Van's productive visit to Bathurst

Over the past two days Dr Van Tran  visited CSU in Bathurst to work with Dr Cen (Audrey) Wang and myself on her PhD research, which is part of our VietSpeech grant. During her visit we worked on four different journal articles: two for her PhD and two for the VietSpeech study. We submitted the first article based on Study 1 of our VietSpeech ARC Discovery Grant titled "Language proficiency, use, and maintenance among people with Vietnamese heritage living in Australia". We look forward to hearing from the editors and reviewers about whether it is suitable, and any changes we need to make. We also visited a peach orchard, and enjoyed the blooms in the Begonia House in Machattie Park. It was a productive and fun visit.

Dr Van Tran, Prof Sharynne McLeod, Dr Audrey Wang at CSU
(it is quiet because it is the week before the students return)

Van in the Begonia House in Machattie Park

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.

ASHA's most shared articles in 2018

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association has published a blog today titled: In case you missed it: Our most shared articles of 2018.
https://academy.pubs.asha.org/2019/02/in-case-you-missed-it-our-most-shared-posts-of-2018/

The first article in the blog was ours!
Children’s Consonant Acquisition in 27 Languages: A Cross-Linguistic Review by Sharynne McLeod and Kathryn Crowe

Here is the altmetric score (275): https://asha.altmetric.com/details/47435915#score
It states:

"Altmetric has tracked 12,465,602 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric."

Maintaining Vietnamese

Dr Van Tran has written two excellent articles (in Vietnamese) for the BBC

• The benefits of maintaining Vietnamese as a home language (https://www.bbc.com/vietnamese/forum-47028662) 
• How to maintain Vietnamese when living overseas (https://www.bbc.com/vietnamese/forum-47147158). 

2019 students and postdocs

I am very fortunate to be working with some amazing women in 2019:

PhD students

• Helen Blake (CSU)
• Anna Cronin (CSU)
• Nicole McGill (CSU)
• Dr Van Tran (CSU)
• Natalie Hegarty (Ulster University, Northern Ireland)
• Anniek van Doornik (Utrecht University, The Netherlands) 

Postdoctoral scholar

• Dr Michelle Brown

Research fellows

• Dr Audrey Wang 
• Dr Ben Pham
• Dr Kate Crowe

as well as other members of the Speech-Language-Multilingualism team including:

• Dr Sarah Verdon
• Dr Suzanne Hopf
• Dr Sarah Masso
• Dr Jane McCormack 
• Kate Margetson

Happy lunar new year

Today is the day many people around the world celebrate lunar new year.

• Chúc Mừng Năm Mới (Happy New Year - Vietnamese) 
• 恭贺新禧 (gōng hè xīn xǐ) (Happy New Year - Chinese) 

It was a very special day for our VietSpeech project, since Kate Margetson began working as our Project Officer for 2 days/week.
Other members of the team are:

• Dr Sarah Verdon (Chief investigator) 
• Dr Audrey Wang (Project Officer 1 day/week) 
• Dr Van Tran (PhD student) 
• Dr Ben Pham (Consultant, based in Viet Nam). 

An additional reason for celebration is that today was my first day back at work on campus for approximately 6 months.

Kate Margetson (with Dr Audrey Wang and Prof Sharynne McLeod)

Want to research speech pathology in Australia? CSU is the place

Charles Sturt University recently has written an article titled "Want to research speech pathology in Australia? CSU is the place" and has promoted it via social media. I was not aware of them writing it, but it is a great summary of our work, and encourages new students to come and work with our team: https://insight.futurestudents.csu.edu.au/want-to-research-speech-pathology-in-australia-csu-is-the-place. I look forward to hearing from passionate, hardworking students who wish to join us. 

Congratulations Natalie on your PhD submission

Today Natalie Hegarty submitted her PhD at Ulster University in Northern Ireland. Her thesis was titled: "Supporting speech and language therapists' application of evidence-based practice in the management of phonological speech sound disorders". Congratulations Natalie!
I have been fortunate to be on Natalie's supervisory team with Dr Jill Titterington and Laurence Taggart from Ulster University. Her viva will be held in March.

