Banter Speech & Language

Sydney speech pathologists helping adults and children speak for themselves.

ESL

Common pronunciation challenges for people who do not speak English as a first language: fact sheets

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To help professionals, business owners and others who:

  •  speak English as a second (or later) language well or fluently; but
  •  have some English pronunciation issues,

we are compiling some fact sheets about common pronunciation challenges (and therapy targets) related to the differences between their first languages and English.

To help as many people as possible, we are prioritising our fact sheets by reference to Census data on languages (other than English), that are commonly spoken at home in Australia.  To put this mini-project in perspective, in 2011, the most common languages spoken at home (other than English) were:

As we complete each fact sheet, we will enable the link to the language above.  We hope you find these summaries useful when thinking about your priorities for improving your intelligibility or comprehensibility.

If you speak English well or fluently, but feel that your English pronunciation skills are holding you back, please get in touch with us.

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics – 2011 Census Data.

Image: http://tinyurl.com/pomlqtj

Banter Speech & Language Banter Speech & Language
Banter Speech & Language is an independent firm of speech pathologists for adults and children. We help clients in our local area, including Concord, Rhodes, Strathfield and all other suburbs of Sydney’s Inner West.

Banter Speech & Language is owned and managed by David Kinnane, a Hanen- and LSVT LOUD-certified speech-language pathologist with post-graduate training in the Spalding Method for literacy, the Lidcombe and Camperdown Programs for stuttering, and Voicecraft for voice disorders. David is also a Certified PESL Instructor for accent modification.

David holds a Master of Speech Language Pathology from the University of Sydney, where he was a Dean’s Scholar. David is a Practising Member of Speech Pathology Australia and a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist (CPSP).

Can language development tips help ESL learners learn English?

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Living and working in the multicultural area that is the Inner West of Sydney means we often work with children who speak English as a second (or third or fourth) language.

We’ve written about the difference between true language delays and English as a second language (ESL) issues.  In our experience, some children have both issues.  We’ve also dedicated several posts to explaining evidence-based principles for language therapy for children with language delays.  But can these principles also assist children with ESL issues?

A team of researchers from the United States says “yes”.

In a paper published in August 2014, Haruka Konishi from the University of Delaware and her colleagues identify 6 principles of language development that have implications for how we should go about helping second language learners.  The paper uses a fair amount of abstract language and jargon.  Paraphrasing its core message into Plain English, the researchers advocate building 6 language development elements into ESL teaching:

1. Increase the amount of language the child hears.  For ESL learners, more exposure to fluent English is more likely to help them acquire English skills than less exposure.  This does NOT mean that you should stop speaking with your child in his or her first language – especially if you don’t speak fluent English yourself.  But, if there are opportunities in your local area for your child to participate in English speaking playgroups, sports teams, or other social activities where English will be spoken by native speakers, seize them!

2. Use the child’s interests to facilitate their learning. One reason our client questionnaire contains lots of questions about your child’s interests and hobbies is that it allows us to tailor therapy activities to their interests.  Research supports the idea that appropriately aligning therapy to your child’s natural interests is more likely to lead to better language outcomes, which makes sense for ESL learners too.

3. Teach the child by interacting with him or her. Don’t just rely on passive drilling techniques like flashcards.  We’ve written about the limits of flashcards and worksheets.  It’s far better to help children with language delays, then to constantly test and re-test them.  Play-based activities that capture children’s attention through action can often give children more opportunity to acquire language in a functional way that transfers more readily to the “real world”.  Teaching key verbs through action involving the child is a good example of this.

4. Do activities that require your child to communicate with you meaningfully. Don’t just drill grammar in a vacuum.  Set up the environment so your child has an incentive to use the target words and grammar in a way that has some meaning to them in the real world (e.g. requesting something he wants but can’t reach, or describing something only she can see).

5. Children need lots of different examples from different people in different places to learn. Hearing different words and grammar used by several fluent English speakers in different contexts helps children learn language.

6. New words (vocabulary) and grammar (syntax) should be worked on together. Learning more vocabulary enhances a child’s knowledge of syntax/grammar, and vice versa.

