International speech acquisition: A world tour

On 24th February, I presented a one-day workshop in Sydney for Speech Pathology Australia. The workshop was titled "International speech acquisition: A world tour".

The workshop covered:

• definitions and aspects of multilingualism
• the range of languages spoken by children in Australia
• similarities and differences between aspects of speech (consonants, vowels, syllable structure etc) for a wide range of languages
• typical speech acquisition for monolingual children who speak languages other than English
• speech acquisition for multilingual children
• speech assessment for multilingual children, including techniques for differentiating difference from disorder in children’s speech, and ways to listen to children's perspectives
• speech intervention for multilingual children

I really enjoyed working with the group of enthusiastic participants who are equipped with many respectful techniques for working with children from multilingual backgrounds.

Year 2 begins

During February, I have been fortunate to work with some wonderful people in order to continue to achieve the aims of my Future Fellowship. These have included:

• Gail Fuller, Spatial Analysis Network, Charles Sturt University - to analyse Australian census data
• Rebekah Lockart, Macquarie University - to begin a project on speech pathologists' transcription of the speech of children from non-English speaking backgrounds
• Dr Elise Baker, The University of Sydney - to write both a grant and a book on children's speech
• Dr Yvonne Wren, University of West of England  - to write a grant and journal articles
• Professor Sue Roulstone, University of West of England - to edit a book on listening to children and young people with speech, language, and communication needs
• Professor Helen Grech, University of Malta - to write an invited book chapter on multilingual speech and language development and disorders

Elise Baker and her lovely children

Year 1 of my Future Fellowship

The first year of my Future Fellowship concluded on 7th February, 2011. Over the past year, Kim Woodland from The Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education (RIPPLE) has summarized the year in a series of updates published in the RIPPLE newsletter. I have copied these below.


AUSTRALIAN RESEARCH COUNCIL FUTURE FELLOWSHIP UPDATES
Speaking my language: International speech acquisition in Australia

UPDATE 1:
Sharynne McLeod has created a blog—‘Speaking my languages’—to record her experiences while working on her ARC Future Fellowship research. Sharynne’s fellowship will allow her to conduct research into communication impairment in multilingual children, which is currently both undiagnosed and over‐diagnosed due to a lack of culturally‐sensitive measurement tools. Her blog can be found at http://www.speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/.

Over the last few months, Sharynne has combined research and travel, as she explores communication impairment in multilingual children. In May, Sharynne visited Hong Kong University, where she presented two seminars for speech therapists: ‘Children’s speech acquisition’ and ‘Prevalence, risk, and impact of childhood speech and language impairment’. This was followed by a trip to the United States in June, where Sharynne visited the East Tennessee State University and presented another two seminars: ‘Speech sound disorders in children: Typical acquisition, prevalence, risk, and impact’ and ‘Listening to children through the Sound Effects Study’. Sharynne also visited the Child Study Centre at the University. Next was a trip to Oslo, Norway, to give an invited speech at a children’s speech acquisition workshop, and to attend the 13th International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Conference. Sharynne co-presented three papers/posters at the conference.


UPDATE 2:
Prof McLeod has continued at her usual incredible pace in the past six months, covering more of the globe than many people do in a lifetime. The Commonwealth-sponsored Future Fellowship "International speech acquisition in Australia", has provided opportunities to present her amazing research to a multitude of people across the world. On 8 July, she was invited to attend a reception at Speakers House, Houses of Parliament, in London. The event honoured the work of Afasic, the national organisation supporting families of children with speech, language and communication needs in preparation for the 2011 UK National Year of Children with Speech, Language and Communication Needs. While in the United Kingdom, Sharynne spent July working at the Speech and Language Therapy Research Unit (affiliated with the University of the West of England) at Frenchay Hospital in Bristol (which she revisited in late August). Later in the month, Sharynne travelled to Zambia for the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development (ISSBD) conference in Lusaka on 18-22 July. At the conference, Sharynne presented a paper on behalf of the Sound Effects team (Linda Harrison, Lindy McAllister, and Jane McCormack). While in Zambia she visited a village, and the Mwandi Orphans and Vulnerable Children Project. From 22 to 26 August, Sharynne attended the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics (IALP) conference in Athens, Greece. Along with colleagues, Sharynne presented four papers, hosted a symposium, and also met with the IALP Education Committee, of which she is a member. Sharynne then travelled to Stockholm from 4 to 6 September, to meet with the editorial staff who publish the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, of which she is editor. From 7 to 10 September, Sharynne worked with colleagues at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh, on an upcoming book titled Electropalatography for Speech Assessment and Intervention. Back in Australia, Sharynne presented a 2-day workshop (20-21 September) at the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development Speech Pathology conference at LaTrobe University in Melbourne.

