Universities

While I was on leave I had the opportunity to visit the campuses of a few universities around the world. I did not visit in an official capacity - so had a lovely time just exploring the campuses of ancient and modern universities in cities including:

• Fes and Marrakesh in Morocco 
• Coimbra, Aveiro and Braga in Portugal

I particularly enjoyed the tour of the UNESCO heritage listed university in Coimbra and chatting to the students about the customs and traditions. 

Chatting with students at the University of Coimbra about traditions when students transitioned from first to second year

 

Presentations at the University of Central Florida

Professor Jack Ryalls invited Dr Michelle Brown and I to visit the speech-language pathology program at the University of Central Florida. While there we gave two presentations at the NSSLHA seminar:

• Michelle I. Brown: "Book reading during infancy impacts academic achievement in later primary school years"
• Sharynne McLeod: "The right to communicate"

UCF: Sharynne, Prof Martine Vanryckeghem, Prof Jack Ryalls, Dr Michelle Brown

Visiting Beijing Language and Culture University

On Friday Dr Ao Chen invited me to visit the speech-language pathology clinic at Beijing Language and Culture University.  Dr Chen obtained her PhD from Utrecht University (where Anniek van Doornik studies), and undertook a postdoc in infants' tone perception at Western Sydney University.

Walking with Dr Chen along the avenue of autumn trees

Beijing Language and Culture University has a Masters in Speech-Language Pathology and a Bachelors of Speech and Hearing. Prof Liqun Gao organised the Belt and Road summit, the lecturers presented and attended, and the students were volunteers (including Megan Li and Xiao Yao). I enjoyed visiting the university, seeing the clinic and having a long discussion about speech acquisition,  assessment, and intervention. We followed the visit with traditional Beijing hotpot.

Sharynne and Dr Ao Chen

Dr Chen and I met with the speech-language pathologist and students in the university speech clinic

Enjoying traditional Beijing hotpot

Exploring multilingual speakers’ perspectives on their intelligibility in English

The following manuscript has been accepted for publication. It forms part of Helen Blake's PhD research:
Blake, H. L., Verdon, S. & McLeod, S. (2019, in press February). Exploring multilingual speakers’ perspectives on their intelligibility in English. Speech, Language and Hearing.
50 free copies are available from this link: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/eJF8jisEZg7UkRtFFBIM/full?target=10.1080/2050571X.2019.1585681
Here is the abstract:

Multilingual speakers’ ability to communicate effectively and intelligibly in the language of their country of residence is crucial to their participation. This study explored multilingual speakers’ motivations for improving their intelligibility in English and their perceptions of potential barriers and facilitators to enhancing intelligibility. Participants were multilingual students and staff at 14 Australian universities. Extended response data from 137 survey responses were combined with seven semi-structured interviews, thematically analysed using the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health as a conceptual framework, and coded using NVivo software. Three overarching themes were: motivations, barriers, and facilitators. Themes that emerged under motivations were meeting their own and others’ expectations and career aspirations. Themes that emerged under barriers to intelligibility were lack of self-awareness of reduced English intelligibility, use of ineffective strategies (e.g., fast speech rate to disguise pronunciation difficulties), language differences, lack of opportunity to practise English, participants’ perceptions of others’ negative attitudes to their English skills, and challenging conversational partners. Facilitators to intelligibility were emotional support from others, beneficial strategies (e.g., confirming listener understanding), and opportunities to practice. The results highlight the importance of supporting multilingual speakers’ efforts to improve their English intelligibility. An environment with barriers such as lack of opportunity to practise English may restrict an individuals’ performance and participation, while facilitators such as support from others may increase participation. This study will inform the understanding of speech-language pathologists engaged in Intelligibility Enhancement, as well as SLPs working with multilingual speakers in any context.

Visiting the Australian Catholic University

Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet with the speech pathology staff at the Australian Catholic University in North Sydney. I presented a seminar titled "Children's consonant acquisition: A cross-linguistic update" to staff in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. I also met with Jane McCormack about a journal article, book chapter and other research we are collaborating on. While there, Jane showed me her latest (excellent) book: Child Development and Learning - published by Oxford University Press - with a 2019 publication date.

