Multilingual Speech Assessment: Using an Implementation Science Framework to Explore Acceptability of the Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL)

Congratulations Kate Margetson who has just had the following manuscript accepted for publication that was written during her postdoc It is the next step in the research about the Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL)

Margetson, K. & McLeod, S. (2025). Multilingual speech assessment: Using an implementation science framework to explore acceptability of the Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL). American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. Advance online publication. 
 

Here is the abstract

Purpose: The Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL) offers a new, evidence-based clinical protocol for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to assess speech in unfamiliar languages. This study used implementation science to investigate SLPs’ current multilingual speech assessment practices, determine the prospective acceptability of the SACHL, and compare current confidence to prospective confidence with the SACHL.
Method: The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) and Theoretical Framework of Acceptability (TFA) were used to explore innovation deliverers’ (SLPs’ and student SLPs) prospective acceptability of the innovation (SACHL). Attendees at in-person and online SACHL presentations were invited to participate. 360 participants commenced an online questionnaire exploring current practices, transcription skills, confidence and acceptability of the SACHL. Statistical tests compared attendees at different presentations, SLPs and students SLPs, and monolingual and multilingual participants. 
Results: The majority of participants indicated low current confidence in assessing multilingual children. Most SLPs assessed, transcribed, and analyzed multilingual children’s speech in English; but rarely or never applied these practices in children’s home language(s). The majority of participants rated the SACHL as being culturally responsive, well-designed, easy to understand, and that it would increase diagnostic accuracy. There were concerns around the time burden in using the SACHL. Most (87.45%) indicated they would like to use the SACHL in clinical practice, and there was a statistically significant improvement between current confidence and prospective confidence.
Conclusions: The SACHL was evaluated by SLPs and student SLPs to be an acceptable clinical protocol to assess children’s speech in unfamiliar languages.

Planning for Lucy to come back to CVC

This afternoon I met online with Lucy Rodgers (UK) to discuss her next grant application so that she can come back to the Children's Voices Centre. We really enjoyed Lucy's visit earlier this year, so look forward to her coming again.

 

Kate Margetson concludes her postdoc (in Greece)

Kate Margetson has worked with me 2 days a week for 18 months on her postdoc - which concludes now. Her postdoc was funded by a Commonwealth grant to the Rural Health Research Institute.

It has been a VERY productive time focusing on supporting speech-language pathologists to work with multilingual children in unfamiliar languages.

The end of Kate's postdoc coincided with the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association (ICPLA) conference in Patras, Greece. Kate presented two papers from her PhD and postdoc and had so many opportunities to network and plan the next steps of her research journey. 

It has been such a privilege to work with Kate and learn from her. I am glad she has a continuing position as a lecturer in the speech pathology course at Charles Sturt University so that we can continue to collaborate as colleagues.

Kate presenting work from her postdoc at ICPLA

Kate and Sharynne in Corinth on the way home from ICPLA

Helen Blake, Sharynne  and Kate Margetson at the ICPLA conference dinner

Kate Margetson discussed the SACHL with the President of the International Phonetics Association (IPA)

Kate Margetson's postdoc is coming to an end

Dr Kate Margetson has been working with me as a postdoc for 2-days per week for the past 1.5 years. It has been an amazing time of developing the SACHL using the implementation science processes. We will end her postdoc in Greece at the ICPLA conference. Congratulations Kate on all you have achieved so far - I know that your work will continue to inspire SLPs' practice and change multilingual children's communication capacity.

Grant: Australian Commonwealth Grant Activity 4-DGEJZ1O/4-CW7UT14 - Project 8: Improving access to speech pathology services for rural children with speech, language and communication needs

Aim: To equip rural speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to work cross-culturally and cross-linguistically, especially in languages they do not speak

Outcomes against objectives:

• Developed workshop on a clinical protocol for assessing speech in other languages: the Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL)
• Provided 7 workshops in person and online to speech pathologists and speech pathology students training them in the SACHL
• 459 speech pathologists and speech pathology students responded to a questionnaire about the SACHL to provide feedback on the acceptability of the SACHL, recommendations for change and barriers and facilitators to using the SACHL in clinical practice
• Collaborated with 15 multilingual speech pathologists and speech pathology students to gather more SACHL feedback via focus groups and develop language-specific resources for the SACHL

Outputs (Grants, Publications, etc.):

Journal articles

1. Margetson, K., & McLeod, S. (2025). Multilingual speech assessment: Using implementation science to explore acceptability of the Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL). [Manuscript submitted for publication]. 
2. Margetson, K., McLeod, S., & Verdon, S. (2025). Collaborative design of the Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL) through implementation science. [Manuscript in preparation]