Hello and thank you!

During my international travels I always try to learn to say "hello" and "thank you" in the languages and dialects of the places I visit. I have received appreciative smiles from taxi drivers in Hong Kong, and waiters in Zambia for undertaking this small courtesy.

One of my colleagues in the UK has recently shown me this fantastic website, that contains videos of school  children saying "first words" in a huge number of languages:
http://www.newburypark.redbridge.sch.uk/langofmonth/index.html


The words they speak and write are: welcome, hello, goodbye, good morning, good afternoon, thank you, sorry, please, yes, no, come here, well done.

I am certainly going to use this site to prepare for my future travels.

Multilingual norms

Last year the following book chapter was published:

McLeod, S. (2010). Laying the foundations for multilingual acquisition: An international overview of speech acquisition. In M. Cruz-Ferreira (Ed). Multilingual norms (pp. 53-71). Frankfurt: Peter Lang Publishing.

A review of the book, Multilingual Norms has been published in the Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching (JLLT), vol.2(1). It concludes: " Altogether, the current publication, edited by Madalena Cruz-Ferreira, can be regarded as highly valuable for teachers, researchers and language clinicians. The authors successfully present an eminently readable book which is based on solid empirical research and which hopefully finds the readership it deserves."

Website containing the review
Madalena Cruz-Ferreira's blog

AusTalk: An audio-visual corpus of Australian English

I am an associate researcher on the Australian Research Council project to map Australian speech. The project is titled AusTalk: An audio-visual corpus of Australian English. Australian speech will be recorded across the entire country, including at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst.
On Australia Day (26th January), the AusTalk project will be launched, and soon after, Australians' speech will begin to be recorded.
AusTalk website
ABC News

Congratulations Jane!

Jane McCormack has received her excellent PhD examination reports while visiting Bathurst with her supervisors (A Prof Linda Harrison, A Prof Lindy McAllister). We have been working on a postdoctoral fellowship application to continue Jane's important research. Recently, Jane has commenced a lecturing position in speech pathology at CSU. We look forward to seeing Jane's continued contribution to the profession and to children with speech, language, and communication needs.

Jane McCormack and her PhD supervisors Sharynne, Linda Harrison and Lindy McAllister

More details about Jane's PhD can be found here

Māori

Te reo Māori (the Māori language) is spoken by the Māori people of New Zealand.

Around the year 1300 AD, seven boats containing the Māori people left their home in Rangeātia, Tahiti and travelled to Aotearoa (literally, the land of the long white cloud, and later called New Zealand). Six boats settled in the North Island and one in the South Island. The Māori people were warriors, and are known for the haka (performed internationally by New Zealand rugby teams), poi dancing, tattoos, carving, and weaving.

In written Māori there are 5 vowels: a, e, i, o, u
10 consonants/diagraphs: p, t, k, m, n, ng, wh, h, w, r

• Short vowels are pronounced as /a, e, i, ɔ, u/
• Long vowels are indicated with a macron: ā, ē, ī, ō, ū
• Long and short vowels are phonemic. For example, keke (cake), kekē (creak), kēkē (armpit).
• The consonant ‘t’ sounds like /t/ before the vowels i and u, but /d/ before the vowels a, e, o
• ‘wh’ is pronounced as ‘f’(or possibly a bilabial fricative, such as found in Japanese)
• ‘r’ is a tap/flap, but there are dialectal differences