Jane McCormack with her latest book

Michelle Donaghy, Jane McCormack, Sharynne, Nisrine El Choueifati

50th anniversary of speech and language pathology education in Sweden

Speech and Language Pathology education in Sweden celebrated its 50th anniversary on June 14th 2014. The 50th anniversary symposium took place in Aula Medica, Karolinska Institutet in Solna.

Professor Christine Dollaghan from University of Texas at Dallas was the invited speaker and her keynote was titled: Evidence-based practice in speech and language pathology: How far have we come and how much farther do we need to go? The program also included presentations by invited Swedish researchers and speech and language pathologists. The event concluded with a celebratory dinner at City Hall, the venue for awarding Nobel Prizes.

Professor Christine Dollaghan's keynote address

Dinner at City Hall

 

Visiting Trinity College, Dublin

Provost George Salmon

When traveling I enjoy visiting universities, so while in Dublin I had to visit Trinity College. Trinity College was founded over 400 years ago. As well as being an important university, it is famous for the Old Library containing the Book of Kells, a 9th century illustrated manuscript of the four gospels of the Bible. The long room of the Old Library houses over 200,000 books from the 14th-19th century - and at 1pm each day people are able to request and read books from the collection. Trinity College is also famous for some of its alumni including Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, and Samuel Beckett. One story that interested me was that the Provost Professor George Salmon finally agreed to sign a document allowing women to study at Trinity College in 1904. It is said that he signed with his hand, but not with his heart. Later that year, he died, and his grave is near the back entrance of the College, where the women students passed as they entered. Now the women students can enter in the front gate, and make up 62% of the student population.

Books in the Old Library

The Book of Kells (facsimile)

Sharynne in the Long Room of the Old Library

Trinh Foundation

The speech therapy program at Pham Ngoc Thach University in Ho Chi Minh City was established by the Trinh Foundation (http://www.trinhfoundation.org/), a not-for-profit organisation with the following mission:

¨ To improve the quality of life of the many Vietnamese children and adults who suffer from communication and swallowing disorders.

¨ To address this problem by continuing to raise the awareness in Vietnam of Speech-language Therapy as a profession. 

¨ To provide the knowledge, clinical skills and finance to establish formalised educational courses in Speech-language Therapy in Vietnam.  This will allow the Vietnamese people themselves, to successfully manage communication and swallowing disorders such as those arising from head injury, cleft conditions, hearing impairment, autism, developmental delay and head and neck cancer.

Jamaican data collection continues

During March, Dr Karla Washington, Dr Nancy Creaghead, and a team of students from the University of Cincinnati went to Jamaica to continue data collection for our study of Jamaican children's speech and language acquisition. In total, we have worked with 60 children to assess their speech and language skills in Jamaican and English. We are now analyzing the data, and look forward to presenting our findings later in the year.
Here is some more information about Dr Washington's work on this project

University of the West Indies

Today Karla and I visited the University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona Campus and were given a tour by professor Hubert Devonish. UWI has three physical campuses: Mona (Jamaica), St. Augustine (Trinidad and Tobago), Cave Hill (Barbados) and an Open Campus. It serves 19 countries in the Caribbean. The Mona Campus is on the site of two plantations, and the aqueducts used to drive the mills are still able to be seen. The brown pelican is on the coat of arms. The Jamaican Language Unit is housed at UWI.

Aqueducts

Dr Karla Washington and Professor Hubert Devonish beside the Communication mural

The interior of the UWI chapel

Professorial forum at CSU

Today (25 July, 2012) I participated in the Charles Sturt University Professorial Forum held in Bathurst. The professors within CSU meet three times a year to discuss issues relating to the university, community, and the world. During our meeting topics we discussed included teaching, research, professional practice, finance and resources, and copyright issues. The meeting was followed by dinner with the Chancellor, Vice Chancellor and members of the University Council.

International Speech Assessment: Finalization of the ETSU capstone project

Today was the final presentation of the capstone project undertaken by the masters' students from East Tennessee State University. Over the past 18 months they have been working with Dr. Martin Barrett and myself to create a prototype for the International Speech Assessment. During their presentation, the students said that they had completed 2897.5 hours of work on the project! It has been a very an interesting process to learn what is important for creating a working computer program.
An earlier blog posting about the project (May 2011) is here

ISA Capstone Team: L-R Howard Morris, Jim Johnson, Dr. Martin Barrett, Nathanial McConnell, Heather Haley, Chandan Biswas, Eric Barclay, Kris Cunigan, Aaron Stokes

Lecture given in 5 time zones on 3 continents

This morning I gave a lecture in 5 different time zones, across 3 continents, in 2 languages (it was translated into Portuguese at one of the sites). The lecture was titled "Cross-linguistic aspects of communication development".

