Page proofs submitted!

What a huge job! The 1500+ pages of The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World have been proofed by the 173 authors and I have read every chapter (online and on paper - because you find different errors). I have collated all of the changes, with assistance from Helen Blake. After a month of working days, evenings and weekends - it has been submitted. I expect to see one more set of proofs - then publication. Nearly there. Hooray. It is an AMAZING resource. Thank you to the fantastic authors for the outstanding research they do and have collated in this book.

"We would also like to sincerely appreciate the significant effort you have both put into collecting, consolidating, and clearly marking the corrections across the volume. We recognize the scale and complexity of this handbook, and your thorough and well-organized review has greatly supported the smooth progression of this stage." Suriya, Newgen | 25 February 2026

CVC Community Research - Thursday presentation

Today I was the CVC Community Research presenter at our weekly Thursday lunch session.

Multilingual Minds are Unlocking Global Knowledge, γνώση, 认识, إدراك, דַעַת, ज्ञान …
Distinguished Professor Sharynne McLeod Children’s Voices Centre, Charles Sturt University
There are over 7,000 languages in the world. Literature about children’s communication development focusses on English, northern hemisphere Indo-European languages (Draper et al., 2023; Kidd & Garcia, 2022), and “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies” (Henrich et al., 2010). This presentation will commend the work of multilingual minds (researchers, professionals, and translators) who provide English-language access to global knowledge about speech, language, and communication. It will outline the decade of work of the International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children’s Speech, and knowledge contained within two global initiatives
The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-speech-development-in-languages-of-the-world-9780192868862) 
Multilingual Children’s Speech website (https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-acquisition/speech-acq-studies)
The presentation will conclude by challenging our reliance on English as the medium for knowledge dissemination and acknowledging the future potential of our connected multilingual world for greater understandings of speech, language, and communication.

Sharynne McLeod, PhD is a Distinguished Professor at Charles Sturt University, Australia specialising in multilingual children’s speech and language acquisition. She has a legacy of leading interdisciplinary teams, building world-class research capacity to undertake impactful international research. Her transformative research has reframed the speech-language pathology profession by foregrounding communication rights and social justice. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association has awarded her Honors and the Certificate of Recognition for Outstanding Contributions in International Achievement. She is a Life Member of Speech Pathology Australia, Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales, and served as editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. The Australian Newspaper describes her as Australia’s Research Field Leader and Best in the World in Audiology, Speech and Language Pathology based on the “quality, volume and impact” of her research. 

19 people attended online and in person. Thanks for your encouragement and great discussion about the importance of home language maintenance and looking beyond English-language research.

Global knowledge in 131 languages and dialects about children’s speech development, assessment, and intervention

 The following manuscript has been accepted for publication. I am so proud of this work.

McLeod, S. & Blake, H. L. (2026, in press February) Global knowledge in 131 languages and dialects about children’s speech development, assessment, and intervention. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics.

Here is the abstract

This paper exhorts communication specialists to look beyond English language knowledge by providing evidence to disrupt the unsubstantiated belief that there are few assessment and intervention resources for supporting multilingual children’s speech. The Multilingual Children’s Speech website https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/home has curated 1,337 (mostly free) resources for supporting multilingual children’s speech acquisition, assessment, and intervention in 131 of the world’s languages and dialects (86 languages). Specifically, there are 658 speech acquisition studies in 55 languages, 423 speech assessment resources in 77 languages, and 178 speech intervention resources in 21 languages. This free website includes links to assessment tools, intervention manuals, journal articles, books, chapters, theses, and video recordings for 16 of the top 20 most spoken languages in the world and many minority languages, Indigenous languages (e.g., Māori, Samoan, Sesotho, Setswana, Warlpiri, isiXhosa, Zapotec, isiZulu) and languages and dialects impacted by colonization and slavery (e.g., African American English, Fiji English, Jamaican Creole, Tok Pisin). Only 17.95% of the resources are about English, with 51.68% about 39 other Indo-European languages, and 30.37% about 46 languages belonging to 15 non-Indo-European language families. Previous analyses of curated knowledge about children’s development in psychology and linguistics have found a WEIRD bias “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies”; however, only 29.07% of the languages included on the Multilingual Children’s Speech website are WEIRD. While only 1.23% of the 7000 world languages are represented on the website, these assessment and intervention resources will continue to grow due to ongoing work of multilingual communication specialists across the globe. 

Index for The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World

The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World has 80 chapters and is over 1500 pages. Most of the chapters are structured around a template to support comparisons across languages. Creating an index for the Handbook is a large task requiring attention to detail and a lot of pattern matching. I am so pleased that Wiebke Freese has worked with the template to create the index for chapters 6-80. Wiebke is visiting the Children's Voices Centre during February and is a PhD student at the University of Lubeck (Universität zu Lübeck), Germany. Her supervisor, Prof Annette Fox-Boyer co-authored the chapter on German speech development. Wiebke said she was surprised and impressed that there is so much research about children's speech across the world. Thanks Wiebke for supporting children's speech - you are a superstar!

