ACQ Vol 13 no 3 2011

Cultural diversity

From the editors Marleen Westerveld and Kerry Ttofari Eecen

Contents

One of the questions in my Australian citizen- ship test sounded like this: “How many languages are spoken in Australia’s diverse society? a) 20, b) 50, c) 150, or d) over 200”. In the last couple of weeks, I have put this question to friends and neighbours; most of them answered incorrectly, guessing options b or c. The fact is that more than 400 different languages are spoken in Australia. Moreover, people from more than 270 different ancestral backgrounds call Australia home (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2010). Of the approximately 22 million people living in Australia, over one-quarter were born overseas (Commonwealth of Australia, 2009). As a result, speech pathologists are likely to encounter clients from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds on a regular basis. This edition of ACQuiring Knowledge in Speech, Language and Hearing aims to bring our readers up-to-date, evidence-based information related to working with culturally and linguistically diverse populations that will no doubt help raise our awareness of the complex issues surrounding this topic. Williams starts by providing us with an overview of some of the challenges we face when working with children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in Australia. The author concludes that further evidence is needed to support our clinical practice and calls for all practitioners to consider conducting small-scale studies. McLeod presents data from a nationally representative Australian sample of nearly 5,000

105 From the editors 106 Working with children from

culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds: Implications for assessment and intervention – Cori Williams 112 Cultural and linguistic diversity in Australian 4- to 5-year-old children and their parents – Sharynne McLeod 120 Examining culturally valid language assessments for Indigenous children – Petrea Cahir 126 Oral narratives produced by Aboriginal Australian children: Dilemmas with normative comparisons – Wendy Pearce and Emma Stockings 132 Working with Mandarin-speaking clients: Linguistic and cultural considerations – Taiying Lee and Elaine Ballard 137 Working with bilingual children who stutter and their families – Etain Vong, Linda Wilson, and Michelle Lincoln 141 Clinical insights: Partnerships: A service delivery option for speech pathology in Indigenous communities – Andrea Coleman, Tania Porter, Ursula Barber, Jillian Scholes, and Helen Sargison 144 Clinical insights: Home-based speech pathology rehabilitation for an African stroke survivor – Katy Stewart 148 What’s the evidence? Working bilingually with language disordered children – Linda Hand 155 Webwords 41: GLBTI affirmative practice – Caroline Bowen 157 Our Top 10 resources for working with children from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds – Multicultural Interest Group (Victorian Branch)

children (4- to 5-year-olds) and their parents. This information can potentially be used to guide allocation of resources for development of culturally and linguistically appropriate information, assessments, and intervention by state/territory. The next two papers address assessment of Indigenous children. Cahir considers how culturally valid our current (standardised) assessments are for Indigenous children and highlights the importance of community consultation. Pearce and Stockings’ preliminary investigation analysed the oral narrative skills of six Aboriginal children from North Queensland. Interestingly, language sample analysis revealed lower than expected (based on overseas norms) performance on grammatical and semantic measures, but average performance on a measure of story quality. The authors call for further research into culturally appropriate language sampling practices for Indigenous Australian children. The final two peer-reviewed articles concentrate on Mandarin-speaking clients. Lee and Ballard do an excellent job in raising our awareness of the linguistic and cultural considerations when working with this population by clearly outlining the implications for the clinician. Vong and colleagues describe three bilingual/multilingual clients whose first language is Mandarin, and who received stuttering treatment. Most of the issues the authors raise, however, would apply to all bilingual clients. Examples include which language to target in assessment and intervention and the generalisation of treatment to the untreated language(s). The number of clinical insights articles clearly reflects speech pathologists’ interest in cultural diversity. For example, Stewart provides a vivid description of her experience in treating an African woman post-stroke. Our What’s the Evidence column, brought to you by Linda Hand, addresses the well-known conundrum “should we treat bilingual children with language impairment in English, in their first language, or in both?” Hand considers all available evidence, using a step-by-step approach, and comes to the conclusion that the evidence base is increasing for making an informed decision. Last, but not least, our regular columns focus on diversity in one way or another (see Webwords 41). Our sincere thanks are extended to all the authors for your inspiring contributions to this issue of ACQ and your obvious commitment to the profession.

159 Around the journals 160 Resource reviews

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ACQ Volume 13, Number 3 2011

www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au