Natalie Hegarty (image from Twitter @UlsterUniPhD)

Here is the abstract:

Background: Speech and language therapists (SLTs) often use two elements of evidence-based practice in their management of children with phonological impairment (i.e., internal clinical data and child/parent preferences integrated through SLTs’ experiences), but do not regularly use the third element: research evidence. Indeed, SLTs often use long-standing approaches with developmental target selection criteria (e.g. conventional minimal pairs) despite some research suggesting that interventions with more complex target selection criteria (e.g. the complexity approaches or multiple oppositions) may provide greater system-wide change. Moreover, recent research has found that SLTs’ intervention intensity provision is lower than provision in the literature. Narrowing this research-practice gap is necessary to achieve evidence-based practice.
Aim: To support SLTs’ use of evidence-based practice in the clinical management of children with phonological impairment.
Methods: This thesis used an explanatory sequential mixed methods design. There were five stages: (1) systematic review; (2) online survey; (3) focus groups and interviews; (4) resource co-production workshops and; (5) face validity exploration. This thesis was guided by the Medical Research Council, the Knowledge to Action framework and the Intervention Mapping framework, including the use of logic modelling and the socio-ecological model.
Findings: Using information gathered throughout this thesis and through co-production with SLTs, this work resulted in the development of an online, evidence-based resource that aims to support SLTs’ use of research in practice in the clinical management of children with phonological impairment. The resource is called SuSSD (Supporting and understanding Speech Sound Disorder) and was found to have high face validity.
Conclusion: Integrating SuSSD into SLTs’ decision-making should support their use of research in practice and improve outcomes for children with phonological impairment. Further research is necessary to determine if SuSSD can effectively increase SLTs’ use of research in practice and improve speech outcomes for children with phonological impairment.

What do children with speech sound disorders think about their talking?

The following manuscript has been accepted for publication
McCormack, J., McLeod, S., & Crowe, K. (in press). What do children with speech sound disorders think about their talking? Seminars in Speech and Language.
Here is the abstract:

Investigating children’s feelings and attitudes toward talking assists speech–language pathologists (SLPs) to understand experiences of communication and the impact of speech sound disorders (SSD). This, in turn, can assist SLPs in identifying appropriate intervention for children with SSD that addresses the needs of children, and their communication partners. This paper draws on data from the Sound Start Study in Australia to explore the attitudes toward talking of 132 preschool-aged children with SSD and the relationship between children’s attitudes, speech accuracy, and parent-reported intelligibility and participation. Most of these children with SSD had a positive attitude toward talking. There was a significant relationship between children’s attitudes toward talking and speech accuracy. Furthermore, there was a significant relationship between speech accuracy and parents’ perceptions of intelligibility and participation. However, there was no significant relationship between children’s attitudes and parents’ perceptions. These results highlight similarities and differences between attitudes and experiences of preschool-aged children, their performance on clinical measures, and their parents’ perspectives, indicating the need for SLPs to consider each of these areas during assessment and intervention.

Communication milestones

Last year Speech Pathology Australia produced a Communication Milestones Poster. Recently we have been invited to contribute sections on multilingual speech acquisition as they plan to have it translated into a number of different languages.
Here are some references we used to update it:

• McLeod, S., & Crowe, K. (2018). Children’s consonant acquisition in 27 languages: A cross-linguistic review. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 27, 1546–1571. doi:10.1044/2018_AJSLP-17-0100 
• McLeod, S., Crowe, K., & Shahaeian, A. (2015). Intelligibility in Context Scale: Normative and validation data for English-speaking preschoolers. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 46, 266-276. doi:10.1044/2015_LSHSS-14-0120

A productive year

Here is a list of the journal articles that I have published with members of our SLM team and other colleagues during 2018. We also have published chapters, encyclopedia entries and have presented papers at national and international conferences. It has been a productive year of undertaking research to support communication across the world.

IN PRESS (underlined = student/postdoctoral scholar)

1.              Blake, H. L., & McLeod, S. (2018, in press December). Speech-language pathologists’ support for multilingual speakers’ English intelligibility and participation informed by the ICF. Journal of Communication Disorders.

2.              Hopf, S. C., McDonagh, S., Wang, C., & McLeod, S. (2018, in press October). English language and literacy proficiency of students in an urban Fiji primary school. Language, Culture, and Curriculum. Advance online publication doi:10.1080/07908318.2018.1541999

3.              Howland, C., Baker, E., Munro, N. & McLeod, S. (2018, in press August). Realisation of grammatical morphemes by children with phonological impairment. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics.