Wiebke Freese working in The Beehive at CSU

Discussing the index with Dr Helen L. Blake and the CSU copyeditor Dr Mark Filmer

Oxford Handbook page proofs

This year has begun with the arrival of 1500 pages of The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World. Every word and page must be checked over the next few weeks to ensure that the entire book is ready for publication. It is a BIG job - but I am thrilled to finally see this fantastic resource in its close to final form. Thanks to Dr Helen Blake who is assisting me and to the diligent chapter authors who have checked the orthography and typesetting so carefully.

1500 pages - 9cm double sided!

Sharynne with the page proofs at the Children's Voices Centre @ The Treehouse in Bathurst, Australia

Helen with lot of paper to be read (this is double sided)

Helen and Sharynne online ready for the work ahead

Here is the OUP website for the book:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-speech-development-in-languages-of-the-world-9780192868862
 
Published: 16 June 2026 (Estimated)
Length: 1552 Pages
 
VIDEOS and WEBSITE
Our videos will remain freely available on the Multilingual Children’s Speech website

• Multilingual Children's Speech Development (free videos): https://multilingual-childrens-speech-development.csu.domains/by-language/
• YouTube: https://research.csu.edu.au/multilingual-speech-playlist 
• Multilingual Children's Speech Website, under 'Speech Acquisition' and then ' Multilingual children's speech development' https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-acquisition/multilingual-childrens-speech-development

 
BOOK LAUNCH
Here are some lovely photos from our launch at the International Phonetics and Linguistics Association Conference in Greece in 2025: https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2025/06/launch-of-oxford-handbook-of-speech.html
 

Visiting Dr Margaret Kehoe and the University of Geneva

While in Geneva I had the opportunity to spend the day with my friend and colleague Dr Margaret Kehoe-Winkler. Margaret and I used to work together at The University of Sydney (~1989-1991). Margaret has lived and worked in Geneva for a long time - so was able to show us the University and other interesting parts of Geneva. The university was holding their graduation ceremony when we visited - so we were able to clap for Margaret's research assistant as she received her degree. The 2-year speech pathology program has just over 30 Masters' students per intake. Margaret recently retired, but is continuing with some of her research. I am grateful for her work that informed her chapter on Children's development of Swiss French for The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World.

University of Geneva - Uni Mail

Graduation at the University of Geneva

Sharynne  and Margaret enjoying lunch by Lake Geneva

Lake Geneva

Invited presentation to the Canadian Speech and Stuttering Institute

 This morning Dr Kate Margetson, Dr Helen L. Blake and I were invited to present a 3-hour live session to the Canadian Speech and Stuttering Institute (SSI) (https://ssitraininghub.ca/) and speech-language pathologists across Canada and the USA (n = 25). Our presentation was titled "Multilingual Children's Speech Acquisition and Therapy".

Here is the summary

 Children learn to communicate in one or more of the world’s 7000 languages. Assessment and intervention for multilingual children’s speech can be challenging, especially if children do not speak languages that are familiar to speech-language pathologists (S-LPs). This workshop will provide a cross-linguistic account of monolingual and multilingual and children’s speech development.
Part 1 of the workshop, will begin with an overview of (mostly free) resources that are available to support children’s speech acquisition, assessment, and intervention in over 130 of the world’s languages and dialects on the Multilingual Children’s Speech website https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/home 
Part 2 of the workshop will present the Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL), a practical evidence-based protocol for assessing children’s speech in unfamiliar languages. The step-by-step protocol includes: comparing languages with English; identifying and using SLPs’ existing skills; identifying areas requiring support from families/interpreters; locating and using assessments in a range of languages; taking a collaborative approach to transcribing and analyzing multilingual speech; considering reasons children’s speech may not match standard targets; and implications for diagnosis of speech sound disorder.

SSI organisers and presenters

Kate presenting part 2

One attendee sharing her "favourite book"

We reported on the VietSpeech research in part 2

Padlet answers

 

Success stories

Today Nilima Mathai (Business Operations and Engagement Manager, Office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research)) let me know that our work has been profiled on the Charles Sturt University Research Success Stories page: "Transforming global understanding of speech development: The Oxford Handbook launch - Research" https://research.csu.edu.au/our-impact/success-stories/transforming-global-understanding-of-speech-development-the-oxford-handbook-launch

BIG TASK - Copyediting the Oxford Handbook

All of the copyedited chapter files (80 chapters) and figure files arrived this week! There is a lot of work to be done to finalise these in the next two weeks. Thank you Helen Blake for your assistance - we make a great team!