Invited Presentations

1. McLeod, S. & Margetson, K. (2025, Feb 7). Help! How can I support multilingual children? Speech assessment of children’s home language(s) (SACHL) [Invited workshop]. Central West Speech Pathologists’ Professional Development/Networking Day. Orange, NSW.
2. McLeod, S. & Margetson, K. (2024, Oct 19-20). Multilingual speech development, assessment, analysis and intervention [Invited workshop]. Hong Kong, SAR China. 
3. McLeod, S., Blake, H. L. & Margetson, K. (2024, June 27-29). Multilingual speech development and disorders: A contemporary perspective of children’s speech development in languages of the world [Invited presentation]. 100th Anniversary Celebration of the International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders (IALP), Vienna, Austria (online). https://ialp-org.com/event/9853/ 
4. McLeod, S. & Margetson, K. (2024, April 18). Assessing children’s speech in unfamiliar languages: Insights from Vietnamese-English children [Invited keynote]. XI LLDI Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal.

Presentations

1. 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). Paper presented at the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association Conference, Patras, Greece. 
2. McLeod, S., Blake, H., & Margetson, K. (2024, December). Culturally Appropriate Assessment in International Contexts: Assessing Children’s Speech in  their Home Language(s). Paper presented at the American Speech-Language Hearing Association Convention, Seattle, WA, USA.
3. Margetson, K. & McLeod, S. (2024, November). Using an implementation science framework to co-design and test the Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL). Paper presented at the Early Childhood Voices Conference, Charles Sturt University, Australia.
4. Margetson, K. & McLeod, S. (2024, May). How can I assess children’s speech in a language I do not speak? Insights from VietSpeech research. Paper presented at the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference, Perth, Australia.

CONGRATULATIONS KATE! What an amazing legacy! 

Learning from Lindy

Today Dr Kate Margetson and I had the privilege of learning from Emeritus Professor Lindy McAllister. Lindy gave us advice about Kate's postdoc data - and undertaking the appropriate qualitative analysis. Lindy has co-edited two very helpful books on the topic:

• Qualitative Research in Communication Disorders: An introduction for students and clinicians http://jr-press.co.uk/product/qualitative-research-communication-disorders/
• Diving Deep into Qualitative Data Analysis in Communication Disorders Research https://www.jr-press.co.uk/product/diving-deep/

Thanks Lindy! 

Lindy, Vida and Sharynne 

Dr Kate Margetson, Sharynne  and Lindy discussing qualitative analysis of SACHL data

 

Help! How can I support multilingual children? Speech assessment of children’s home language(s) (SACHL)

Today Dr Kate Margetson and I presented a 2-hour invited seminar titled "Help! How can I support multilingual children? Speech assessment of children’s home language(s) (SACHL)" at the Central West Speechies' PD Day in Orange.

Karen Trengove (Learn2Communicate), Dr Kate Margetson (CSU), Prof Sharynne McLeod (CSU), Dr Rebecca Sutherland (The University of Sydney)

Dr Kate Margetson describing data from our research

Dr Kate Margetson describing the SACHL

 

This presentation was a really important day for Kate's postdoctoral research. We have had a 18month grant from the Rural Health Research Institute (RHRI) to consider how speech pathologists can support multilingual children, particularly in rural areas. Kate presented our work on the SACHL:

https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-assessments/sachl

The attendees both provided a wonderful audience for research translation, but also for providing advice about how to make the SACHL better for all.

Hong Kong workshop - Children's speech assessment and intervention: What works? What's new? What's the evidence?

Dr Kate Margetson and I presented a workshop (19-20 October 2024) in Hong Kong titled: Children's speech assessment and intervention: What works? What's new? What's the evidence? https://speechearing.org/en/products/speech-sound-disorder

We were invited by Prof Thomas Law, Prof Valerie Pereira, and Prof Kathy Lee from Chinese University of Hong Kong Speech and Hearing Social Enterprise.

This 2-day workshop will combine the latest evidence with clinical examples and opportunities to apply knowledge to your clinical practice based on the following topics

• Understanding children with speech sound disorders
• Children’s speech development: Latest evidence from 50 languages
• Children’s speech assessment, analysis, and differential diagnosis
• Speech assessment of children’s home language(s) (SACHL)*
• Twenty interventions: Selecting the right intervention approach for each child
• Listening to children to make a difference in their day-to-day lives.

Dr Kate Margetson presenting the SACHL

Chinese University of Hong Kong graduates attending our seminar

HongKong Speech Therapy Association executive committee at the end of our seminar

*The SACHL research is supported by the CSU Rural Health Research Institute.

