Viet Nam now officially has the first 14 speech and language therapists with Masters' degrees (MSALTs)

Email received today from Nguyễn Thị Thanh Thủy celebrating a huge milestone in Vietnam

Dear Prof Lindy, Dr. Ben and all the Australian supervisors, 

As you know, the MSALT [Masters in Speech and Language Therapy] thesis defense on the 3rd and 5th Nov was fruitful and finished with good results that all the 14 MSALT students passed and will be awarded with MSALT degrees. On behalf of MCNV and UMP [University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Ho Chi Minh City], I would like to express my sincere thanks to you for your intensive support for the past two years with the students' theses and for your attendance and support for the students in their defense sessions. Your attendance valued a lot to them and was meaningful to MCNV as a partner of TFA [Trinh Foundation Australia] in this ST [speech therapy] education project. VN now officially has the first 14 MSALTs. We hope that this group can contribute to the development of the ST profession in VN [Viet Nam]. 

With best regards, Thanh Thuy from MCNV https://mcnv.org/

Nguyễn Thị Thanh Thủy

It has been an honour to play a small part over the past two years in this big milestone:  https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/search/label/MSALTs

A special gift

Dr Ben Pham and I received special gift this evening - an email and this photo:

"I have [attached] a photo when Prof. Sharynne talked after I defend[ed my thesis]. I want to send it to you as a souvenir so that you always remember there is a Vietnamese practitioner who is me."

Thank you to our masters' students - we are very proud of all you have learned and achieved over the past two years and wish you all the best for your future careers as you change the lives of people in Vietnam.

Congratulations to Phạm Thị Vấn and Nguyễn Thị Hằng

Congratulations to our two masters students who presented their theses today at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam. Their presentations and answers to reviewers' were excellent. I was very proud of them.

Phạm Thị Vấn's thesis was titled "Đặc điểm âm lời nói của trẻ có rối loạn âm lời nói ở miền Bắc Việt Nam"[Speech sound characteristics of children with speech sound disorders in Northern Viet Nam] Her three supervisors were 1. TS. Võ Nguyên Trung 2. TS. Phạm Thị Bền 3. GS. TS. Sharynne McLeod 

Nguyễn Thị Hằng's thesis was titled "TÍNH DỄ HIỂU LỜI NÓI CỦA TRẺ CÓ RỐI LOẠN ÂM LỜI NÓI Ở MIỀN BẮC VIỆT NAM" [SPEECH INTELLIGIBILITY OF CHILDREN WITH SPEECH SOUND DISORDERS IN NORTHERN VIETNAM] Her three supervisors were 1. PGS. TS. Đỗ Văn Dũng 2. TS. Phạm Thị Bền 3. GS. TS. Sharynne McLeod.

Both students have published their literature reviews as journal articles in Vietnam and we plan to publish their results in English-language journals in the future. 

Thank you to Dr Ben Phạm who simultaneously translated the session from Vietnamese to English so that I could understand. She provided excellent information throughout the process went for over 4 hours during the session where three students presented.

Two new articles have been published today in Vietnam

Two new articles have been published today in Vietnam. These articles were written by our masters' students, supervised by Dr Ben Phạm and myself. Congratulations Hang and Van!

1. Nguyen Thi Hang, Phạm, B., McLeod, S., & Do Van Dung (2021). Tổng quan mô tả về thang đo tính dễ hiểu theo ngữ cảnh [Scoping review of the Intelligibility in Context Scale]. Tạp chí Khoa học trường Đại học Sư phạm Hà Nội: Khoa học Giáo dục [HNUE Journal of Science: Educational Sciences], 66(4AB), 68-81. doi: 10.18173/2354-1075.2021-0062.

2. Pham Thi Van, Phạm, B., McLeod, S., & Vo Nguyen Trung (2021). Tổng quan các tiêu chuẩn chẩn đoán rối loạn âm lời nói ở trẻ em [Review of diagnostic criteria for speech sound disorders in children]. Tạp chí Khoa học trường Đại học Sư phạm Hà Nội: Khoa học Giáo dục [HNUE Journal of Science: Educational Sciences], 66(4AB), 82-97. doi: 10.18173/2354-1075.2021-0063.

Congratulations!

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

Travelling the world from my home

Zoom meetings (and emails) enable me to travel across the whole world from my home. This week I have spoken with people in the following countries:

• Fiji - Suzanne Hopf (email)
  
• Germany - Sarah Masso (email)
• Hong Kong SAR China - Carol To
• Iceland - Kate Crowe
• The Netherlands - Anniek van Doornik
  
• Vietnam - Ben Pham, Hang Nguyen, Van Pham
• United Kingdom - Yvonne Wren
• United States - Lynn Williams; Marie Ireland

It is wonderful to collaborate with so many different people and fascinating to learn from each person about the impact and restrictions of COVID-19 on their daily lives.

Carol To (Hong Kong, SAR China) and Sharynne McLeod

COVID-19 test to be taken before going to work in The Netherlands

Data analysis in Vietnam

Yesterday I worked with Dr Ben Pham and our masters students in Vietnam to analyse data from 30 children with speech sound disorders. This will be the largest study in the world of Vietnamese children with speech sound disorders and will provide useful information for the emerging SLP/SLT profession in Vietnam as well as across the world.

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.