Important words

• kia ora (welcome)
• tēnā koe (hello to one person), tēnā kōrua (hello to two people), tēnā koutou (hello to three or more people)
• tēnā koe (thankyou to one person), tēnā kōrua (thankyou to two people), tēnā koutou (thankyou to three or more people)

A Māori proverb I like is:

• Ui mai koe ki ahau he aha te mea nui o te ao, Māku e kī atu he tangata, he tangata, he tangata! (Ask me what is the greatest thing in the world, I will reply: It is people, it is people, it is people)

Sources:

Staff and information at the Te Puia Māori Cultural Centre, Rotorua
Niwa, H. (2009). Pronounce Māori with confidence. Auckland: Reed Publishing.
Reed, A. W. (2001) The Reed concise Māori dictionary (6th ed). Auckland: Reed Publishing.

Sharynne and Jessica talking with a Maori elder who has worked in early childhood education throughout her life. We were at at Te Puia, the Maori Cultural Centre in Rotorua

New Zealand vs. Australia

New Zealand and Australia are often said to have sibling rivalry. In many ways their culture and history are similar, with white (British) people settling in each country at similar times. There are many similarities between New Zealand and Australian English consonants, vowels and diphthongs. The most noticeable difference is in the pronunciation of the high front vowels ‘i’, ‘e’ and ‘a’. Speaking the phrase “fish and chips” is one way many people use to differentiate these two dialects of English. Another area of difference is the vast size of Australia vs. the compactness of New Zealand. Australia’s size means the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people speak hundreds of different languages. In contrast, Māori is the same (although with some dialectal differences) throughout New Zealand.



Asia Pacific Conference on Speech, Language and Hearing, Christchurch, New Zealand

The 8th Asia Pacific Conference on Speech, Language and Hearing was conducted from 11-14 January. It was held at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. The program listed around 120 papers from 23 different countries. Here are the papers my colleagues and I presented:

• McLeod, S. Crosslinguistic speech acquisition in Australia.
• McLeod, S. Becoming bilingual: Children’s insights about sequential bilingualism.
• McLeod, S. & Baker, E. Australian speech pathologists’ assessment and analysis practices for children with speech sound disorders from English and non-English backgrounds.
• McCormack, J., Harrison, L. J., McLeod, S. & McAllister, L. A population study of children identified with communication concerns in early childhood: Parent, teacher and child reported outcomes at school-age.
• Crowe, K., McLeod, S. & Ching, T. Oral languages and communication modes used by children with hearing loss in Australia.

I particularly enjoyed listening to the key note address provided by Kathy Lee (Chinese University of Hong Kong) titled: "When a SLP meets a psychometrician: The journey of constructing assessment tools"

Conference website

Professors Manwa Ng (Hong Kong), Nan Mai Wang (Taiwan), Kathy Lee (Hong Kong), and Sharynne

Kate Crowe, Jane McCormack, Sharynne in New Zealand

Tongan

Tongan is spoken by the people in the Kingdom of Tonga. Fifty two of the 176 Tongan islands in the South Pacific archipelago are inhabited.

Tongan consists of
5 vowels: a, e, i, o, u
12 consonants: p, t, k, m, n, ng, f, v, s, h, l, ‘
The consonants p, t, k sound voiced to English speakers.
Unlike English, Tongan words can commence with ng.
The ‘ is phonemic as can be seen in the following Tongan words:

• la’a = sun vs. laa = sail
• tu’i = king vs. tui = believe in God
• ‘ivi = Eve vs. ivi = energy

Here are some of the words I have learned:

• malo e lelei (hello)
• malo (thank you) 
• ‘alu ā (goodbye, if you are staying)
• nofo ā (goodbye, if you are leaving)

Biblical words are “transliterated” using Tongan consonants and vowels: Semisi (James), Mele (Mary).

Children from Tonga, New Zealand, and Australia

While visiting New Zealand, my family and I spent time with an Australian Tongan family. They come to New Zealand annually to visit relatives, to participate in the Tongan church, and keep in touch with their language and cultural heritage. We were invited to join them at the Saturday beach picnic that followed the Tongan church’s week of prayer. There were about 100 people at the picnic: from grandmothers to babies and all the children played and were cared for by the whole community. People ate, shared stores in Tongan and English, swam, kayaked, and later the men and boys played rugby league in the ankle-deep water.