It was part of the "Different Languages, One World": Online seminar to Brazil and USA being conducted by

• East Tennessee State University, USA
• University of Northern Iowa, USA
• Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Brazil
• Universidade de São Paulo-Baurú, Brazil

The lecture covered the following topics: defining multilingualism, speech sounds of the world, multilingual speech acquisition, multilingual assessment and intervention. The presentation is here.

It was a lot of fun, and the Adobe Connect classroom even allowed for some interaction between the sites.

Factors that enhance Australian speech-language pathologists’ assessment of the speech of Cantonese-speaking children

Rebekah Lockart has finished her Masters thesis titled: Factors that enhance Australian speech-language pathologists’ assessment of the speech of Cantonese-speaking children. It has been an honour to supervise her project as part of her Master of Speech and Language Pathology in the Faculty of Human Sciences, Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney. Here is her thesis abstract:

The aim of this study was to investigate the ability of 33 Australian speech-language pathology (SLP) students to identify and transcribe typical and atypical speech in a nonnative language. Participants completed 3 tasks in an experimental within subjects design. Task 1 involved transcription of 5 English words to provide a baseline of their transcription skills. In Task 2 participants transcribed a typical Cantonese-speaking adult from an audio recording of 25 words from the Hong Kong Cantonese Articulation Test (HKCAT). The listeners transcribed an average of 59.1% consonants correctly. The participants’ average score was increased to 72.9% when a transcription scoring system was applied (2=exact match, 1=common transfer pattern, 0=incorrect). In Task 3 participants were presented with 100 audio-visual recordings of Cantonese-speaking children producing words from the HKCAT and a phonetic transcription of each word. Participants identified consonant speech sound errors and transcribed each word under 4 additive conditions: 1) baseline, 2) +recording of an adult model, 3) +information about the Cantonese phonological system, 4) all variables. In Condition 1 participants accurately identified an average of 63.8% of children’s whole word productions as correct or incorrect. Participants achieved an average transcription score of 71.2%. The accuracy of speech sound error identification and transcription was significantly improved by the provision of information about the Cantonese phonological system (69.2%, 76.1%), and further enhanced by a recording of an adult model (71.6%, 76.1%), and addition of both factors (72.8%, 79.8%). Accuracy was influenced by broad transcription skill and proficiency in LOTEs, but not by musicality or confidence in working with multilingual clients. These results indicate SLP students, with no exposure to or specific training in Cantonese, have some ability to transcribe the speech of Cantonese-speaking adults and children and identify speech sound errors made by Cantonese-speaking children.

Assessment and intervention for Vietnamese children with speech sound disorder

Today I spoke with (Skyped) two groups of students and their lecturer Janella Christie from Pham Ngoc Thach University in Ho Chi Minh City about their final year projects. These two groups of students have chosen to continue work that we discussed during their lectures in May. One group has analyzed retrospective data of 57 children with speech sound disorders to identify common phonological patterns and is aiming to develop minimal pairs intervention resources for Vietnamese. The other group is creating a new assessment to use for all children in their hospital. They will be assessing preschool children and conducting in-depth analyses of these children's phonological skills. It is exciting to see that these students are committed to resourcing the new speech therapy profession in Vietnam. I anticipate that their resources will be useful for working with Vietnamese children throughout the world as well.

Vancouver, BC, Canada

Prof May Bernhardt and Prof Joe Stemberger have hosted my stay in Vancouver. While here I have presented a seminar at the University of British Columbia (UBC) titled International speech acquisition: An Australian perspective.

L-R: Prof May Berhnardt, Daniel Berube, Heather Campbell, Sharynne, Sandy Taylor,
Dr Stefka Marinova-Todd, Dr Donald Derrick

May, Joe, Stefka, and the team have been working on a large cross-linguistic study of typical speech acquisition. They have developed a speech assessment, and scan analysis in the following languages:
Kuwaiti Arabic, Bulgarian, Canadian English, Manatoba French, German, Slovanian, Icelandic, Shanghai Mandarin, Japanese, Hungarian, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, and Punjabi.
They also have tested 30 typical children in most of these languages. Their assessments and analyses will be made available on the UBC website in the future.

