August 31, 2021

Advances in Communication and Swallowing - first articles

We are very proud that our paper is one of the first to be online in the journal Advances in Communication and Swallowing and look forward to their publication of their first issue: 

McGill, N., McLeod, S., & Hopf, S. C. (2021). Waiting list management: Professionals’ perspectives and innovations. Advances in Communication and Swallowing, Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.3233/ACS-210026

NSW Health presentation: "Communicating with children and families in a multilingual world"

Dr Sarah Verdon, Dr Van Tran and I presented the second of three Allied Health Telehealth Virtual Education Sessions today (31 August 2021) - titled "Communicating with children and families in a multilingual world" 

Registrations closed with more than 85 health professionals from 54 NSW Health facilities registered to attend. "This has again proven to be a very popular topic!" (Jen Nicols)

  • Registered participants are from a range of professions including audiology, dental, dietetics, genetic counselling, nursing, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, psychology, social work and speech pathology. 
  • Registered Local Health Districts are: ACT Health, Albury-Wodonga Health, Central Coast, Hunter New England, Mid North Coast, Murrumbidgee, Nepean Blue Mountains, Northern Sydney, South Eastern Sydney, South Western Sydney, Southern NSW, Sydney, Sydney Children's Hospitals Network, Western NSW, Western Sydney. 


 

Here is some of the feedback written in the online chat that was sent to us from Jen Nichols at NSW Health 

  • “thanks for the tips on home maintenance of mother tongues. This answered a lot of my questions” 
  • “Great presentation, very useful tips and information to use with families. Thank you very much!” 
  • “Lots of great things to think about and helps us challenge our own practice and approaches."
  • “Very positive presentation with a lot of good tips and information :)”

Speech Pathology Australia Practice Guideline Domain 3 Meeting

Today we had another meeting to continue working on the SPA Practice Guideline (Domain 3) to support work with multilingual and multicultural people. It is coming together well.

Say Bananas data collection is in full swing+

Grace Kelly is doing a fantastic job with data recruitment and assessing potential participants in our Say Bananas research:

  • 54 inquiries
  • 3 not eligible
  • 11 assessments complete (+5 more this week)
  • Roll out of the Say Bananas app imminent
  • 8 inter-judge reliability checks completed

Thanks Grace!

You can see what the app looks like on this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Unh1uKJWwA&t=5s 

Here's the link to participate in the research: https://www.research.net/r/SayBananas

August 26, 2021

Celebrating Speech Pathology Week with Bathurst speech pathologists

Difficulties conducting research - noisy environments

I am currently reading a draft research document - and was reminded of the difficulties in the field when trying to audio- and video-record young children's speech so that reliable speech transcription can be made and accurate data entry can be assured:

"The speech sample collection was not carried out if the assessment room had too much noise such as drilling machines, saws, wall demolition, continuous honking, etc. in the surrounding area."

It reminded me of conducting speech assessments in Vietnam in a room that was next to the parking area for parents' and teachers' motorbikes. We kept having to stop as people came and went.

August 25, 2021

ASHA Honors Interview

This morning I was interviewed by ASHA so that they can create a video to play during the ASHA Awards Ceremony in Washington D.C. in November.

Will, Sharynne and Gina Olwoch (ASHA) recording the interview

At the end of the interview, Will stated the following 5 words to describe me: "energetic - bright - kind - humble - passionate"

Speak Up Podcast: "Communication is everyone's right"

I was interviewed by Anneke Flinn from Speech Pathology Australia for their Speech Pathology Week podcast titled "Communication is everyone's right". In the podcast I was able to share our presentation to the United Nations in 2019 and how we all can advocated for communication as everyone's right.

Happy Speech Pathology Week! In this week’s episode, SPA’s Anneke Flinn explores this year’s Speech Pathology Week theme, “Communication is everyone’s right” with Professor Sharynne McLeod, from Charles Sturt University. Sharynne would like to extend her gratitude to Gail Mulcair (SPA CEO), Gaenor Dixon (2019 SPA President), Belinda Hill (2019 SPA Vice President) and Jess McLeod for sharing her UN journey. To view the Speech Pathology Australia “Speak Up for Communication Rights” page referred to in this episode. Speech Pathology Australia acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of lands, seas and waters throughout Australia, and pay respect to Elders past, present and future. We recognise that the health and social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are grounded in continued connection to culture, country, language and community.