Working with my postdoc, PhD and Masters students

My postdoc, PhD and Masters students are working hard. There are so many small steps to completing a higher degree - and it is an honour to walk alongside them.

Holly McAlister: PhD supervisors Dr Suzanne Hopf and Prof Sharynne McLeod

Cathie Matthews: Masters supervisors - Sharynne McLeod, Julian Grant, Libbey Murray

Kate Margetson: Postdoc supervisor: Sharynne McLeod

Assessing Multilingual Children's Speech in their Home Languages - Professional Development Events online at CSU

This week Kate Margetson is running three free professional development events titled "Assessing Multilingual Children's Speech in their Home Languages" as part of our Rural Health Research Institute Grant. We have asked participants to complete a 10 minute questionnaire as part of the free event to provide us with information about current work with multilingual children and to give us feedback on the clinical feasibility and applicability of our new evidence-based approach to support multilingual children's speech titled Speech Assessment in Children's Home Languages (SACHL). 502 people registered - and 348 enthusiastic people attended the sessions. 

• Monday 1st July at 8am Sydney timezone - 90 attendees 
• Tuesday 2nd July at 12pm Sydney timezone - 137 attendees
  
• Friday 5th July at 12pm Sydney timezone - 121 attendees
  

Kate Margetson presenting online - introducing the SACHL

The presentation included lots of published evidence from the VietSpeech Study

Fulbright application conversations

I have had a number of wonderful conversations with Dr Chelsea Sommer about her Fulbright Scholarship application to come to visit our team at Charles Sturt University. She is an amazing scholar with expertise in Spanish and children with cleft palate. Her project fits so well into our multilingual children's speech research. I hope her application is successful. We really want her to visit!

Sharynne and Chelsea in NZ at the IALP congress in August 2023

Sharynne and Chelsea in US and Australia on Zoom

UPDATE - 15th September - APPLICATION SUBMITTED! 

Best wishes Chelsea - we really want you to come to CSU as a Fulbright Future Postdoctoral Scholar (funded by The Kinghorn Foundation) in 2025

 

Welcome Dr Van Tran - VietSpeech postdoc

Today we welcomed Dr Van Tran as a CSU staff member and postdoc in the VietSpeech ARC Discovery Grant titled "Vietnamese-Australian children's speech and language competence" (DP180102848). Van submitted her second PhD last week - so now she can be employed to assist us to finalise the journal articles and research translation for our VietSpeech grant. Welcome Van to your new role.

Van joins the VietSpeech team:

• Chief Investigators: Prof Sharynne McLeod, Dr Sarah Verdon
• Project Officer: Kate Margetson (currently PhD student)
  
• Postdoc: Dr Van Tran (previously PhD student)
  
• Statistician: Dr Audrey Wang
• Research Assistants: Katherine White, Lily To, Evelyn Sowter

Congratulations Dr Sarah Masso - Humboldt Scholar

This month, Dr Sarah Masso begins as a Humboldt Scholar to work with Prof. Dr. Annette Baumgärtner in the Medizinische Fakultät, Universität zu Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany. Congratulations Sarah!

Engagement and impact from Dr Michelle Brown's postdoc

 Dr Michelle Brown's postdoc with me will end in a few weeks' time. It has been a fantastic time of establishing her StoryBabies research program (we even coined the term during her postdoc). She has had rich engagement opportunities with speech pathologists, educators and librarians across Australia. She has led the Library Talks for Speech Pathology Austrlalia and the Australian Librarians Association. A longer list will be uploaded soon. It has been a pleasure working with her. 

SPA Speechie Library Talks

Congratulations to my postdoctoral scholar, Dr Michelle Brown, who has collaborated with Speech Pathology Australia to present the Speechie Library Talks across Australia. 

https://www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au/library 

This event was launched at the Speech Pathology Australia Book of the Year Awards today.

She is also organising short courses for librarians, early childhood educators and speech pathologists about early storybook reading. 

2020 Speech and Hearing Foundation of MA Annual Lecture

I was honoured to attend the 2020 Speech and Hearing Foundation of MA (Massachusetts) Annual Lecture presented by Dr. Kate Crowe titled "Why use one language when you can use two... or three or fout? Recognising and supporting the potential of Deaf multilingual learners."

The Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders at Emerson College is pleased to announce the 2020 Speech and Hearing Foundation of MA lecture by Dr. Kathryn Crowe, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Iceland and member of the International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children’s Speech. http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07ehb3g6dya9451987&llr=ntsxjg8ab&showPage=true

Continuation of postdoctoral scholarship until the end of 2020

Late last week it was confirmed that Dr Michelle Brown will be able to continue as my postdoctoral scholar (0.4FTE) until the end of 2020. The Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research and Engagement) enabled me to reallocate some of my travel funds from my Senior Research Fellowship that can no longer be used due to COVID-19 restrictions, to employing Michelle for the remainder of the year. This is great news as her StoryBabies research is going so well, and we have so many grants, papers, presentations and analyses to complete and submit in that timeframe.