4.              McLeod, S., Harrison, L. J., & Wang, C. (in press, August). A longitudinal population study of literacy and numeracy outcomes for children identified with communication impairment in early childhood. Early Childhood Research Quarterly.

5.              McLeod, S. & Masso, S. (2018, in press July). Screening children’s speech: The impact of imitated elicitation and word position. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools. Advance online publication doi:10.1044/2018_LSHSS-17-0141

6.              Baker, E., Williams, A. L., McLeod, S., & McCauley, R. J. (2018, in press January). Elements of phonological interventions for children with speech sound disorders: The development of a taxonomy. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. Advance online publication doi:10.1044/2018_AJSLP-17-0127

7.              Blake, H. L., Bennetts Kneebone, L. & McLeod, S. (2017, in press February). The impact of oral English proficiency on humanitarian migrants’ experiences of settling in Australia. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Advance online publication doi:10.1080/13670050.2017.1294557

                                                                                                    

PUBLISHED             

8.              Baker, E., Masso, S., McLeod, S., & Wren, Y. (2018). Pacifiers, thumb sucking, breastfeeding, and bottle use: Oral sucking habits of children with and without phonological impairment. Folia Phoniatrica et Logopedica, 70(3-4), 165–173. doi:10.1159/000492469.

9.              McLeod, S. & Crowe, K. (2018). Children’s consonant acquisition in 27 languages: A cross-linguistic review. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. 27(4), 1546-1571. doi:10.1044/2018_AJSLP-17-0100

10.            Blake, H. L. & McLeod, S. (2018). The ICF framework: Considering individuals from a perspective of health and wellness. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups (SIG17: Global issues in Communication Sciences and Related Disorders), 3(17), 69-77. doi: 10.1044/persp3.SIG17.69

11.            Hopf, S. C., McLeod, S., McDonagh, S., Wang, C., & Rakanace, E. (2018, published online 2017). Communication disability in Fiji: Community self-help and help-seeking support. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 20(5), 554-568, doi:10.1080/17549507.2017.1337226

12.            Hegarty, N., Titterington, J., McLeod, S., Taggart, L. (2018). Intervention for children with phonological impairment: Knowledge, practices and intervention intensity in the UK. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 53(5), 995-1006. doi:10.1111/1460-6984.12416

13.            McLeod, S., Crowe, K., McCormack, J., White, P., Wren, Y., Baker, E., Masso, S., Roulstone, S. (2018, published online 2017). Preschool children’s communication, motor and social development: What concerns parents and educators? International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 20(4), 468-482. doi:10.1080/17549507.2017.1309065

14.            van Doornik, A., Gerrits, E., McLeod, S., & Terband, H. (2018). Impact of communication partner familiarity and speech accuracy on parents’ ratings of their child for the Intelligibility in Context Scale: Dutch. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 20(3), 350-360. doi:10.1080/17549507.2018.1472808

15.            Phạm, B., McLeod, S. & Le, X. T. T. (2018). Xây dựng bộ trắc nghiệm đánh giá lời nói Việt: Nghiên cứu định khung [Development of the Vietnamese Speech Assessment]. Ngôn ngữ [Language], 4(347), 33-45. (translation of Phạm, McLeod, & Le, 2017)

16.            Blake, H. L., McLeod, S., Verdon, S., & Fuller, G. (2018, published online 2016). The relationship between spoken English proficiency and participation in higher education, employment and income from two Australian censuses. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 20(2), 202-215. doi:10.1080/17549507.2016.1229031

17.            McLeod, S. (2018). Communication rights: Fundamental human rights for all. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 20(1), 3-11. doi: 10.1080/17549507.2018.1428687

18.            Wang, C., Harrison, L. J., McLeod, S., Walker, S., & Spilt, J. L. (2018, published online 2017). Can teacher-child relationships support human rights to freedom of opinion and expression, education, and participation? International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 20(1), 133-141. doi:10.1080/17549507.2018.1408855

Ceremony in Vietnam for Australia Awards scholarship beneficiaries

This week Dr Ben Phạm was welcomed home by the Australian Ambassador to Vietnam, His Excellency Mr Craig Chittick at a ceremony for the Australia Awards scholarship beneficiaries.