Here is a link to the podcast: https://soundcloud.com/speechpathologyaustralia/communication-is-everyones-right-s03-e31  

The President of Speech Pathology Australia sent the following email: 

Hi Sharynne and Anneke, Thank you for a great commute home today. The SpeakUp podcast for SPweek was excellent. Both a celebration of the work we do, and a galvanising call for activities during the week. Nicely done! Best wishes Tim.

August 24, 2021

Sarah Masso in Germany

It was really lovely to catch up with Dr Sarah Masso in Germany this week. She is working on her Humbolt Fellowship with Dr Annette Fox-Boyer.

Media during Speech Pathology Week


August 23, 2021

VietSpeech data analysis

We are currently analysing the data from our VietSpeech SuperSpeech program. Audrey is such a fantastic statistician. It's great to be able to share SPSS over zoom! 


 

Happy Speech Pathology Week

This is Speech Pathology Week in Australia. Speech Pathology Australia's campaign theme is "Communication is everyone's right" - a theme I certainly embrace! I have been priviledged to work with Speech Pathology Australia to prepare for this week by being interviewed on their weekly podcast and also working with their media team to prepare media releases on the theme. Here is one of their digital resources for the week.

Charles Sturt University published the following media release after interviewing Dr Sarah Verdon: https://news.csu.edu.au/opinion/for-children-with-communication-disorders,-parents-and-educators-are-the-first-responders

Happy Speech Pathology Week from the ASHA President, Lynn Williams

 

August 20, 2021

American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation donations

Today I received this email:

Contributions have been given to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation by: 

  • Karen Beverly-Ducker
  • Julie Masterson
  • Sharon Moss 
  • Tommie L. Robinson, Jr. 
  • Nancy Swigert 

in recognition of your receiving Honors of the Association.

Thank you to each of the donors - I know that the ASHFoundation will use this money well.

August 19, 2021

Book chapter in press "Supporting the communication of underserved children in Viet Nam"

The following book chapter was just accepted for publication:

Supporting the communication of underserved children in Viet Nam 

Ben Phạm, Sharynne McLeod, Sarah Verdon, Kate Margetson, and Van H. Tran 

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a case study of work undertaken in Viet Nam to support underserved children with communication disabilities. This chapter focusses on collaborations between Viet Nam, Australia, and other countries to support children with communication disorders and to nurture the developing speech and language therapy profession in Viet Nam. The chapter also profiles research and initiatives that have focussed on understanding children’s speech and language acquisition to develop culturally and linguistically appropriate assessments and resources to support intervention. Childhood communication disorders include difficulties with speech, language, hearing, communication and/or literacy.

The title of the book is: Improving Care for Marginalized and Underserved Populations with Communication Disorders and the International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders (IALP) is currently finalising the publisher.

August 17, 2021

21 most spoken languages in the world in 2021

Here are the 21 most spoken languages in the world in 2021 according to Ethnologue

  1. English
  2. Mandarin Chinese
  3. Hindi
  4. Spanish 
  5. Standard Arabic 
  6. Bengali 
  7. French 
  8. Russian 
  9. Portuguese 
  10. Urdu 
  11. Indonesian 
  12. Standard German 
  13. Japanese 
  14. Marathi 
  15. Telugu 
  16. Turkish 
  17. Tamil 
  18. Yue Chinese 
  19. Wu Chinese 
  20. Korean
  21. Vietnamese
The Ethnologue 200 accounts for most of the world's population. Over 88% of people speak one of these languages as their native tongue, and many hundreds of millions more speak them as second languages. This ranking accounts for both, showing the total usage worldwide. https://www.ethnologue.com/guides/ethnologue200

Eberhard, D. M., Simons, G. F., & Fennig, C. D. (2021). Ethnologue: Languages of the world (24th ed.). SIL International. http://www.ethnologue.com


August 16, 2021

Welcome Dr Van Tran - VietSpeech postdoc

Today we welcomed Dr Van Tran as a CSU staff member and postdoc in the VietSpeech ARC Discovery Grant titled "Vietnamese-Australian children's speech and language competence" (DP180102848). Van submitted her second PhD last week - so now she can be employed to assist us to finalise the journal articles and research translation for our VietSpeech grant. Welcome Van to your new role.