We were very welcomed and I learned a lot about Tongan culture and language, particularly from two women: one who is a social worker working with Pacifica people, and one who is a high school teacher. Some of the things that they mentioned are that church and community is very important. At church events there is always a lot of food so that no one in the community is hungry. Women are respected. Tongan people are happy, and will often laugh seemingly for no reason. Not all of the grandparents can speak English, so speaking with their family is one motivation for children to learn and retain Tongan. My friends are fortunate to be able to visit New Zealand annually to retain their family, cultural and linguistic heritage.

Hugo (2010) describes circular migration in Australia where many families migrate from their homeland, to Australia, to their homeland, and back to Australia. Many more families in Australia have circular visiting where this pattern occurs regularly, but for shorter periods of time. This circularity in Australia’s people continues to enhance our cultural and linguistic diversity and heritage.

Hugo, G. (2010). Circularity, reciprocity, and return: An important dimension of contemporary transnationalism. ISSBD Bulletin, 58(2), 2-5.

Data analysis and writing research

Throughout the year I have been very fortunate to work with two amazing research assistants: Hannah Wilkin and Jane McCormack. They have been instrumental in ensuring high quality data entry, analysis, publications, and presentations. During December we have entered and analysed data on 128 speech-language pathologists' professional practice with children who speak languages other than English, 4,983 Australian children's cultural and linguistic diversity, and children's qualitative data regarding becoming bilingual.  

Sharynne and Hannah Wilkin analysing data at CSU in Bathurst

Listening to children in Philadelphia, PA, USA on Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day in the USA is a day for families to get together. In Philadelphia, the day starts with a parade where children line the streets to watch teenagers and adults perform in marching bands, on floats and with giant balloons such as Big Bird and Frosty the Snowman. Just as Frosty arrived it began to snow! The first snow of the season.

I was invited to the Goldsteins' home for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a very special time to enjoy each others' company and eat well: Italian soup, turkey with all the trimmings, and pumpkin, pecan, and apple pie (as well as lots of other treats). The feast was followed by watching gridiron football and having friends come over.

For most children in the US, Thanksgiving is a time of "fs": family-food-football-fun-friends.

Multilingual Aspects of Speech Sound Disorders in Children

Brian Goldstein and I are co-editing a book titled Multilingual aspects of speech sound disorders in children to be published by Multilingual Matters in the UK. The book includes 30 chapters written by authors from 16 different countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region - China, Iceland, Israel, Malta, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Singapore, Taiwan, Turkey, UK, and USA. They address sociolinguistic issues, typical speech acquisition, perception, assessment, transcription, analysis, intervention, and literacy.


Languages and dialects mentioned in the book include: Albanian, American Sign Language, Amharic, Arabic (various dialects), Armenian, Athabaskan languages, Australian Indigenous languages, Australian Sign Language (Auslan), Austronesian languages, Basque, Bini, British Sign Language, Bulgarian, Burmese, Cantonese, Catalan, Chinese, Creole, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (various dialects), Ewe, Farsi, Finnish, Flemish, French, Fulani, Galician, German, Gilbertese, Greek, Gujarati, Haida, Hawai‘ian, Hebrew, Hindi, Hokkien, Hungarian, Icelandic, Inuit, Irish, Italian, Jalapa Mazatec, Jamaican Creole (Patois), Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Kurdish, Lahanda, Lao, Latin, Latvian, Limburg, Lithuanian, Lugandan, Malay, Maltese, Mandarin, Mayan languages, Melpa, Mirpuri, Mongolian, Navajo, Norwegian, Oto-Manguean, Pakistani heritage languages, Pawaian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian & European), Punjabi, Putonghua, Rabinian, Romanian, Rotokas, Russian, Sami, Samoan, Scottish Gaelic, Serbo-Croatian, Sindhi, Shanghainese, Singlish, Slovene, Southern Min, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Teke, Thai, Tlingit, Tok Pisin, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, Welsh, Western Pahari, Wolof, Xhosa, !Xũ, Yucatec Wolof, and Zulu.