StoryBabies research has begun

Dr Michelle Brown is my postdoctoral scholar as part of my CSU Senior Research Fellowship. This week her StoryBabies research to learn from speech-language pathologists has begun. Very soon, she will also open a questionnaire for early childhood educators.

If you are a speech-language pathologist (therapist) and work with children aged 0-2 years, please complete the questionnaire here: https://www.research.net/r/StoryBabies-SLP

CSU Early Career Researcher Mentoring Grant for Dr Michelle Brown

Dr Michelle Brown (my postdoc) received a CSU Faculty of Arts and Education Early Career Researcher Mentoring Funding Scheme to attend the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention (ASHA) in Orlando, FL with me over the past week. There were over 15,000 people in attendance. While in Orlando,  Michelle and I:

• presented seminars to staff and students in the School of Communication Sciences & Disorders, University of Central Florida as a guest of Professor Jack Ryalls
• presented two papers on parent-child book reading, one of which was profiled by ASHA in their US media release
• attended the Academic Researcher Meeting on Wednesday evening, where Dr Kate Crowe and I received the Editors’ Award for our article in the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology
• attended the opening session, awards ceremony
• attended presentations on research (e.g., grant writing)
• networked with many influential people including 2021 ASHA president Professor Lynn Williams, ASHA CEO Dr Arlene Pietranton, ex-ASHA president Tommy Robinson, etc.

I believe that networking at the ASHA convention was a significant step to launch Michelle's international career as a key researcher in our field.

Michelle with Prof Jack Ryalls at University of Central Florida

Mark Guiberson, Kate Crowe, Michelle Brown, Sheila Degotadi, Sharynne McLeod

Michelle presented two papers, one that was profiled in the US media

Michelle chatting with ASHA CEO Dr Arlene Pietranton about her experience at the ASHA convention

Sharynne, Dr. Silvia Martinez, Dr. Tommy Robinson, Dr Michelle Brown, Dr Helen Blake

Dr Michelle Brown's SpeakUp podcast

Dr Michelle Brown's SpeakUp podcast titled "Reading with babies" is available here:
https://soundcloud.com/speechpathologyaustralia/reading-with-babies-s01-ep06%20
There have been over 600 downloads in 24 hours!
More details (including the transcript) are here (podcast number 6).
Congratulations Michelle!

New grant: "StoryBabies: Reading with multilingual babies and young children"

Congratulations Dr Michelle Brown who has been awarded a Forest Hill Grant from the The Foundation of Graduates in Early Childhood Studies titled: "StoryBabies: Reading with multilingual babies and young children". This is going to be a very useful grant.

Here is the description

Literacy difficulties have lifelong implications for academic achievement, employment, mental health, and quality of life. Early storybook reading (ESR) is considered one of the most effective methods early childhood educators (ECE) and parents can engage in to strengthen language development to establish a solid foundation for children’s later literacy success. While it is widely accepted that reading is important with babies and young children, much of the information available to early childhood educators (ECE) and parents on ESR is anecdotal and not based on empirical evidence that has demonstrated that the recommended strategies support language development. Moreover, there is limited information for multilingual families and access to services may be a barrier for families who live in regional/remote areas. This project, StoryBabies: Reading with multilingual babies and young children, aims to empower ECE and families across Australia and abroad, who work with multilingual families by providing an ESR intervention through two video recorded workshops. These workshops will include families from two different languages (such as Vietnamese, Arabic, Cantonese, Italian, and Mandarin) and will be based on an ESR intervention that was previously found to be effective (Brown, Westerveld, Trembath, & Gillon, 2018). Innovation will be demonstrated by focusing on multilingual families and supporting access to ECE and families who live in regional/remote locations. These two ESR workshops will include information and video recorded demonstrations of reading with multilingual babies and young children. StoryBabies will be freely available to ECE and families through a public website such as The Multilingual Children’s website created by Professor Sharynne McLeod.

Aims and objectives of the project: StoryBabies: Reading with multilingual babies and young children aims to equip early childhood educators and families with information and video demonstrations of how to strengthen language development with multilingual babies and young children, through early storybook reading. StoryBabies also aims to support early childhood educators and families with access to this freely available, evidence based resource regardless of their location.

Dr Michelle Brown with Prof Sharynne McLeod (post doc supervisor) and Prof Gail Gillon (PhD supervisor) who have supported her research into early storybook reading