Dr Ben Phạm with the Australian Ambassador to Vietnam, His Excellency Mr Craig Chittick 

The CSU News story about Ben's PhD is here.
Ben's web profile  at Hanoi National University of Education is here.
Additionally this week Ben was appointed an Adjunct Research Fellow at Charles Sturt University for the next 3 years.

Congratulations again Dr Phạm! 

Speech-language pathologists’ support for multilingual speakers’ English intelligibility and participation informed by the ICF

Congratulations to Helen Blake who just had the following paper accepted for publication from her PhD:
Blake, H. L. & McLeod, S. (in press). Speech-language pathologists’ support for multilingual speakers’ English intelligibility and participation informed by the ICF. Journal of Communication Disorders.

Purpose: To use the ICF to classify characteristics and aspirations of multilingual university students and faculty who seek speech-language pathologists’ support for intelligibility in English and to identify activities, facilitators, and barriers that impact participation in society.
Method: A retrospective record review was conducted on files of 175 clients attending a university clinic for intelligibility enhancement (accent modification). Participants came from 35 countries and spoke 28 different home languages.
Results: Assessment and intervention for intelligibility enhancement involved consideration of ICF components of Body Functions and Structures (e.g., articulating phonemes, rate, prosody), Environmental Factors (e.g., support), and Personal Factors (e.g., motivation). Consonant substitutions and deletions were common, although participants were often unaware of these. For example, only 25.6% of participants reported English dental fricatives (/θ/ and /ð/) were difficult to pronounce; however, 94.9% substituted them with other phonemes such as [t] and [d]. The combination of substitutions/deletions, fast speech rate, low speaking volume, and differences in word stress exacerbated poor intelligibility. More time conversing in English was associated with greater confidence and less difficulty communicating in English, although more time knowing English was not. Difficult communication situations were reported to be conversing over the phone, talking to strangers, and communicating in English on professional fieldwork placements. Participants were motivated to seek intelligibility enhancement for academic, employment, and social reasons.
Conclusions: To ensure multilingual speakers are able to participate fully in society, intelligibility enhancement requires a multi-pronged approach where speech and environmental characteristics interweave.

Congratulations Dr Phạm on your graduation

Today Dr Ben Phạm graduated with her PhD from Charles Sturt University. Her dissertation was titled "Children’s acquisition of consonants, semivowels, vowels, and tones in Northern Viet Nam". Details about her PhD and resulting publications are here.

Ben received an Australia Awards scholarship to undertake her PhD in 2014 and we have had a wonderful 4 years together.

Ben has returned to Vietnam to apply her new knowledge but will continue collaborating with members of the SLM Team and on our VietSpeech grant.

Congratulations Dr Phạm on all you have achieved and the influence your work has and will make throughout the world.

The CSU media release about her graduation is here.

Dr Suzanne Hopf, Dr Ben Pham, Prof Sharynne McLeod

My PhD students' theses

Here are the links to my most recent PhD students' completed theses

• Helen L. Blake - English proficiency, intelligibility, and participation of multilingual speakers in Australia https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/publications/english-proficiency-intelligibility-and-participation-of-multilin
• Ben Pham - Children's acquisition of consonants, semivowels, vowels, and tones in Northern Viet Nam - https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/publications/childrens-acquisition-of-consonants-semivowels-vowels-and-tones-i 
• Suzanne C. Hopf - Supporting Fijian children's communication - https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/publications/supporting-fijian-childrens-communication 
• Sarah Masso - Polysyllable maturity of preschool children with speech sound disorders - https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/publications/polysyllable-maturity-of-preschool-children-with-speech-sound-dis-3 
• Sarah Verdon - Embracing Diversity, Creating Equality: Supporting the Speech, Language and Communication of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Children - https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/publications/embracing-diversity-creating-equality-supporting-the-speech-langu-3 
• Kathryn Crowe - https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/publications/multilingual-children-with-hearing-loss-communication-and-choice 
• Jane McCormack - https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/publications/the-extent-and-experience-of-childhood-speech-impairment-3

Emeritus Prof Lindy McAllister's visit

Sharynne and Lindy

Today I met with Emeritus Prof Lindy McAllister to discuss the projects we have underway. These include teaching in the speech and language therapy Masters course in Vietnam, her new book on qualitative research co-edited with Rena Lyons from Galway, and the 20 year celebration of the speech pathology course at CSU Albury. We have collaborated for 30 years (since January 1989) when we began working together at The University of Sydney. It is always wonderful to catch up with Lindy.