Meeting Dr Stefka Marinova-Todd who co-authored the chapter
on Filipino in the International Guide to Speech Acquisition

Learning in London and Toronto, ON, Canada

Dr Karla Washington has hosted my visit to Ontario, Canada.
During my stay we have visited the University of Western Ontario (in London, ON), and have met Prof Geneese Warr-Leeper, who developed TykeTalk and has published a book for parents in English and French titled: Helping Kids Discover and Develop Language.

Dr Karla Washington and Prof Geneese Warr-Leeper

Dr Karla Washington and Sharynne at University of Western Ontario

I also presented an invited seminar at Bloorview Research Institute in Toronto titled: Children's speech: Prevalence, risk and impact of speech sound disorder. While there, I met with Prof. Nancy Thomas-Stonell, who has created the FOCUS (Focus on Children under Six), an outcome measure based on the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health.

Sharynne, Prof Nancy Thomas-Stonell, and Dr Karla Washington

Revisiting Speech and Language Therapy Reseach Unit, Bristol

Between 30 August and 3rd September I revisited the Speech and Language Therapy Reseach Unit, Bristol to continue working with colleagues including Professor Sue Roulstone, Dr Yvonne Wren and Helen Hambly on journal articles, a grant and a book. On my last day we had lunch with Professor Jeanine Treffers-Daller and Dr Selma Babayigit from the University of West of England to discuss mulitilingualism and child development. 

East Tennessee State University

From June 6-19 I visited the Centre for Excellence in Early Childhood Learning and Development at East Tennessee State University and worked with Professor Lynn Williams.

I presented two seminars as outlined on the ETSU website:

Prof. Sharynne McLeod, Prof. Marty Barrett,
Prof. Lynn Williams, and Prof. Stephen Camarata

• Speech sound disorders in children: Typical acquisition, prevalence, risk, and impact (ASHA CEUs event)
• Listening to Children through the Sound Effects Study (incorporating Children Draw Talking: Art Exhibition)

I have enjoyed working with many people while at ETSU.

Prof. Stephen Camarata drove from Vanderbuilt University to visit us and to discuss research and grants.

I enjoyed talking with

Prof. Becky Isbell about her research into children's art and listening to children

Prof. Nancy Shearer about her international work with children with cleft lip and palate

Prof. Brenda Louw about her work in Africa and her research into Afrikaans and Zulu speech acquisition

Prof. Wally Dixon about his research on children's temperament and language acquisition

Prof. Marty Barrett about computer programming assessments

Prof. Kerry Proctor-Williams, Dr. Sandy Countermine, Dr. Julia Herwig, and so many others. I was made to feel so welcome and learned a lot about people of the Appalachian Mountains and Tennessee.

ETSU professors

Children draw talking: Art exhibition on tour

Children Draw Talking is an art exhibition of illustrations produced by 157 4- to 5-year-old children in the Sound Effects Study. 143 children who had difficulty talking and making speech sounds were invited to draw themselves talking to someone. The resulting drawings have been identified with six focal points, including enlarged ears on the listeners and smaller mouths on the speakers.

The art exhibition has already been shown at the opening session of the 2009 Speech Pathology Australia Conference in Adelaide and the 2009 Asia Pacific Speech Language Hearing Association Conference in Hawai'i.

In 2010 it has been shown in the following venues:

June 7 to 11, 2010: Johnson City, TN, USA

East Tennessee State University (ETSU) at the Slocumb Art Gallery

Receptions: June 10, Thursday, 5 p.m. and June 11, Friday, 11 a.m.


Lecture: June 10, 5:30 to 8 p.m. and June 11, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., Ball Hall Auditorium

Hosted by ETSU Center of Excellence in Early Childhood
http://www.etsu.edu/cas/art/slocumb/exhibitions/students.aspx

Slocumb Gallery, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN, USA

June 23, 2010: Oslo, Norway

International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Assocation Conference
Approximately 200 people attended the opening session of the ICPLA conference and listened to a half hour presentation about our research with children and the background to the Children Draw Talking art exhibition. The exhibition was displayed throughout the conference.

ICPLA conference Holmenkollen Park Hotel, Oslo, Norway

July: Bristol, United Kingdom

University of the West of England