Van joins the VietSpeech team:

  • Chief Investigators: Prof Sharynne McLeod, Dr Sarah Verdon
  • Project Officer: Kate Margetson (currently PhD student)
  • Postdoc: Dr Van Tran (previously PhD student)
  • Statistician: Dr Audrey Wang
  • Research Assistants: Katherine White, Lily To, Evelyn Sowter

August 12, 2021

Congratulations Dr Van Tran on your second PhD submission

Today Dr Van Tran submitted her second PhD. Her thesis is titled: “Home language maintenance among Vietnamese-Australian families”. It was submitted as four journal articles and an exegesis. Her PhD scholarship was from Charles Sturt University and she was part of our Australian Research Council Discovery Grant: VietSpeech (DP180102848).

Van was in COVID-19 lockdown in Sydney and was cheered on by her family (in Sydney and Vietnam), her supervisory team (myself in Bathurst, Dr Sarah Verdon in Albury, Dr Audrey Wang in Bathurst), members of the Speech-Language-Multilingualism team (in Shepparton, Sydney, Newcastle, Fiji, Vietnam, Brisbane, Young, Newcastle and Iceland), and friends (in Sydney) and received congratulatory messages from across the world (Sydney, Albury, Germany, The Netherlands, and US).  Congratulations Van and best wishes for your examination!
Congratulations Van from around the world!
Here is Van’s abstract: 

Home language maintenance is of importance in culturally and linguistically diverse societies including Australia, where more than 300 languages are spoken and over one-fifth of the population speak a language other than English at home. While home language maintenance is associated with academic, social, cultural, and economic benefits for both individuals and societies, it can be a challenge for multilingual families due to child, parent, community, and society level factors. 

Underpinned by Spolsky’s language policy theory, which comprises language practices, language ideologies, and language management, the purpose of this mixed methods research is to explore home language maintenance among Vietnamese-Australian families. To achieve this purpose, this study aims to explore how factors related to demographics, language practices, language ideologies, and language management are associated with: (1) Vietnamese-Australian children’s proficiency and use in Vietnamese and English, (2) Vietnamese-Australian parents’ language use with their child and in social situations and their attitudes towards home language maintenance, and (3) Vietnamese-Australian parents having language policies. Additionally, it aims to: (4) describe Vietnamese-Australian families’ language policies in relation to home language maintenance, and (5) explore successful experience of home language maintenance among Vietnamese-Australian families. 

To achieve these aims, data were collected from a questionnaire completed by 151 Vietnamese-Australian families and a focus group discussion with seven parents from five families. All the families had children under 18 years of age. Survey data were analysed using Pearson’s correlation, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and multiple regression models. An inductive thematic analysis using NVivo was applied to the focus group discussion to explore successful home language maintenance. 

The results from these analyses were presented in three published papers and one submitted paper. The first paper highlights that children’s home language maintenance does not negatively impact English proficiency and is significantly dependent on parents’ language use and attitudes towards home language maintenance. The second paper indicates that parents’ language use with their children is positively linked to their language use in social situations. This in turn is higher when parents are younger, have higher Vietnamese and lower English proficiency, and attend community events more frequently. Parents’ attitudes towards home language maintenance correlate with their perceptions of cultural identity, beliefs in the importance of English maintenance and in the benefits of home language maintenance, and their age. The third paper highlights that only a third of the families had a family language policy. Having a family language policy is associated with parents’ Vietnamese proficiency, parents’ language use with children, and their intention of future residence in Vietnam. The fourth paper concludes with an in-depth investigation of families’ successful experiences of home language maintenance. It presents parents’ motivations, challenges, practices and strategies, and recommendations for support in home language maintenance. 

