Multilingual Training Issues and Development of Teachers' Speaking Skills for the Special Education Purposes: Kazakhstani Case Study

Objective: The paper's main purpose is to analyse approaches to the development of multilingual education and the development of speech teaching skills in the special education system.Background: Improving the special education system is challenging because it takes a long time to change. The learning process must include the possibility of educating all groups of the population. Method: During the study, the current state of the implementation of multilingual education within the framework of the Kazakhstani educational process was analysed, national and regional features of the process under study were investigated, prospects for its further improvement were considered.Results: Based on the results of the study, scientific, methodological, and theoretical foundations of the development of multilingual teacher training in a modern educational institution are summarised; educational and methodological aspects of the issue are described.Conclusion: The results obtained are of theoretical and practical importance for inclusive multilingual training of teaching staff and the improvement of teacher education in general, the implementation of leading ideas for the modernisation of all professional education

Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology in South Africa: Clinical Training and Service in the Era of COVID-19

Introduction and purpose: The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) presented new and unanticipated challenges to the provision of clinical services, from student training to the care of patients with speech-language and hearing (SLH) disorders. Prompt changes in information and communication technologies (ICT), were required to ensure that clinical training continued to meet the Health Professions Council of South Africa’s regulations and patients received effective clinical care. The purpose of this study was to investigate online clinical training and supervision to inform current and future training and clinical care provision in SLH professions. Methodology: A scoping review was conducted using the Arksey and O'Malley (2005) framework. The electronic bibliographic databases Science Direct, PubMed, Scopus, MEDLINE, and ProQuest were searched to identify publications about online clinical training and supervision and their impact on clinical service during COVID-19. Selection and analysis were performed by three independent reviewers using pretested forms. Results and Conclusions: The findings revealed important benefits of teletraining and telepractice with potential application to South African clinical training and service provision. Five themes emerged: (1) practice produces favorable outcomes, (2) appreciation for hybrid models of training and service delivery, (3) cost effectiveness is a “big win” (4) internationalization of remote clinical training and service provision, and (5) comparable modality outcomes. These findings may have significant implications for teletraining and telepractice in low-and-middle income countries (LMICs) in the COVID-19 era and beyond, wherein demand versus capacity challenges (e.g., in human resources) persist. Current findings highlight the need for SLH training programmes to foster a hybrid clinical training model.  Few studies were conducted in LMICs, indicating a gap in such research. &nbsp

Catching up to multiculturalism: Bilingual and cultural competent practices in speech-language pathology

The rapid rise of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) clients has resulted in an increased demand for bilingual speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in schools and health care settings. Yet little is known about the experiences and the training needs of these bilingual service providers. This qualitative study used in-depth interviews with seven bilingual SLPs to highlight their perspectives on bilingualism and provision of bilingual speech-language pathology services. Participants reported the value of being a bilingual and took pride in having these skills to help people communicate but noted the gap between their graduate training and clinical experiences in working bilingually due to a lack of awareness, training, and resources. The presented experiences of bilingual SLPs provided an understanding of the significance of their role in supporting CLD individuals and families and current challenges in offering appropriate services

Review of Research on Speech Technology: Main Contributions From Spanish Research Groups

In the last two decades, there has been an important increase in research on speech technology in Spain, mainly due to a higher level of funding from European, Spanish and local institutions and also due to a growing interest in these technologies for developing new services and applications. This paper provides a review of the main areas of speech technology addressed by research groups in Spain, their main contributions in the recent years and the main focus of interest these days. This description is classified in five main areas: audio processing including speech, speaker characterization, speech and language processing, text to speech conversion and spoken language applications. This paper also introduces the Spanish Network of Speech Technologies (RTTH. Red Temática en Tecnologías del Habla) as the research network that includes almost all the researchers working in this area, presenting some figures, its objectives and its main activities developed in the last years

UNLV College of Education Multicultural & Diversity Newsletter

A newsletter discussing a variety of topics dealing with multicultural topics and diversity in education

A Review of Accent-Based Automatic Speech Recognition Models for E-Learning Environment

The adoption of electronics learning (e-learning) as a method of disseminating knowledge in the global educational system is growing at a rapid rate, and has created a shift in the knowledge acquisition methods from the conventional classrooms and tutors to the distributed e-learning technique that enables access to various learning resources much more conveniently and flexibly. However, notwithstanding the adaptive advantages of learner-centric contents of e-learning programmes, the distributed e-learning environment has unconsciously adopted few international languages as the languages of communication among the participants despite the various accents (mother language influence) among these participants. Adjusting to and accommodating these various accents has brought about the introduction of accents-based automatic speech recognition into the e-learning to resolve the effects of the accent differences. This paper reviews over 50 research papers to determine the development so far made in the design and implementation of accents-based automatic recognition models for the purpose of e-learning between year 2001 and 2021. The analysis of the review shows that 50% of the models reviewed adopted English language, 46.50% adopted the major Chinese and Indian languages and 3.50% adopted Swedish language as the mode of communication. It is therefore discovered that majority of the ASR models are centred on the European, American and Asian accents, while unconsciously excluding the various accents peculiarities associated with the less technologically resourced continents

Language learning and technology

By and large, languages, both as first, second or foreign languages remain one of the most important core subjects at every educational level. In early stages, their inclusion in the curriculum is intricately connected with (pre-)literacy practices, but also as a main driver for the successful integration of minority students learning a second language. In addition, the attainment of a certain level of a foreign language by the end of compulsory education is a common goal in most educational systems around the globe. Arguably, the key drivers of success in learning a language range from motivational to attitudinal, but ultimately they also have to do with the amount of target language use, the access to quality input, and especially language teachers' readiness to incorporate the latest educational trends effectively in the language classroom, educational technologies amongst them

A Framework to Support Development of Learning Applications for Disabled Children

Multimedia resources are an important tool that can be used by teachers in the classroom as a learning aid for learners with disabilities or by parents and children at home. However, disabled children are not always able to use existing assistive technologies because they are not experienced enough, suffer from medium/profound disability, or simply do not have the financial resources to buy commercial tools. Additionally, today’s adapted tools are not always valid for a broad spectrum of disabled users and often focus on a user group. We claim that potential applications and resources for people with special needs must self-adapt to user capabilities and skills, reducing the use of external assistive technologies. In this paper, we present a guide for developers to create accessible applications and resources that reduce workload