The authors conclude by asserting that “putting these principles into practice will increase language competencies on ESL children and will thus put them on the path to greater academic success”.  In my view, most of the principles summarised above are sensible and are unlikely to detract from any ESL program.  Most of these principles are no doubt part of most education and speech pathology professionals’ practice.

It’s worth remembering that ESL issues and language delays are very different beasts, even if they can present with similar features in English.  This means that treatments that target language development may not always achieve the same results for children who are not language delayed.

And, at the risk of repeating myself, this study does not support sacrificing a child’s first language at home to improve his or her English skills.

Related articles:

Principal source: Konishi, H., Kanero, J., Freeman, M, Michnick, G., & Hish-Pasek, K. (2014). Six Principles of Language Development: Implications for Second Language Learners. Developmental Neuropsychology, 39(5), 404-420.

Image: http://tinyurl.com/m3ardye

Banter Speech & Language Banter Speech & Language
Banter Speech & Language is an independent firm of speech pathologists for adults and children. We help clients in our local area, including Concord, Rhodes, Strathfield and all other suburbs of Sydney’s Inner West.

Banter Speech & Language is owned and managed by David Kinnane, a Hanen- and LSVT LOUD-certified speech-language pathologist with post-graduate training in the Spalding Method for literacy, the Lidcombe and Camperdown Programs for stuttering, and Voicecraft for voice disorders. David is also a Certified PESL Instructor for accent modification.

David holds a Master of Speech Language Pathology from the University of Sydney, where he was a Dean’s Scholar. David is a Practising Member of Speech Pathology Australia and a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist (CPSP).

Conversations without borders, across generations – a beautiful thing

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Young Brazilian students wanting to practice their English with native speakers.  Retirees in Chicago looking for someone to talk with.  Put them together and bam!  Magic: 

Almost every day, I read something about the ill-effects of the Internet.  People are becoming obsessive, lonely, addicted narcissists, we’re told.  We communicate more, but connect less.  We’ve lost the ability to interact face-to-face.

Yes, there is some truth to these statements.  Looking at all the language learning apps on the market today, for example, you’d think there was a drought of actual people to speak with in this world.

But I don’t buy into the pessimist’s view of technology holus bolus.  For some people, the Internet and the miraculous, stigma-free mobile devices it’s spawned, are the only way they can communicate their thoughts and pursue their interests.  For others free and accessible tools like Skype, Twitter and even the humble email provide invaluable opportunities to communicate with like-minded people; skills they can then use with confidence out in their “real world”, whatever that may be (and, yes, it may be online). 

So when next you’re reading a devastating screed about the death of conversation, the enslavement of the human race to the dastardly iDevice and the rise of the machines, consider, too, the joy in the faces of the folk in this video.

via: www.goodnet.org.

Banter Speech & Language Banter Speech & Language
Banter Speech & Language is an independent firm of speech pathologists for adults and children. We help clients in our local area, including Concord, Rhodes, Strathfield and all other suburbs of Sydney’s Inner West.

Banter Speech & Language is owned and managed by David Kinnane, a Hanen- and LSVT LOUD-certified speech-language pathologist with post-graduate training in the Spalding Method for literacy, the Lidcombe and Camperdown Programs for stuttering, and Voicecraft for voice disorders. David is also a Certified PESL Instructor for accent modification.

David holds a Master of Speech Language Pathology from the University of Sydney, where he was a Dean’s Scholar. David is a Practising Member of Speech Pathology Australia and a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist (CPSP).

Language problem or English as a Second Language issue?

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For the latest research, see our 2016 article about bilingual development.

One of the best things about living and working in the Inner West of Sydney is the diversity of its food. Whether it’s feasting on pho in Homebush West, chocolate and churros in Mortlake, a short stack in North Strathfield, Mediterranean charcoal chicken in Croydon Park, tandoori in Homebush, kim chi in Strathfield, French steak in Concord, pizza and pasta in Five Dock or dumplings in Ashfield, there’s something for everyone.

Of course, with locals coming from places as varied as China, Korea, India, Sri Lanka, Italy, Lebanon, Sudan and even Ballarat, we also have plenty of cultural diversity.  And with different cultures, come the sweet sounds of lots of different languages, dialects and accents.