This PhD research found that home language maintenance is dependent on parents’ efforts including persistent language input, positive attitudes towards home language maintenance, and consistent reinforcement of a family language policy. The research also highlights parents’ desire for the inclusion of home language maintenance in formal education. This research is expected to raise public awareness of the importance of home language maintenance, promote multilingualism, and support multilingual families in Australia and around the world. 

The following papers are in Van's PhD

  1. Tran, V. H., Wang, C., McLeod, S., & Verdon, S. (in press). Vietnamese-Australian children’s language proficiency and use. International Journal of Bilingualism
  2. Tran, V. H., McLeod, S., Verdon, S., & Wang, C. (2021). Vietnamese-Australian parents: Factors associated with language use and attitudes towards home language maintenance. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2021.1904963
  3. Tran, V. H., Verdon, S., McLeod, S., & Wang, C. (in press). Family language policies of Vietnamese-Australian families. Journal of Child Science
  4. Tran, V. H., Verdon, S., & McLeod, S. (2021). Consistent and persistent: Successful home language maintenance among Vietnamese-Australian families. [Manuscript submitted for publication]. School of Education, Charles Sturt University. 

Here are other publications she has co-authored during her PhD (more to come)

  1. Wang, C., Verdon, S., McLeod, S., & Tran, V. H. (2021). Profiles of linguistic multicompetence in Vietnamese-English speakers. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 30(4), 1711-1727. https://doi.org/doi:10.1044/2021_AJSLP-20-00296 
  2. McLeod, S., Margetson, K., Wang, C., Tran, V. H., Verdon, S., White, K., & Phạm, B. (2021). Speech acquisition within a 3-generation Vietnamese-English family: The influence of maturation and ambient phonology. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics. Advance online publication https://doi.org/10.1080/02699206.2020.1862915 
  3. McLeod, S., Verdon, S., Wang, C., & Tran, V. H. (2019). Language proficiency, use, and maintenance among people with Vietnamese heritage living in Australia. Journal of Monolingual and Bilingual Speech, 1(1), 55–79. https://doi.org/10.1558/jmbs.10973

Multilingualism is a superpower

Recently I received this email from Felicity Conlan, a speech pathologist from Penleigh and Essendon Granmar School in Melbourne (@speechforthestars). She gave me permission to share it on my blog.

I just had a listen to the 'up and coming speechies' podcast and wow, you are an amazing woman! I particularly LOVED hearing about everything you do for the multilingual community. I come from a monolingual family...but I have a degree in French and Indonesian...my dream was to become an interpreter, but I was intimidated by the profession and thought I could never sound like a native! So then, I decided to study speech pathology. Foreign languages and speech are DEFINITELY linked, and what important knowledge to have as a speechie. I REALLY loved how you called being multilingual as having a 'superpower', such a cool way of putting it...and will definitely be using that term with my ESL students đŸ™‚ Kind Regards, Felicity Conlan


Mutilingualism is a superpower videos from CSU: https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2021/08/multilingual-childrens-speech-social.html

 

Senior Advisor Evidence Based Practice and Research at Speech Pathology Australia

Congratulations Dr Nicole McGill who has just completed her first week in her new role as Senior Advisor Evidence Based Practice and Research at Speech Pathology Australia. Nicole is part of the Professional Standards team, and her role focuses on enhancing and promoting a culture and knowledge of evidence based practice (EBP) and research across the speech pathology profession, including supporting staff and members to be confident and equipped with skills to undertake EBP and research activities. We look forward to working with you in this important role Nicole!

August 11, 2021

HERDSA

A/Prof Deb Clarke, Vice President of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) outlined the relevance of HERDSA to all academics in Australia: https://www.herdsa.org.au/

August 10, 2021

Masters students each have submitted a draft of their whole thesis - congratulations

I am very proud of Van and Hang who have recently submitted a draft of their whole thesis. It is such a pleasure to co-supervise these students with Dr Ben Pham from Ha Noi National University of Education.


