Multilingual Aspects of Children's Speech Sounds (2nd edition) has been submitted

SUBMITTED 

Today we submitted Multilingual Aspects of Children's Speech Sounds (2nd edition) to Multilingual Matters (it was due 31st December - so we are early!). 

 In the final book there are:

• 95,379 words across 34 chapters
• written by 59 authors from 17 countries: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, England, Fiji, Germany, Ghana, Hong Kong SAR, China, Iceland, Iran, Ireland, Singapore, USA, Vietnam, and Wales
• mentioning 151 languages: !Xũ, Afrikaans, Akan, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic (6 varieties: Algerian, Classical, Egyptian, Kuwaiti, Modern Standard, Palestinian), Asanti Twi, Assyrian, Azeri Turkish, Bahasa Indonesia, Balochi, Bengali, Brahvi, Bulgarian, Burmese, Cantonese, Catalan, Chichewa, Croatian, Dagbani, Danish, Dari, Dutch, English (10 varieties: Australian Aboriginal, British Standard, Fiji, Irish, Jamaican, Singapore Colloquial, Singaporean, Singapore Standard, Standard Australian, Welsh), Ewe, Fanti, Faroese, Farsi, Fe’efe’e, Fijian, Finnish, Flemish, French and French Canadian, Ga, German, Greek (Cypriot, Standard Modern Greek), Gujarati, Haida, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hindi and Fiji Hindi, Hindko, Hmong, Hokkien, Hungarian, Icelandic, Igbo, Inuit, Irish, Italian, Jalapa Mazatec, Jamaican Creole, Japanese, Karen, Khmer, Kikamba, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Kisii, Kiswahili, Korean, Kriol, Kurdish, Laki, Latvian, Lingala, Lithuanian, Luganda, Luhya, Luxembourgian, Madagascan, Malay, Maltese, Mandarin/Putonghua, Melpa, Mirpuri, Ndebele, Nepali, Norwegian, Pacific Island languages and dialects, Pakistani heritage languages, Pawaian, Pitjantjatjara, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian, European), Potohari, Punjabi, Pushto, Romanian, Rotokas, Russian, Samoan, Sataiki, Scottish Gaelic, Sepedi, Serbian, Serbocroatian, Sesotho, Setswana, Shona, sign languages (5 varieties: American, Australian, British, Danish, Icelandic), Sindhi, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Spanish and Granada Spanish, Swazi, Swedish, Sylheti, Tagalog, Tagalog, Tamil, Teke, Telugu, Thai, Tlingit, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Tshivenda, Tsonga, Turkish, Twi, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, Warlpiri, Welsh, Xhosa, Yolngu Matha, Yoruba, Yumplatok, and Zulu. 
• There is also discussion about the following 34 multilingual pairs: Albanian and Greek, Bengali and English, Cantonese and Greek, English and French and Spanish (trilingual), German and Russian, German and Spanish, German and Turkish, Greek and English, Gujarati and English, Hindi and Gujarati and English (trilingual), Irish and French, isiXhosa and English, Italian and English, Japanese and English, Lingala and English, Mandarin and English, Mandarin and Swedish, Polish and English, Portuguese and English, Spanish and English, Turkish and English, Turkish and German, Twi and English, Urdu and Balochi, Urdu and Brahvi, Urdu and English, Urdu and Hindko, Urdu and Potohari, Urdu and Punjabi, Urdu and Pushto, Urdu and Sataiki, Urdu and Sindhi, Vietnamese and English, and Yoruba and English. 

Thank you to the authors who have undertaken important research that enables us to support multilingual children and their families across the world.

 

We had an Australian editors' meeting yesterday.

Helen Blake, Sharynne  McLeod, Kate Margetson

Helen and I met with Brian Goldstein a few weeks ago when we were in the Washington DC at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) convention. 

Sharynne  McLeod, Brian Goldstein, Christina Gildersleeve-Neumann, Helen Blake

 

Mark Filmer from Charles Sturt University has supported the copyediting of the chapters and we were able to thank him yesterday.

Sharynne  McLeod, Mark Filmer, Helen Blake

OAMS Little Libraries launch

On Thursday we launched the OAMS Little Libraries. What a special day of celebrating the launch of four Little Libraries of children's books written by Indigenous authors and selected by the OAMS community:

1. OAMS Medical
2. OAMS Dental
3. OAMS Early Years
4. OAMS Marang Gunya
   

It has been an exciting research collaboration - and we were thrilled to have members of the OAMS community cutting the ribbon - being joined by local speech pathologists and colleagues from the CSU Rural Health Research Institute. Book passports have been designed for the children to record their reading. A special thanks to Christine Sweeney (OAMS) and Emily-Jane Woodhead (CSU) for all of the behind the scenes work.

