistic, and cultural factors. This paper examined linguistic multi-competence of 271 adults with Vietnamese heritage living in Australia and factors associated with varying profiles of multilingualism. Participants completed a self-report questionnaire (available in English and Vietnamese). Participants were statistically sorted into three distinct profiles of linguistic multi-competence: (1) English Proficient (17%), (2) Vietnamese Proficient (31%), (3) Shared Proficiency (52%). Participants in the English Proficient group: used English more than Vietnamese, were more likely to have lived in English-speaking countries longer, were younger in age, and were less likely to believe that maintaining Vietnamese helped improve academic study than those in the Shared Proficiency group. This study demonstrates the importance of undertaking a comprehensive language profile during a multilingual assessment to enable speech-language pathologists to develop an understanding of different presentations of linguistic multi-competence, engage in culturally responsive practice, and to acknowledge that high levels of competence can be achieved across multiple languages.

Oxford Children’s Language Australia (OCLA)

Recently, Oxford University Press invited me to be a member of Oxford Children’s Language Australia (OCLA). Education Today just published this news article outlining the partnership and listing the members: 

"Oxford University Press’ Oxford Children’s Language Australia (OCLA) partners with leading Australian literacy and language research experts to unlock the power of language for learning. The OCLA will support the education community by sharing best-practice teaching resources and tools based on evidence-based pedagogies to help transform children’s language and literacy skills." https://www.educationtoday.com.au/news-detail/Experts-partner-to-unlock-the-power-of-language-for-learning-5201

Early Childhood Research Group: First meeting for 2021

Today was our first Early Childhood Research Group for 2021. We reviewed the excellent feedback from our ECV2020 conference - then planned for ECV2021, an edited book, communication with professionals, and infrastructure grants.

Rejoinder submitted

This morning I submitted my rejoinder for an Australian Research Council grant application. I submitted the original application in November and received the assessors' reports a couple of weeks ago. I had the opportunity to write 5000 characters in response to the assessors' reports (rejoinder). I was thrilled to see the Dean John McDonald and Head of School Carol Burgess moments after the Research Office submitted the rejoinder. They have been very supportive during the application process. Now we await the ARC's decision.

Prof Sharynne McLeod, Executive Dean John McDonald, Head of School Carol Burgess

CSU orientation week

This week is CSU's orientation week - the week before the academic year begins. We are fortunate that we have few COVID restrictions at the moment so that students can come to campus and receive a face-to-face welcome.

"Getting Ready for School the Deadly Way"

 The series of videos titled "Getting Ready for School the Deadly Way" are a great resource. They address the following topics: 

• 'RRAP' Shared Book Reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAK0OPkJixA 
• Book Selection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyNPH0I_D0c 
• Reading is for Everyone (SONG): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKy-gg7gvPo 
• Words (SONG): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEsnXgR9ymI 
• Teaching Emotional Literacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1kmjtun2LE 
• Emotions (SONG): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyqrq3GQuJE 
• Pencil Grip Handwriting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JACKIX5Aq34 
• Happy Day (SONG): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iVN0uUzQLI 
• Stop, Wait and Go (SONG): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLDTNgc2C_o

Van's PhD

Dr Van Tran is working hard to complete her second PhD this semester. She is currently analysing data for paper 5. We had another productive meeting today. She is supervised by Dr Sarah Verdon, Dr Audrey Wang and myself.

Dr Van Tran, Dr Audrey Wang, Prof Sharynne McLeod, Dr Sarah Verdon

Information from Vietnam's 2019 census

My colleagues in Vietnam have just shared the following information with me from the 2019 census in Vietnam: 

1. Infographic of 20 major indicators https://www.gso.gov.vn/en/data-and-statistics/2019/12/infographic-20-major-indicators-of-the-2019-population-and-housing-census/ 
2. Full report: https://www.gso.gov.vn/en/data-and-statistics/2020/11/completed-results-of-the-2019-viet-nam-population-and-housing-census/

International Mother Language Day

Happy International Mother Language Day for 21st February (which aptly is also Helen’s birthday). https://en.unesco.org/commemorations/motherlanguageday

The theme of the 2021 International Mother Language Day, “Fostering multilingualism for inclusion in education and society,” recognizes that languages and multilingualism can advance inclusion, and the Sustainable Development Goals’ focus on leaving no one behind. UNESCO believes education, based on the first language or mother tongue, must begin from the early years as early childhood care and education is the foundation of learning.(UNESCO, 2021)

World Health Organization or Organisation?

