ISB14 conference dinner at the NSW Art Gallery

 

Keynote speaker at the International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB)

I was honoured to be invited to be a keynote speaker at the International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB) 26-30 June 2023, hosted by Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia (https://www.isb14.com/home). Over 550 people attended in person and online.

My presentation was titled "Cross-linguistic perspectives on children’s speech development" and is available here: https://youtu.be/mbMRPo73ERE

An artist in the audience painted me during my keynote!

International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB) is a biennial conference on a wide range of issues concerning bi/multilingualism. Since its inaugural conference in 1997 at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, ISB has become the most significant conference in the field of bi/multilingualism. ISB has a strong focus on showcasing multidisciplinary research with a representation from a range of disciplines at every conference, including education, linguistics, neuroscience, psychology and sociology. The aim of ISB is to bring together bi/multilingualism researchers from all around the globe to advance the theoretical and applied research in bi/multilingualism, and to support bi/multilingualism practices in the community.

The conference theme of ISB14 is Diversity Now. The United Nations General Assembly has declared the period between 2022 and 2032 as the International Decade of Indigenous Languages to draw attention to the critical status of many Indigenous languages across the world and encourage action for their preservation, revitalisation, and promotion. As we move into this decade, ISB14 encourages work especially involving lesser studied bilingual communities and interdisciplinary work to tackle bilingualism across the life-span, cultures and societies. 

ISB14 Psycholinguistics Cognitive Effects of Bilingualism Neuroscience Interpreting & Translation Speech-Language Pathology Infant and Child Development Sociolinguistics Indigenous Languages Sociology Health Communication Education Phonetics and Phonology  

Dr Nan Xu Rattanasone - conference chair with Sharynne and Holly

Blogpost about the impact of our research into children's speech development

Dr. Ellen S. Kester, President of Bilinguistics Speech and Language Services (www.bilinguistics.com) in Austin, TX has just written a blogpost about the impact of our research into children's speech development (https://bilinguistics.com/a-summary-of-current-speech-acquisition-data-across-27-languages/) before I present a keynote address at the Bilinguistics Conference in a few weeks' time. Here are a few quotes: 

"The word “landmark” is an Olde English word originally used to describe the expansion of the boundaries of a kingdom. Nowadays, this word is typically reserved to describe changes in legislation which will have a massive impact on our lives. I think it’s fair to use this word to describe two speech acquisition data studies that came out right before the pandemic and that have huge implications for how we do our jobs as SLPs. New speech acquisition data published by Dr. Sharynne McLeod and Dr. Kate Crowe challenges some long-held beliefs about how and when sounds emerge. Results suggests that developmental norms are common across all languages, initial sounds develop as early as age 2, and the majority of sounds are mastered by age 5, including the American /r/." 

"Dr. Sharynne McLeod is so easy to listen to and her humility is pervasive in everything she shares. If you are new to her work, there are some things we don’t want to skip past: Her work spans decades. She received funding and traveled extensively to the countries of many of the languages she studied. She purchased and explored oodles of evaluations tools in multiple languages to understand the normative data on which they are based. Her country is her lab: The people working with and for her are out in the rural communities, towns, and urban centers of Australia. And what is the result? Possibly the greatest data set accumulated on speech acquisition..."

https://bilinguistics.com/slp-conference-presentations/

 

Online launch of the free bilingual book "VietSpeech: Multilingual Children/Trẻ em Đa ngữ"

Today, the VietSpeech team hosted an online launch of the free bilingual book titled "VietSpeech: Multilingual Children/Trẻ em Đa ngữ". The 52-page book aims to support Vietnamese-Australian children and families to maintain their home language and enhance speech skills in Vietnamese and English. It contains many strategies to support families’ teaching of Vietnamese every day at home. 

The free book is available here: https://www.csu.edu.au/research/vietspeech/info 

Capstan Le

Dr Duong Nguyen

Sheila Pham

Dr Van Tran

 

This book is the culmination of our VietSpeech research project funded by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery ARC Discovery Grant is titled Vietnamese-Australian children's speech and language competence (DP180102848) that began in 20218 and concluded in December 2021. VietSpeech team members are here: https://www.csu.edu.au/research/vietspeech/team

More details https://about.csu.edu.au/community/events/upcoming/online/vietspeech-book-launch

The CSU media release is here: https://news.csu.edu.au/in-brief/research-delivers-free-bilingual-book-vietspeech-to-be-launched-online  

I have provided radio interviews on ABC Goulburn Murray and 2BS Bathurst regarding the launch. 

ABC published a news story https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-07/new-book-encourages-survival-of-vietnamese-language-in-australia/

VietSpeech team - bilingualism is a superpower

Dr Van Tran and Sheila Pham will mention the book on their SBS radio programs and podcasts.

We hope that it is a useful resource for the world. 

Wow! Our research published by ABC was featured in the Qantas Club!

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-07/new-book-encourages-survival-of-vietnamese-language-in-australia/