Invited Nancy McKinley Lecture - Supporting Monolingual and Multilingual Children’s Phonological Development

This morning I was honoured to present (online) the 2024 Nancy McKinley Lecture organised by the American Board of Child Language & Language Disorders that was attended by 711 people across the USA.

https://www.speechpathology.com/slp-ceus/nancy-mckinley-lecture-series/

 Supporting Monolingual and Multilingual Children’s Phonological Development 

By age 5, most children worldwide have acquired most consonants, vowels (and tones), and are intelligible. Respectful assessments that analyze children’s speech in all thei r home languages, and consider standard and dialect forms relevant to the child’s family, are described in this course. Free, evidence-based resources to support SLPs working with monolingual and multilingual children are also shared.

https://www.speechpathology.com/slp-ceus/course/supporting-monolingual-and-multilingual-children-10849

 

https://www.childlanguagespecialist.org/specialist/sharynne-mcleod/

Visiting Kate at The University of Iceland

Aðjúnkt Kathryn Crowe and A/Prof Þóra Másdóttir teach and research in the Talmeinafræði program at the University of Iceland
https://ugla.hi.is/kennsluskra/index.php?tab=nam&chapter=namsleid&id=820072_20176&kennsluar=2023 

I enjoyed visiting to see exactly where they worked - and Icelandic research into speech development and their home language maintenance research with their multilingual children.

Working on a book chapter and a Memorandum of Understanding between our universities

McLeod and Crowe (2018) posters in Iceland

Icelandic speech development poster featuring Lubbi and based on Masdottir & McLeod (2021)

Kate with her CSU award

Kate's office

Kate and Thora are currently undertaking a large-scale randomised controlled trial in preschools across Iceland to support multilingual children's speech and language development.

Explaining patterns in children's speech acquisition data

This morning Dr Kate Crowe and I met with Prof Morten Christiansen, Steven Elmlinger and Pablo Andres Contreras Kallens from Cornell University https://psychology.cornell.edu/morten-h-christiansen 

We are going to collaborate on a project to use statistical learning to explore whether young children's linguistic experiences can explain patterns in children's speech acquisition data. The Cornell University team will re-analyse the data from the following papers. I'm looking forward to see the first set results because their pilot work using data contained within these papers is very promising.

• McLeod, S., & Crowe, K. (2018). Children’s consonant acquisition in 27 languages: A cross-linguistic review. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 27(4), 1546–1571. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_AJSLP-17-0100 
• 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/10.1044/2020_AJSLP-19-00168 

ASHA awards ceremony: Official photos

The official photos from our ASHA awards ceremony have just arrived. It was a very special night shared with very special people. Here is the CSU media release.

Dr Kate Crowe and Prof Sharynne McLeod receiving the AJSLP editor's award from Prof Mabel Rice

Sharynne and Kate

ASHA journal award winners

Prof Sharynne McLeod (CSU, Australia), Dr Karla Washington (US), Dr Kate Crowe (CSU and Iceland), Dr Thora Masdottir (Iceland), Dr Helen Blake (CSU and UTS Australia), Dr Michelle Brown (CSU, Australia)

Prof Lilly Cheng, Prof Sharynne McLeod, Dr Helen Blake, Prof Dolores Battle

CSU Media: "Another international award for leading Charles Sturt researchers"

Thanks CSU Media for so eloquently celebrating this award with us:

• "Another international award for leading Charles Sturt researchers" https://news.csu.edu.au/latest-news/another-international-award-for-leading-charles-sturt-researchers

• The story was also featured in the Campus Review (4 Dec 2019): "The award-winning Charles Sturt paper that 'broke' the internet"
• Here is the impact of our paper and how it is being used around the world

Campus Review story: "The award-winning Charles Sturt paper that 'broke' the internet"

Supporting students' critical thinking about developmental norms

While at the ASHA 2019 convention in Orlando, FL Dr Kate Crowe and I met Dr. Alyssa Boucher from Boston University and were inspired by her innovative way to support her students' critical thinking using our recent journal article about children's speech acquisition across 27 languages.
She asked her students to

• read the AJSLP journal article, 
• watch my video presentation about the article, 
• listen to Kelly Farquharson and Holly Storkel's episode on See Hear Speak podcast,
• (an alternative could be to listen to the SLPToolkit podcast),
• read the InformedSLP blogpost about how the article broke the SLP internet,  
• download the posters, 
• look at a summary of speech acquisition studies for English
• look at speech acquisition studies across the globe,
• and discuss in class.

**(All of these resources are free to download)
She then gave her students the following exam question:

“A fellow SLP in your school district stops by one day to ask you about the “new norms.” She’s in a panic and worries this will increase her caseload. Using McLeod and Crowe (2018) and the other related resources, (kindly) debunk the “new norms” hysteria and help your colleague to interpret the results of the study and the implications for determining special education eligibility.”

What a great way to support students' critical thinking.

Extra information:

1. Chapter 6 in Children's Speech (McLeod & Baker, 2017) provides a clinically-oriented overview of children's speech acquisition and available evidence. (Currently available for free to US and Canadian students during COVID-19 shutdown at https://studentresponse.redshelf.com/search/?terms=0132755963)
2. We were thrilled that this paper won the Editor's Award from the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology that was presented at the 2019 ASHA convention in Orlando, FL. Some photos are here and some associated media is here.
3. Dr. Kate Crowe and I recently have analysed speech acquisition data from children in the US (excluding the rest of the world). The paper is currently under revision in a journal - and we are hoping that it may be published in 2020.

Dr. Kate Crowe, Dr. Alyssa Boucher, Prof Sharynne McLeod

@SLPToolkit Podcast

InformedSLP blogpost

McLeod & Crowe (2018) infographic poster