Launch of the Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World

The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World edited by Charles Sturt University Distinguished Professor Sharynne McLeod presents a transformative approach to overcome traditional English- and Western-centric biases by respecting and acknowledging longstanding traditions of research, theories, and knowledge from a wide range of countries and cultures – including knowledge not previously translated into English. Languages spoken by First Nations people and traditionally marginalized groups are given equivalent status to majority languages, and the language maps, resources, and pronunciation guides have been created using a rights-based, social justice approach, acknowledging the impact of colonization. 

This remarkable book was written by 173 authors from across the globe. It contains 1008 pages and 80 chapters covering 49 languages and 27 dialects with companion audio recordings of children and adults. A Charles Sturt YouTube channel presents a free summary of each chapter in English and the target language (https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-acquisition/multilingual-childrens-speech-development). 

The Handbook was launched at the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association (ICPLA) conference in Patras, Greece on Thursday 26th June 2025. The CSU authors in the book are: Prof Sharynne McLeod , Dr Helen L. Blake, Dr Suzanne C. Hopf, A/Prof Sarah Verdon, Dr Kate Margetson, Holly McAlister. CSU Adjunct  staff authors are: A/Prof Kate Crowe, Dr Van H. Tran, A/Prof Ben Pham.

This volume presents a paradigm shift in the world’s knowledge about children’s speech development. Each of the chapters follows the same structure, facilitating comparison across languages and dialects. Researchers and students can identify relationships between common and unique elements of children’s speech to develop new theories and enhance understanding. Crucially, the curated data in the chapters can be used by communication specialists to collaborate with families and communities, in order to support children’s home language maintenance and speech development. 

More information: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-speech-development-in-languages-of-the-world-9780192868862
 

Chapter authors presenting in our 3-hour seminar based on the book's content

No one wanted to "eat the children" until we asked some children who were attending with their parents for permission!

International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association (ICPLA) 20th conference, Patras, Greece

This week the 20th conference of the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association (ICPLA) is held from the 24th to 27th of June 2025 at the University of Patras, Conference and Cultural Centre, Greece, hosted by Dr Eleftheria Geronikou https://logoth.upatras.gr/en/icpla2025/

There are four of us representing Charles Sturt University: Dr Helen L. Blake, Dr Suzanne Hopf and Dr Kate Margetson - everyone has multiple roles during the conference. Here are the presentations I am involved in:

1.  McLeod, S. & Blake, H. L. (2025, June). Children’s speech development around the world: A transformative paradigm shift. [3-hour symposium presentation]. International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association Conference, Patras, Greece.
2. Blake, H. L. & McLeod, S. (2025, June). Children’s speech development around the world in 170+ recordings. [Oral presentation]. International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association Conference, Patras, Greece.
3. Margetson, K. & McLeod, S. (2025, June). Developing a clinical protocol for assessing speech in languages that you do not speak: The Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL). [Oral presentation]. International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association Conference, Patras, Greece.
4. Davies, A., Wren, Y., & McLeod, S. (2025, June). Understanding intelligibility in children born with cleft lip and/or palate: Findings from the Cleft Collective Cohort Study. [Oral presentation]. International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association Conference, Patras, Greece.

I am the President of ICPLA so have a busy week of duties. 

• Tuesday - I am chairing the International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children's Speech and opening the conference
• Wednesday - I am chairing sessions, co-presenting a paper with Kate Margetson and Yvonne Wren, and I am receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of Patras.
• Thursday -  I am launching The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World, co-chairing and presenting in a session with 16 presentations from around the world on multilingual children's speech (1:30-6:15pm), chairing the business meeting, and attending the conference dinner
• Friday -  I am co-presenting a paper with Helen Blake, presenting at the awards ceremony and farewell ceremony.

Sharynne  with conference chair Eleftheria Geronikou

CSU attendees: Dr Kate Margetson, Dr Helen L. Blake, Dr Suzanne Hopf, Prof Sharynne McLeod

Sharynne  opening the conference as ICPLA President

Sharynne with ICPLA founders: Martin J. Ball and Nicole Muller

Keynote speaker: George

Kate and Karla with a conference fan and hat to keep us cool since it was 40oC on one of the days!

Sharynne with Annette Fox-Boyer's current and ex-PhD students from Germany

Presidents

HDR students from Edinburgh and Sydney

Helen Blake presenting one of our papers

Conference dinner with keynote speaker Frank Guenther

Kristian Kristofferson (Norway) at the poster session

ICPLA colleagues at the conference dinner

Colleagures from Poland: Agetha and Paulina

ICPLA conference organising committee and students

Last day: Helen, Kate, Sharynne  and Anniek

Spanish/USA contingent: Chelsea Sommer, Angela, Tania Flores