None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
Speech pathology students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds who are at-risk of failure or have failed clinical placements are often identified with communication difficulties. This is an exploratory study that aims to investigate the effectiveness of an intensive pronunciation program on overall speech intelligibility and acceptability of students’ communication skills. It involves comprehensive assessments and an intensive 3-week intervention program focussing on speech sound articulation and prosody. This phase I pilot study will use a single-case experimental design. Treatment outcomes will be measured.
Interventions
This is a phase one clinical trial.
Each participant will attend 3 sessions per week for 3 weeks during the baseline and treatment phase. Follow up sessions will be conducted once a week for 3 weeks following the end of the treatment phase. This is a total of 21 sessions.
Mode of administration:
1) Baseline phase: 3 x 50 minute individual sessions per week for 3 weeks. All sessions will be administered by speech pathology students supervised by a qualified speech pathologist.
2) Treatment ph
This is a phase one clinical trial. Each participant will attend 3 sessions per week for 3 weeks during the baseline and treatment phase. Follow up sessions will be conducted once a week for 3 weeks following the end of the treatment phase. This is a total of 21 sessions. Mode of administration: 1) Baseline phase: 3 x 50 minute individual sessions per week for 3 weeks. All sessions will be administered by speech pathology students supervised by a qualified speech pathologist. 2) Treatment phase: 2 x 50 minute individual sessions per week, plus 1 x 50 minute group session per week for 3 weeks (total of 9 sessions). All sessions will be administered by speech pathology students supervised by a qualified speech pathologist. 3) Follow up phase: 1 x 50 minute individual sessions per week for 3 weeks. All sessions will be administered by speech pathology students supervised by a qualified speech pathologist. Treatment method: Treatment for articulation (target sounds selection) will be dependent on participants’ assessment results and the intervention approach will be based on Principles of Motor Learning (Maas, Robin, Hula et al, 2008). Prosody training will focus on lexical stress. The treatment program will use Perfect Pronunciation (Kimble-Fry, 2012) as a guide for articulation and prosody production. Treatment will be in 2 phases: pre-practice and practice phase. Goal criterion is 90% accuracy. Participants will be provided with target words practice at word and sentence level. Data of target words production will be recorded. Once the participant is able to achieve 90% accuracy in the pre-practice phase, she/he will continue to the practice phase. 3) Interrater reliability checks will be conducted each week of treatment.
Sponsors
The University of Sydney
Study design
Allocation
Non-randomised trial
Intervention model
Single group
Primary purpose
Treatment
Masking
Open (masking not used)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
Speech pathology students at the University of Sydney who have failed a communication screener, a clinical placement or been identified as being at risk of failure will be invited to participate. Students must be from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds which includes: * Students who were born overseas, enrolled as international students * Students who were born overseas who have migrated to Australia as a child, adolescent or young person, enrolled as domestic students * Students who were born in Australia to parents who were born overseas (including a child of a refugee) * Students who were born in Australia to parents who were born in Australia but speak another language at home or in their community, or a dialect of English that is common and acceptable in their cultural community * Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Australian * Students who speak a language other than English as their first language or main language
Exclusion criteria
Exclusion: CALD speech pathology students who are not at risk of failing a clinical placement or who have not failed a communication screener or a clinical placement. Students who were born in Australia to parents and grandparents who were born in Australia and who do not identify themselves as being culturally or linguistically diverse from mainstream English-speaking Australian culture Australian-born students who identify themselves as part of mainstream Australian culture who are poor users and speakers of English
Outcome results
None listed