Congratulations Dr Brown on your graduation

Today Michelle Brown graduated with her PhD from Griffith University in Queensland. Her thesis was titled "Effectiveness of early storybook reading for promoting language and social communication skills with babies and young children with and without a hearing loss".
She was supervised by A/Prof Marleen Westerveld, Dr David Trembath and Prof Gail Gillon.
Congratulations Dr Brown and your supervisory team.

Dr David Trembath, Dr Michelle Brown, Dr Bronwyn Sutton, A/Prof Marlene Westerveld (photo from Twitter posted by A/Prof Marlene Westerveld)

NSW Health TRGS Grant update

Yesterday our NSW Health Translational Research Grant Scheme team met in Bathurst, Dubbo and Shepparton. It has been a very productive year of data collection, with 172 initial assessments being conducted (57 in Bathurst, 64 in Dubbo, and 51 in Shepparton), the intervention phases almost completed, and follow up assessments underway. We have had poster presentations accepted for the Speech Pathology Australia national conference next year, and are looking forward to analysing the data to find out the results of our randomised controlled trial in 2019.

Angela, Katrina, Emily and Sharynne in Bathurst

70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Today (10th December, 2018) is the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Over the past year, we have promoted this day, and particularly Article 19, celebrating communication rights in many ways. Here are some of the highlights:

• Special issue of International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology (volume 20, issue 1) 
• Speak Up For Communication Rights website (Speech Pathology Australia) 
• Speak Up for Communication Rights blog post (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association) 
• International Communication Project website
• International Communication Project video
• Presentations in Brisbane, Albury, Bathurst, Sydney, Malta and Boston

What kind of public good is language maintenance?

Yesterday (5th December), Dr Van Tran, Dr Suzanne Hopf and I were able to attend the Michael Clyne lecture given by Professor Jo Lo Bianco at The University of Sydney. The lecture was titled: "What kind of public good is language maintenance?" It was an honour to hear Prof Lo Bianco speak, since he has had such an influence on language policy throughout Australia for so many years.  It was also interesting to listen to him speak about  language rights and to hear about the Salzburg Statement for a Multilingual World (2017).

He ended by saying "...there is a potentially deep conceptual change underway, involving a radical reconfiguring of what counts as normal communication". I believe that the work undertaken with multilingual and multimodal children and families by our SLM team in Australia, Fiji, Vietnam, Denmark, The Netherlands, UK, and other countries is contributing to this "radical reconfiguring of what counts as normal communication"

Prof Jo Lo Bianco

Dr Van Tran, Sharynne, Dr Suzanne Hopf

 Here is the description of the event from the Sydney Institute of Community Languages Education site:

Joseph Lo Bianco, Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Melbourne joins the SICLE Seminar Series to deliver its annual Michael Clyne lecture. Professor Lo Bianco is author of Australia’s formal language policy, the National Policy on Languages, adopted in 1987, the first multilingual language policy in an English-speaking country.
In this year’s Michael Clyne lecture, Professor Lo Bianco will be looking at how the term ‘language education’ has a diverse range of activities whose essential differences are often overlooked by policy makers and even researchers. The teaching of languages foreign to their learners is a radically different activity from efforts to maintain spoken community languages across generations. Sociologically and therefore pedagogically, socio-linguistically and therefore in identity terms, teaching and maintaining a community language has its own unique value which needs to be considered in a broader context.
Using a multidisciplinary approach, this lecture draws upon thinking from public good theory in economics, restorative justice reasoning in ethics and law, as well from pedagogical efficiency and equity rationales, to develop a robust account of why Australian language education efforts should make intergenerational language maintenance a central feature of language policy. Should it be a right to learn one’s heritage language? Professor Lo Bianco will also distinguish a case for language rights and discuss the evolution of language rights thinking in international instruments. Specific reference will be made to the turbulent history of indigenous bilingual education for language maintenance of languages spoken by children in the Northern Territory, and the case of language reclamation by urban Aboriginal people, and intergenerational maintenance of immigrant community languages.
The lecture will be followed by a Q&A session. Please join us explore and discuss current themes in the world of community languages education.