Brian Goldstein and Sharynne McLeod

Temple University, Philadelphia, PA

This morning I taught two of Dr. Brian Goldstein's classes at Temple University:

• Foundations and Management in Phonological Disorders (postgraduate class)
• Phonetics and Phonology (undergraduate class)

It was a pleasure to teach them about speech sounds, international speech acquisition, and how to acquire an Australian accent! Thanks so much to the students who took me out to dinner and taught me a lot about studying speech-language pathology in the USA.

Temple University is honouring the diversity of its students by hanging flags representing the countries they are from in the student centre atrium. It was great to see the Australian flag, as well as flags of a number of other countries I had visited this year.

American Speech-Language-Hearing Convention, Philadelphia, PA, USA

From 18-20 November, I attended the American Speech-Language-Hearing Convention, in Philadelphia, PA along with 14,000 other delegates.

I co-presented the following papers:

• Dixon, W., Harrison, L. J., McLeod, S. (2010, November). Association between temperament and speech and language acquisition. Invited 1 hour seminar.
• Williams, A. L., McLeod, S., McCauley, R. J. et al. (2010, November). Interventions for speech sound disorders in 2010. 3 hour short course.
• McLeod, S., Harrison, L. J., McAllister, L., & McCormack, J. (2010, November). Identification, severity, and impact of SSD in the community, Technical presentation.
• Washington, K., Thomas-Stonell, N., McLeod, S., Warr-Leeper, G., (2010). Predictors of participation outcomes in children with communication disorders. Technical presentation.
• Washington, K., Thomas-Stonell, N., McLeod, S., Oddson, B., Warr-Leeper, G., (2010). Evaluating participation outcomes with intervention in pediatric speech-language pathology. Technical presentation.

In addition I chaired the executive board meeting for the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, launched Interventions for Speech Sound Disorders in Children, and have had invigorating conversations with so many colleagues from around the world.

Lynn Williams (USA), Sharynne McLeod, Rebecca McCauley (USA), Elise Baker (Australia) & Susan Rvachew (Canada)



Authors of Interventions for Speech Sound Disorders in Children and ASHA short course presenters



Karla & Kerian Washington (Canada), Sharynne, Elise Baker (Australia), Yvonne Wren (UK)



Linda Harrison and Sharynne McLeod at the Liberty Bell



Australian Research Council 2009‐10 Annual Report

The Australian Research Council 2009-1010 Annual Report has profiled the Sound Effects Study, an ARC Discovery Research project Children with speech impairment: A population study of prevalence, severity, impact and service provision, that was undertaken from 2007-2009 by Sharynne McLeod, Linda Harrison, Lindy McAllister, and Jane McCormack.
ARC Annual Report (page 116)
Sound Effects Study website

Infants' Lives in Childcare

Over the past 2 days the research team from the Infants' Lives in Childcare Project (funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant 2008-2011) met to discuss the data collected so far, to plan publications and the final stage of the project. It was a productive time and great to work with the team who are located in different sites throughout New South Wales. We are using a mosaic approach to analyse data from a range of sources and perspectives including: babycam, video, photographs from older children, MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories, time use diaries and temperament questionnaires.


Infants' Lives in Childcare team:
L-R Linda Harrison, Tina Stratigos, Sheena Elwick, Sharynne,
Fran Press, Ben Bradley, Joy Goodfellow



Perspectives on Global Issues in Communication Sciences and Related Disorders

I have been invited to be an inaugural editorial board member of Perspectives on Global Issues in Communication Sciences and Related Disorders. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association have created a new special interest division called Global Issues in Communication Sciences and Related Disorders, and this journal is part of the membership benefits after joining the special interest division.

Sharynne and Prof. Dolores Battle

"It is the mission of the Division on Global Issues in Communication Sciences and Related Disorders to provide international leadership related to audiology and speech-language pathology services by promoting research, networking, collaboration, education, and mentoring for its affiliates, students, and other service providers in the global marketplace."