Here is our first blogpost this year: https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2020/02/supervising-masters-students-in-viet-nam.html

Speech Pathology Week 2021

22-28 August is Speech Pathology Week 2021. The theme is Communication is everyone's right. https://www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au/SPAweb/whats_on/Speech_Pathology_Week  

"Speech pathologists work to ensure everyone can communicate with confidence. It is important that the broader community understands that: 

  • communication is a basic human right;
  • 1.2 million Australians live with communication disability;
  • communication disability is largely invisible. Unseen and out-of-sight;
  • confident communication helps maximise educational, health and social outcomes; and 
  • communication is more than just speech. "
I was interviewed by Speech Pathology Australia for their SPA Week podcast which will be released soon.


 

CSU Sturt Scheme success

We have just learned that we have been successful in being awarded a Sturt Scheme funding. Here is the title and summary of our project:

Education Research Acceleration Program The Education Research Acceleration (ERA) Program presents a transformative educational research program. This program builds on the existing strength of education research at the University.

Here are the other successful Sturt Scheme applications. 

  1. Contemporary Threats to Australian Society (CTAS) The group will consider Contemporary Right-Wing Extremism in Australia – seen as the most significant terrorist threat to Australia’s domestic security yet largely ignored by Australia’s terrorism researchers; and Trade-Based Money Laundering (TBML) – TBML is the largest and most pervasive money laundering methodology in the world and a significant, but entirely under-researched threat to Australia’s economic security. 
  2. Policy & Security Science (PaSS) PaSS will provide a new and contemporary focus in Policing and Security Science research at Charles Sturt University (Charles Sturt) through the delivery of cutting edge multi-disciplinary research in police wellness & welfare and health security. 
  3. Regional Work and Organisational ResilienceRegional Work and Organisational Resilience research group will focus on the physical, mental, and emotional health and wellbeing of the workforce (with a particular focus in regional areas), and its effective management to increase organisational resilience for societal good.
  4. Future of the Professions Research Group What are professional obligations? How do these change over time? There is a foundational debate in applied ethics on the nature of professional obligation. In what ways can community engagement and curriculum co-creation enhance education for the professions? Through partnerships with industry, priority community issues can be explored and strategies developed to enhance professionals’ capacity to respond to urgent challenges spelled out in the UN Sustainable Development Goals. 
  5. Ageing Well in Rural and Regional Australia This new research group formalises the activity of the Ageing Well Research Group into a cohesive network that brings a regional focus to communities and partnerships that address the broader social and cultural determinants of health outcomes that are person-centred rather than disease specific. In executing our research, the vision is to shape the ageing agenda through collaboration with older adults and their caregivers, health professionals, service providers, and policy makers to jointly find solutions, strategies and pathways towards healthy ageing in regional and rural communities

Waiting list management: Professionals’ perspectives and innovations

The following paper was accepted for publication today. It is the final paper to be accepted from Dr Nicole's PhD:

McGill, N., McLeod, S., & Hopf, S. C. (2021, in press August). Waiting list management: Professionals’ perspectives and innovations. Advances in Communication and Swallowing.

Here is the abstract:

BACKGROUND: Waiting lists for speech and language therapy exist when services do not meet demand. Waiting lists pose practical and ethical challenges for speech and language therapists (SLTs) and workplaces to manage, with potential flow on effects for children and families. 

OBJECTIVE: The present study aimed to describe SLTs’ perspectives about waiting lists for children with speech, language, and communication needs (SLCN) and explore waiting list management strategies. 

METHODS: The present study reports on 187 SLTs’ written responses to open-ended questions in a questionnaire. SLTs were from nine countries, had an average of 12 years’ experience in the profession (range 0.2-45 years), and either currently or had previously worked with children. Data were analysed qualitatively using thematic analysis. 

RESULTS: SLTs’ feelings about their waiting lists centred on three themes: (1) negative (e.g., “overwhelmed”, “stressed”, “anxious”, “embarrassed”); (2) neutral (e.g., “not too bad”, “okay”); and (3) positive (e.g., “manageable”, “proud”). Four themes related to waiting list management: (1) SLT service delivery (e.g., triage, use of technology in service provision); (2) workplace processes and policies (e.g., eligibility criteria, prioritisation); (3) SLT workforce actions (e.g., recruitment and retention of skilled SLTs); and (4) inaction (e.g., waiting list management was “out of my hands”). 