I am continually surprised to see the Australian media write "World Health Organisation". 

From the WHO Style Guide:

"World Health Organization, WHO, the Organization (not World Health Organisation, the WHO)" (p. 3)

https://www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/sg13_web_v4%20pdf%20-%20adobe%20reader.pdf

Launch of the WHO Rehabilitation Competency Framework

In 2019 I was on a Delphi panel to provide advice into the development of the World Health Organization's (WHO) Rehabilitation Competency Framework. Here is a description by WHO of the need for the framework

Profound rehabilitation worker shortages, maldistribution, and issues of quality and relevance pose a major barrier to people accessing the care they need, when and where then need it. Competency frameworks are an important mechanism for addressing these challenges, especially in contexts where the rehabilitation workforce is emerging.

The WHO Rehabilitation Competency Framework will be launched on 26th February, 2021. More details are here: https://who.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_6lTQFccYRoCC8dWuhirZQA

 Here are some posts about my contribution to this work: 

• https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2020/02/contribution-to-world-health.html
• https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2019/11/world-health-organization.html
  
• https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2019/09/world-health-organization.html

 

Chúc mừng năm mới and Guò nián hǎo" (过年好)

Chúc mừng năm mới

过年好 Guò nián hǎo

Happy Lunar New Year - the Year of the Ox!

In 2019, Kate Margetson begain working for VietSpeech on Lunar New Year, and in 2021, she went on maternity leave on Lunar New Year. How appropriate!

https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/search/label/Lunar%20New%20Year

ASHA's Research Tuesday features Crowe and McLeod (2020)

This week our paper was featured by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) for Research Tuesday:

Crowe, K., & McLeod, S. (2020). Children's English consonant acquisition in the United States: A review. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 29(4), 2155-2169. https://doi.org/doi:10.1044/2020_AJSLP-19-00168

Immediately, a Facebook question came up: "Evidence for treating /s,l,r/ at 5 years?"

There has been LOTS of discussion on just this point, beginning with the McLeod and Crowe (2018) article. 

• Here is a summary of all of the discussion based on McLeod and Crowe (2018): https://www.theinformedslp.com/how-to/that-one-time-a-journal-article-on-speech-sound-norms-broke-the-slp-internet 
• And part two based on Crowe and McLeod (2020): https://www.theinformedslpmembers.com/reviews?month=08-2020 
• Here’s another blogpost on the topic: https://www.slptoolkit.com/blog/we-have-been-interpreting-the-articulation-norms-all-wrong/ 
• Here is a paper that puts the discussion into perspective for US schools (open access): Ireland, M., McLeod, S., Farquharson, K., & Crowe, K. (2020). Evaluating children in U.S. public schools with speech sound disorders: Considering federal and state laws, guidance, and research. Topics in Language Disorders. https://doi.org/10.1097/TLD.0000000000000226 

The bottom line – typically developing children produce s, l, r by 5 years and here are the free images everyone can use to promote it: https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-acquisition 

Here is the email we received from ASHA announcing they had selected our article to profile: We've been doing this Research Tuesday initiative since 2015, and we have found it to be a very successful way of getting the word out about our authors' publications and research. I hope that the readership of your important article sees a spike because of next week's highlight! 🙂 Congratulations, and best wishes, ~ Kathleen Halverson, Editorial Projects Editor, Serial Publications and Editorial Services Team Social Media Liaison, Scholarly Journals Program 301-296-8719 khalverson@asha.org Follow us on social media! Twitter for Journals: @ASHAJournals Twitter for Perspectives: @SIGPerspectives Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/ashaweb/asha-journals