Masters students in Vietnam

Our masters students in Vietnam were very happy today. This week Vietnam has allowed students to return to school and university staff to return to work for the first time since 1st February 2020 (14 weeks) due to lifting COVID-19 restrictions. They also shared their proposals in Vietnamese. Dr. Ben Pham and I were really pleased with how hard they have been working.

Congratulations Trinh Foundation: 12 years old

Recently Trinh Foundation Australia (TFA) marked 12 years of supporting the development of the speech-language pathology (speech and language therapy) profession in Vietnam.

TFA's Mission
To improve the quality of life of Vietnamese people through collaborations and
To develop knowledge and skills in management of communication and speech disorders in Vietnam.

Their latest newsletter outlines many of their achievements: https://mailchi.mp/22b69149187d/benefits-of-volunteering-in-vietnam-4943873?e=bec50f8ff8

Our VietSpeech team has had a lot of involvement over the years, and some of our involvement has been highlighted in this newsletter
1. Dr Sarah Verdon is a Trinh Foundation Board Member

Regular TFA Board meetings are held virtually by Zoom, about 10 times each year, and once a year we meet face to face for our annual strategic planning day- this year on 7 March...

2. Kate Margetson has begun a new (extra) position with the Trinh Foundation

"TFA are pleased to announce the commencement of our newest project with our partners Humanity and Inclusion at the end of this month. This exciting project, supported by USAID, will be associated with Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) in Vietnam, and is planned for two phases. Phase one involves mapping followed by a Needs Assessment of current AAC across Vietnam. We are delighted that previous TFA volunteer Ms Kate Margetson has accepted a consultant role for this important and needed project. Kate, who will work remotely from Australia, has extensive experience in this area, having developed an iPad app when volunteering at the Kianh Foundation in Vietnam in 2015-16. She will be ably assisted in Vietnam by the current leader of the Vietnamese Speech Therapy network Dr Thao. (UPNT Graduate 2010-12). Following completion of phase one, recommendations will be made to Humanity and Inclusion regarding the development or application of an existing APP to suit the Vietnamese context as phase two of the project. This APP will meet the critical needs of a large cross section of the Vietnamese community who experience significant communication impairment."

3. Dr Sarah Verdon, Dr Ben Pham and Prof Sharynne McLeod currently are supervising Masters students' research in Vietnam

"And thanks also to the Australian academics and Dr Ben Pham in Hanoi who have used the unexpectedly available time as a result of the suspension of teaching in the Master degree to work intensively with the students on their thesis research proposals and ethics applications, while also still working in the new normal in Australia and Vietnam. "

4. Prof Sharynne McLeod's congratulations were published in the newsletter:

“Congratulations to Lindy McAllister and Sue Woodward for their vision and long-term commitment and all of the dedicated board members, students, staff, volunteers, lecturers, clinical educators, family members, donors and so many others who have worked hard towards the goal of the right to communicate for everyone in Vietnam.” Professor Sharynne McLeod - Charles Sturt University and volunteer lecturer

Our Masters students in Vietnam are writing their literature reviews

Today Dr Ben Phạm and I had a productive meeting with our Masters students in Vietnam who are writing their literature reviews. We discussed the funnel approach where we write from what is known to what is unknown using the following structure:

1. What is widely known 
2. Establish a territory
   a. Show the general area is: important/ central/ interesting/ problematic/ relevant
   b. Introduce and review previous research 3
3. Establish a niche
   a. Indicate a gap in previous research
   b. Raise a question about it
   c. Extend previous knowledge 
4.  Occupy the niche
   a. Outline purposes/nature of the research
   b. Indicate structure of the paper 

We also discussed how it was important to keep revising the title and aims as we read the literature (and respond to constraints from COVID-19). I believe that the students are on track for submitting their thesis proposal even though they have been at home with their children for 5-6 weeks as a result of COVID-19.

Skype meeting with Hang Nguyen,  Vấn Phạm, and Dr Ben Phạm in Viet Nam

2020 Higher Degree Research Students

This year I am supervising the following HDR students at Charles Sturt University:

• Anna Cronin - PhD student
• Nicole McGill - PhD student 
• Dr Van Tran - PhD student
• Holly McAlister - Honours student (co-supervisor)

I am co-supervising the following HDR students at other universities:

• Anniek Van Doornik - PhD student at Utrecht University, The Netherlands
• Hang Nguyen - Masters student at University of Medicine and Pharmacy, HCMC, Viet Nam
• Vấn Phạm - Masters student at University of Medicine and Pharmacy, HCMC, Viet Nam

It is a privilege to work with these women and to support them as they undertake their research to benefit children and families around the world. 

Supervising Masters students in Viet Nam

This year I have the honour of co-supervising two Masters' students with Dr Ben Phạm who is the primary supervisor. The students (Hang Nguyen and Vấn Phạm) are studying in the Masters of Speech and Language Therapy at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam. They will be researching the use of the Intelligibility in Context Scale with preschool children with speech sound disorders in Northern Viet Nam. We had our first meeting via Skype today. The students had prepared excellent questions, and I think we are going to be a great team. I hope to meet them face-to-face in the middle of this year.

Skype meeting with Hang Nguyen,  Vấn Phạm, and Dr Ben Phạm in Viet Nam

Masters thesis supervison in Vietnam

Yesterday Dr Ben Pham and I met with Prof Lindy McAllister and others in Australia to be briefed on supervision of two students' theses within the Masters of Speech Language Therapy (MSLT) at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam. This is part of the ongoing work of the Trinh Foundation to support the development of lecturers in Vietnam.