CSU team: Emily-Jane Woodhead, Prof Sharynne McLeod, Sarah Bartlett

 

RHRI team: Sarah Bartlett, Dr Hazel Dalton, Prof Anna Walduck, Dr Liz Pressick, Emily-Jane Woodhead, Prof Sharynne  McLeod

The launch

An OAMS child's first entry in her book passport after reading Kick with My Left Foot with Sharynne 

OAMS team cutting the ribbon: Adam Gollan, Jess Lees (Early Years), Tegan Wood (OAMS Medical), Christine Sweeney, Melinda Paine-Lambden (Close the Gap)

Breakfast Club and books!

We received this email from our research partners

"We posted the following text on our socials with the attached photos."

Breakfast Club and books!  

Our young mob were given the opportunity to read, choose and take books home to read for keeps as a thank you from our CSU Research Project team (who visited Breakfast Club and exchanged opinions on books late last year). Marang Gunya will soon have it's own Little Library for the kids to access every week.

OAMS Elders Morning Tea to discuss the Little Libraries

Today Emily-Jane Woodhead and I were honoured to meet with the OAMS Elders for a few hours to discuss our Little Libraries project. They were very enthusiastic about the selected books written by Indigenous authors, and rated by 35 OAMS staff during 2024. 

The list of Indigenous children's books is here: https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/first-nations-resources

They provided many great ideas for using the books with OAMS children and families, as well as within the local schools and community. One wonderful idea was for elders to sit in the waiting rooms where some of the libraries will be housed and read books with children while they are waiting to be seen for medical and dental services. 

We hope to learn more from the OAMS elders in the future. It was such a special day (and thanks for allowing us to use this photo). 

Elders providing feedback about the books (photo included with permission)

Emily-Jane talking about our research

The sites where some of the little libraries will be located

Wiradjuri children's books and Indigenous resources

Today at the Dhuluny Aboriginal Art Market I met two Wiradjuri children's book authors: Larry Brandy and Jessica Leffley. We are purchasing Indigenous resources as part of our current RHRI grant to support rural children's communication.

Jessica Leffley

Resources purchased from Reilly Callie

Congratulations Plural Publishing - 20 years

Plural Publishing has marked their 20 year anniversary with the launch of a video.

https://vimeo.com/992289920

I am honoured to be included with Plural Publishing's founder Dr. Sadanand Singh.

We coauthored:

• McLeod, S., & Singh, S. (2009). Speech sounds: A pictorial guide to typical and atypical speech. Plural Publishing. 
• McLeod, S., & Singh, S. (2009). Seeing speech: A quick guide to speech sounds. Plural Publishing. 

 

Indigenous Literacy Foundation

UNESCO has declared 2022-2032 the Decade of Indigenous Languages. The Indigenous Literacy Foundation publishes children's books in Indigenous Australian languages https://shop.ilf.org.au/collections/all. The Charles Sturt University Libraries held a fundraising campaign earlier this month to support this important cause: https://library-blog.csu.edu.au/2023/09/14/great-book-swap-2023/

A special week with Kate and Marc from Iceland

What a special week to have Dr Kate Crowe and her colleague Marc Volhardt (https://english.hi.is/staff/mds) visiting Bathurst from Iceland. While they were here, Kate and Marc presented a lecture on the Bathurst campus: https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2022/07/there-and-back-again-linguists-tale.html

Kate has not been to Australia since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, so the last time I saw her was at the ASHA convention in Florida in 2019. We have a number of projects we are working on together, a student we are co-supervising, and two book chapters that are due soon. We had time for work and play - and lots of catching up.

I was very happy to receive gifts of children's books in a range of languages, including Icelandic and Polish, to add to my bookshelf of children's books from around the world.

It was great to spend time together. Thanks for visiting.

Kate and Marc presented a lecture on the Bathurst campus

We enjoyed the Bathurst Winter Festival

COVID-19 rapid antigen tests are now part of visiting!

Catching up with our colleague Dr Audrey Wang

Sydney bookstores that focus on bilingual books

Here are three Sydney bookstores that have a large supply of multilingual children's books

• Lost in Books https://www.lostinbooks.com.au 
• Kinokuniya https://kinokuniya.com.au/ 
• Abbey’s Bookstore https://www.abbeys.com.au/

Free online text books during COVID-19 shutdown

Some of the books I have co-authored have been made freely available during the COVID-19 shutdown to participating universities in the US and Canada via:

• Red Shelf: https://www.about.redshelf.com/redshelfresponds
• Vital Source: https://get.vitalsource.com/vitalsource-helps 

For example,
Children's Speech: An Evidence-Based Approach to Assessment and Intervention:
https://studentresponse.redshelf.com/search/?terms=0132755963

 

Additionally, the American Psychological Association Publication Manual (7th edition) is also freely available online using these platforms: https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/coronavirus-response

Mandarin Articulation and Phonology Test

While in China I met Prof Pao-chuan Torng who is the Chair of the Department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology at the National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences. She has published a test titled the Mandarin Articulation and Phonology Test (and I was able to purchase a copy to add to my collection), and written two books.