Congratulations Prof Kirrie Ballard - Speech Pathology Australia Innovation Award + AMP Tomorrow Maker 2020

Congratulations to Prof Kirrie Ballard who has won the Speech Pathology Australia Innovation Award 2020 and was named an AMP Tomorrow Maker for 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyHktCHmbr8&list=PLRA7I7WhI1-Qbnqu34HPsYSkh-87h61nt&index=10

Speech Pathology Australia is committed to promoting innovation and being at the forefront of emerging trends and opportunities. In order to help meet this aspiration, early in 2019, the Association’s Board of Directors approved the introduction of the Speech Pathology Australia Innovation Awards. In 2020, the Speech Pathology Australia Innovation Award in the Research category has been awarded to Kirrie Ballard for her nomination, titled: ‘Go Bananas! The game changer in speech therapy’. The nomination outlined the development of an interactive video-gaming system for remote tablet-based speech therapy that solves the challenge of delivering intensive evidence-based treatment protocols to children with speech sound disorder. As the winner, Kirrie Ballard is required to provide an article for Speak Out about her innovation and to provide a short presentation to the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference in Darwin in 2021. Congratulations to Kirrie Ballard! #innovation #WeSpeechies #SLPeeps #SP2030

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/speech-pathology-australia_innovation-wespeechies-slpeeps-activity-6704903308894724096-5Sqt

These grants and acknowledments enable her to continue her important work that we profiled here: McLeod, S., Ballard, K. J., Ahmed, B., McGill, N., & Brown, M. I. (2020). Supporting children with speech sound disorders during COVID-19 restrictions: Technological solutions. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, Advance online publication. https://doi.org/doi:10.1044/2020_PERSP-20-00128

Article revisions with my wonderful colleagues

We received some excellent reviewers' comments about an article addressing multiculturalism - so the authors' discussion occurred in Fiji, Iceland, Bathurst and Newcastle!

PhD students aiming to submit in 2021

This year two of my students plan to submit their PhDs

• Dr Van Tran - who is working with us in the VietSpeech project at CSU. This will be her second PhD
• Anniek Van Doornik - who is undertaking her PhD through Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

Today I had meetings with them both planning the work ahead towards submission. 

Ice in Utrecht - Feb 2021 - from Utrecht University's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/315278225910/posts/10157885831480911/?d=n

First day in the office for 11 months - more zoom meetings with a different background

Today was my first day back in my office since March 2020 due to COVID restrictions (https://staff.csu.edu.au/home/news-and-events/coronavirus-updates).

Despite being oncampus, all of my meetings were still on zoom. I had 5 excellent meetings today - and have provided photos of two.

The second meeting was to farewell Kate Margetson as she goes on maternity leave until 31 August. It was a very helpful handover meeting of all of her tasks to the rest of the VietSpeech team.

In the fourth meeting Dr Nicole McGill, Dr Audrey Wang and I met to discuss requested revisions to a journal article. It was very productive and we should have the revisions finished soon.

Dr Nicole McGill, Sharynne and Dr Audrey Wang

Dr Van Tran, Sharynne, Katherine White, Kate Margetson, Dr Sarah Verdon

Consonant accuracy and intelligibility of Southern Vietnamese children

The following manuscript has been accepted for publication: 

Le, X. T. T., McLeod, S. & Phạm, B. (2021, in press). Consonant accuracy and intelligibility of Southern Vietnamese children. Speech, Language and Hearing. 