For parents and teachers of children who speak more than one language, it can be hard to tell whether a child who is having problems communicating in English:

  • has a speech or language delay; or
  • is simply still learning English.

Speech pathologists need to be able to tell the difference because we are trained to treat speech and language delays – not to tutor in English.  Here are some of the questions we ask parents (and ourselves) to do this:

  • Does the child have problems in both languages, or only English? A true language delay/problem affects the child’s ability to learn any language.  Thus, if the child has a delay in English, but not in his or her mother tongue, it is unlikely the child has a language delay needing treatment from a speech pathologist and more likely that the child would benefit from additional help at school and/or from a teacher or tutor trained in how to teach English as a second language.
  • How long has the child been speaking English? We know children from non-English speaking backgrounds can (in the best case scenario) take around 2 years to develop basic communication skills in English and around 5-7 years to develop a “native”-like level of English.  So if the child speaks, say Mandarin, at home with her parents and only started speaking English at pre-school, we don’t expect her to speak English like her mono-lingual English-speaking peers in Kindergarten, or even in Year 3.  This does not mean she has a language delay – she’s simply acquiring English as a second language within the expected time-frame.
  • Did the child learn the two (or more) languages simultaneously or sequentially? We know that children who learn both languages simultaneously at home develop both languages in approximately the same way as a mono-lingual child develops one language.  If a child learns one language first and then starts to develop another language, he/she may have no problems whatsoever, or may have difficulties, requiring detailed investigation.
  • Have the child’s speech sounds developed differently because the speech sounds and rules used in the child’s first language are different from English speech sounds?  For example:
    •  in some Asian languages, words end in vowels, and speakers may delete final consonants in English, e.g. “li”, rather than “lip”;
    • Japanese speakers don’t recognise the difference between /r/ and /l/, sometimes leading to confusion of the sounds in English words (e.g. “glow” for “grow”);
    • in Spanish, there is no “j” sound (as in “July”), and speakers may substitute a “y” sound (e.g. “yump” for “jump”);
    • in some European and Middle Eastern languages, there is no “w” sound, and speakers may substitute “b” (e.g. “berry” for “very”) or “v” (e.g. “vie” for “why”).
  • Are the child’s syntax problems associated with the structure of his/her first language? For example:
    • in Spanish, adjectives come after nouns (e.g. the “book blue”); and
    • in some Asian languages, plurals are not formed by adding an “s” (e.g. (I saw two movie”), the verb forms of “to be” (e.g. is, are, etc) are omitted (e.g. “they dancing”), and pronouns are used differently (e.g. “s/he a girl”).

Note that standardised language and speech assessments in English are often highly inappropriate for children who speak English as a second language.  Standardised tests of these children often produce biased, distorted results.  If such tests are used at all, results should be interpreted with extreme caution and with a good knowledge of the speech sounds and language structures of the child’s first language.

Related articles:

Further reading: Dr. Celeste Roseberry-McKibbon is one of the leading experts in bilingual language development and language disorders.  She has published a lot of research, some of which is listed on her psychedelic website here.  She is also the author of Multicultural Students with Special Language Needs: Practical Strategies for Assessment and Intervention (3rd Edit.) 2008, from which I learned many of the points above.  In 2009, Speech Pathology Australia published a position paper on Working in a Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Society. If you would like a copy, please contact us.

Image: http://tinyurl.com/kljrdg8

Banter Speech & Language Banter Speech & Language
Banter Speech & Language is an independent firm of speech pathologists for adults and children. We help clients in our local area, including Concord, Rhodes, Strathfield and all other suburbs of Sydney’s Inner West.

Banter Speech & Language is owned and managed by David Kinnane, a Hanen- and LSVT LOUD-certified speech-language pathologist with post-graduate training in the Spalding Method for literacy, the Lidcombe and Camperdown Programs for stuttering, and Voicecraft for voice disorders. David is also a Certified PESL Instructor for accent modification.

David holds a Master of Speech Language Pathology from the University of Sydney, where he was a Dean’s Scholar. David is a Practising Member of Speech Pathology Australia and a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist (CPSP).