Additionally, she has translated a number of texts into Chinese, including
McLeod, S. (2014). Speech sound acquisition. In J. E. Bernthal, N. W. Bankson, & P. Flipsen Jnr (Eds.), Articulation and phonological disorders: Speech sound disorders in children (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

Children's Speech: An Evidence-Based Approach to Assessment and Intervention

Today Elise and I submitted the final version of first 6 chapters of our book, Children's Speech: An Evidence-Based Approach to Assessment and Intervention to Pearson, our publishers in the US. We have been working on this book together for a long time, and Elise's children were there to celebrate this momentous occasion. The remaining chapters will be submitted soon. We hope that this book inspires speech pathologists and students throughout the world to see each child and his/her family as unique and to have the tools to support their full participation in society.

Here are a few of the posts over time as we have written the book: http://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com.au/search/label/Children%27s%20Speech

Introduction to Speech, Language and Literacy: Page proofing underway

Introduction to Speech, Language and Literacy is in the page proofing stage. Oxford University Press has recently begun advertising the book: http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780195527926.do

Jane has written a blog post about the development of our book here

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

Where to write a book (continued)

Writing has continued with two books being close to submission to the publishers. Last week I was writing and editing chapters while on leave at the beach!

Writing by the beach

Here is a previous post on the topic.

Video case studies

This week A/Prof Jane McCormack and I have been working together on our new book to be published by Oxford University Press: An Introduction to Speech, Language and Literacy. We have been finalising the transcripts from the video case studies. We have excellent videos of children aged 2, 4, 5, and 7 as well as of university students and a retired teacher. These videos will be a resource for each chapter and will be used to illustrate speech (phonetics and phonology), language (semantics, morphology, syntax, discourse), cognition, neurobiology, as well as the links between speech, language, and literacy.

Principles of motor learning

I have been on leave the last two weeks. During this time, I have had a lovely time skiing with my family and have been revising the draft manuscript of the text book Elise Baker and I are writing. Yesterday morning I was reading the chapter outlining the principles of motor learning - then went to the ski slopes. While watching children learn to ski the principles of motor learning were evident (e.g., principles relating to the conditions and structure of learning, attentional focus, and feedback). For example, the ski school instructors began with part-practice of relevant skills (e.g., learning to make a pizza wedge with their skis in order to stop), then moved to whole-task practice on the slopes. Children are fast learners!

A child putting the principles of motor learning into practice

Visiting Chris Code

While in Exeter I journeyed along the coastline of England to visit Chris Code. Chris is a professor at the University of Exeter and editor of the journal Aphasiology. I have known Chris since the early 1990s when he was a professor at The University of Sydney. He was the first person to encourage me to write a book (I have written a few since), and to join the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association (I am now vice president). He also has been a very supportive executive board member of the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, and has continued to encourage me throughout my career. It was such a pleasure to see Chris and his wife again.

Chris Code and Sharynne

2014 AIATSIS National Indigenous Studies Conference

This week Sarah Verdon and I have attended the 2014 AIATSIS National Indigenous Studies Conference in Canberra. AIATSIS stands for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. The theme of the conference is "Breaking barriers in Indigenous research and thinking". It has been an excellent conference with though provoking keynote speakers and session presenters. 

Sharynne, Fiona Skelton (LSIC), Laura Bennetts-Kneebone (LSIC), Sarah Verdon (CSU), Deborah Kikkawa (LSIC), Michael Walsh (AIATSIS), Christina Eira (VACL), Doug Marmion (AIATSIS)

We presented the following paper:
McLeod, S. & Verdon, S. (2014, March). Celebrating Indigenous Australian children's languages: Diversity, competence, and support. AIATSIS National Indigenous Studies Conference, Canberra, Australia.
Our presentation is available here

 

Sharynne presenting a paper at the AIATSIS conference

During the conference we have had the opportunity to tour the AIATSIS building and look at the manuscript, photographic and sound archives.

AIATSIS Institute

 I have also been able to purchase a number of useful books about Indigenous education, Indigenous languages, Australian Aboriginal English, and some Indigenous children's literature as well.