It will be published in this journal: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/yslh20

Here is the abstract: 

Understanding typically developing children’s speech acquisition is useful to assist speech-language pathologists’ diagnosis and intervention planning for children with speech sound disorders. The aim of this research was to investigate Southern Vietnamese-speaking children’s speech accuracy and intelligibility. Participants were 132 children aged 3;0-5;11 living in Southern Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City) whose consonants, semivowels, vowels, and tones were assessed using the Vietnamese Speech Assessment (VSA) and parent-reported intelligibility was assessed using the Vietnamese version of the Intelligibility in Context Scale (ICS-VN). Participants’ percentage of consonants correct (PCC) was significantly lower for the younger children compared with the other age groups. Mean PCC was 89.19 (SD = 7.83) at 3;0-3;5 years and 99.31 (SD = 1.33) at 5;6-5;11 years. Percentage of semivowels correct was higher than the percentage of initial and final consonants correct. Participants produced tones and vowels accurately even from the youngest age group. On average, the participants were reported to be usually to always intelligible and were more intelligible with their parents than other communication partners. There was a positive, weak correlation between speech accuracy (PCC) and intelligibility (ICS-VN). There was no sex effect for PCC and no significant effect for age or sex on intelligibility. These data provide information about typical speech acquisition to support the emerging speech-language pathology profession in Vietnam. 

This work was supported by a grant from Trinh Foundation Australia to the first author, an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (DP180102848) to the second author, an Australian Awards Scholarship to the third author, Charles Sturt University, and Ninh Dang Vu who provided data entry support. 

We began working on this paper in 2017. 

https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2017/11/xuans-visit-re-southern-vietnamese.html

The work had to be put on hold in 2018 due to my health issues as well as a few other reasons - so it is really exciting to have it accepted for publication today.

 

Xuan Le, Ninh Dang Vu, Ben Pham and Sharynne McLeod in 2017

I have just learned that our paper was accepted on "Kitchen God Day" which is just before Tet: https://vietnamtimes.org.vn/how-vietnamese-people-celebrate-kitchen-god-day-across-the-regions-27895.html

 

Women in Leadership

My colleague gave me the book "Women in Leadership" as a Christmas present and I have learned a lot from reading it. Yesterday, the authors, Julia Gillard and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala were interviewed here: https://www.cgdev.org/event/conversation-julia-gillard-and-ngozi-okonjo-iweala-women-and-leadership

Research Tuesday profile of our work by ASHA

We have just been informed that next week our article will has been chosedn to be profiled on the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association's (ASHA) Research Tuesday. 

Crowe, K., & McLeod, S. (2020). Children's English consonant acquisition in the United States: A review. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 29(4), 2155-2169.  https://doi.org/doi:10.1044/2020_AJSLP-19-00168 

Here is some more information about this paper:

• It follows on from our article (McLeod and Crowe, 2018) that won the AJSLP editor’s award: https://pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/2018_AJSLP-17-0100 
• There are free infographics available for both McLeod and Crowe (2018) and Crowe and McLeod (2020) here: https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-acquisition 
• Crowe and McLeod (2020) has been profiled here: https://www.theinformedslp.com/how-to/the-not-new-speech-norms-part-2-an-american-tale 
• We described how this information can be applied in schools here: https://journals.lww.com/topicsinlanguagedisorders/Fulltext/2020/10000/Evaluating_Children_in_U_S__Public_Schools_With.5.aspx

 

A 2-year-old's eye view

During at our VietSpeech research retreat, 2-year-old Sadie was busy taking photos. Her Mum just sent me this one. I like it.

Australian Human Rights Commission free online courses

The Australian Human Rights Commission has provided two very interesting free online course: 

The Commission has two new online courses available on our website for everyone, free of charge. 

An Introduction to Human Rights covers the key principles of human rights and what governments need to do to uphold them. (https://humanrights.gov.au/an-introduction-to-human-rights)

An Introduction to United Nations Human Rights Frameworks explains the role of the UN and how human rights frameworks work to protect our rights and freedoms.(https://humanrights.gov.au/united-nations-human-rights-frameworks)

 

Vietnamese Masters students' research about children with SSD

Today Dr Ben Phạm and I had my first supervisory meeting for 2021 with Mrs Hằng Nguyen and Mrs Vấn Phạm who are the Masters students in Vietnam. 