CONCLUSIONS: Waiting lists can have negative consequences and many SLTs take action to manage waiting lists; however, waiting list management strategies are not necessarily effective which can impact children’s outcomes. There is a need to reimagine service delivery and identify effective actions for managing speech and language therapy waiting lists at a local and systemic level in order to optimise outcomes for children and families.

Natural history study of children with speech sound disorders

Dr Carol Kit Sum To and I have continued having regular meetings to work on writing up our grant to document a natural history study of children with speech sound disorders who do not receive speech-language pathology intervention in Hong Kong, SAR China. We are almost ready to submit the manuscript to be considered for publication. Here is a blog post about a meeting we held earlier this year: https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2021/04/investigating-prognosis-and-risk.html

August 9, 2021

Multilingual Children's Speech social media videos

Last year CSU social created Mutilingual Children's Speech videos for us to share. The message was "multilingualism is a superpower"

I have continued to share them in my recent workshops and keynotes. Here are the links:


 

Van's last week of her PhD

 This is Van's last week of her PhD. It is an exciting time. Best wishes Van.

Van's last official PhD meeting with Dr Audrey Wang

August 3, 2021

NSW Health Allied Health Telehealth Virtual Education - invited presentation on Multilingual children

Today I presented a 1-hour workshop at the Allied Health Telehealth Virtual Education titled "Multilingual children: Speech milestones and assessment advice". A lot of the presented work was based on research undertaken as part of our VietSpeech grant with Dr Sarah Verdon. There were 85 people registered from across 56 NSW Health sites.

 

Here is the abstract and aims: 

Over 22% of Australia’s population speak a language other than English at home; whereas, most Australian speech pathologists speak English as their first language. Recently, Australian research has been published to provide practical guidance for speech pathologists to assess multilingual children’s speech. It is recommended that children’s speech be assessed in all languages spoken by the client (International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children’s Speech, 2012). This presentation will demonstrate that all speech pathologists have skills and access to resources (online, interpreters, family, community) that enable them to consider the culture and the linguistic competency of multilingual children on their caseloads. 

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

  • Discuss recent evidence-based international speech acquisition data regarding consonant acquisition and intelligibility. 
  • Source free evidence-based resources regarding speech acquisition and speech assessments created by researchers from across the world in 60+ languages and consider potential applications to their SLP practice https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech 
  • Draw on four types of evidence when working with multilingual children and their families: (1) Research evidence (2) Clinical expertise of the speech pathologist (3) Client preferences, values, and circumstances (4) Practice context relating to the setting and client (Hoffman et al., 2013). 

Here are some of the resources that we shared 

August 2, 2021

Emails from SLPs across the world - this is why we do our research

Here is a series of emails I received over the past few days from Jeanene M. Johnson, M.A. CCC-SLP, a speech-language pathologist (SLP) in Texas (she gave consent for me to share her name). I regularly receive emails like this (but am usually able to be more helpful). I love that we can hear from people who are using our work 

Email 1: 

I am a huge fan of your work!  Can you please tell me if you have updated pictures in the Single Word Test of Consonant Clusters or if you have published a test that uses this test?  I have been using your test and would like an updated version if it is possible.  Your work is amazing! 

 SM response: 

Thank you so much for your lovely email! Unfortunately I haven’t updated my Single Word Test of Consonant Clusters pictures and I haven’t published a test that uses it. I’m glad to hear that it is useful. I often use Pixabay to select new pictures for the work I am doing, but at the moment don’t have time to select updated pictures.

Email 2: 

Thank you Sharyne!  Your work is legendary and it should be! Keep publishing !  You are a true scientist in our field!; Don’t retiree….; You inspire us! Thank you for taking the time to answer my question.  I am just an average private practitioner. 

SM response: 

Thanks so much for your lovely email that has brightened the start to my week!You are exactly the person we do our work for – someone who translates our research into changing children’s lives. Thank you for your important work!