Dr Ben Phạm, Professor Sharynne McLeod, Mrs Hằng Nguyen and MrsVấn Phạm

Today, as Vietnam has just gone into lockdown again for COVID they have completed assessing 48 children with speech sound disorders. This is a huge achievement as the only other English-language paper written about children with SSD had four participants: 

• Tang, G., & Barlow, J. (2006). Characteristics of the sound systems of monolingual Vietnamese-speaking children with phonological impairment. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 20(6), 423-445. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699200500100910 

Recently there has been a Vietnamese-language paper written about 65 children in Southern Vietnam undertaking a retrospective file analysis, including a description of results from the Intelligibility in Context Scale. Congratulations Mr Quyên and team from Children's Hospital No. 1.

• Hoang, V. Q., Tra, T. T., Nguyen, T. T. H., Tran, T. M. D., & Cao, P. A. (2019). Đặc điểm âm lời nói của trẻ bị rối loạn âm lời nói đến khám tại bệnh viện nhi đồng 1 và trường đại học y khoa Phạm Ngọc Thạch từ tháng 1 đến tháng 6 năm 2018 [Speech sound characteristics of children with speech sound disorders at Children’s Hospital 1 and University Of Medicine Pham Ngoc Thach from January 2018 to June 2018]. Y Học TP. Hồ Chí Minh [Ho Chi Minh City Journal of Medicine], 23, 202-207. 

Here is the English translation of the abstract

Objectives: Describing the clinical characteristics of speech sounds of children with speech sound disorders from 4 to 7 years old receiving intervention at Children Hospital 1 and at the clinic of Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine in Hochiminh City from January to June of 2018. 

Methods: A retrospective research on secondary data which were 65 Speech therapy case files. A research describes the speech sound characteristics of patients presented in the specialty case files. 

Results: The outcomes recorded the occurrence of 5/9 phonological processes, which were stopping, gliding, glottal replacement, backing and fronting. The other processes were initial consonant deletion 12/65, nasalisation 9/65 and devoicing 2/65. 

Conclusions: A retrospective research has provided us a general picture of the pronunciation errors and phonological processeses found in children speaking Vietnamese language. Speech sound disorder issue can affect communication quality, learning quality of children, especially the quality of reading – writing subject at elemenetary school.

Our Masters students (Hằng Nguyen and Vấn Phạm) have prospectively assessed children in Northern Vietnam using the Vietnamese Speech Assessment and the Intelligibility in Context Scale and will be undertaking more extensive analysis. So, the two papers will be very complementary and will add to the literature base for Vietnam and provide a more nuanced understanding of children with SSD in Vietnam. It is exciting to see this field is emerging.

VietSpeech in the media (on SBS)

This weekend Dr Van Tran talked about VietSpeech Study 1 on an SBS broadcast in Vietnamese: https://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/block/vietnamese-radio-player

Dr Tran's interview is introduced at 72:14 and then  runs from 73:00 - 95:00. She talked about factors involved in helping maintain Vietnamese, how maintaining Vietnamese in childhood does not impact English proficiency (i.e., children are able to be successful bilinguals) and how to maintain Vietnamese. She will be interviewed again about our SuperSpeech program once we have finished analysing the data. Congratulations Van!

VietSpeech team: 2021 is a productive year

After our VietSpeech writing retreat we have already resubmitted 3 journal articles after peer review and this week plan to submit 2 more. Data from study 4 is being transcribed and analysed. More papers are being written. What a productive team - and only 1 month of 2021 is finished.

Predatory journals

Predatory journals fill up my email in box every day. It's important to remember that our research students may not have received emails from them until they begin publishing.

Here is a recent paper from Nature about predatory journals: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03759-y

The consensus definition reached was: “Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.” 

I have copied one of my favourite (funny) invitations below received on 10 December asking for a paper by 17 December. 

 

Multilingual Children's Speech - January 2021

The Multilingual Children's Speech website had 12,218 page views in January 2021! Most popular pages were: 

• Intelligibility in Context Scale https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/ics 
• Speech acquisition https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-acquisition 
• Speech assessments https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-assessments

  

  Number of users in January 2021 - USA had 1711 users