Latest news from LCS

On this page you can find out about the latest research and teaching activities in our department, and the achievements of our staff and students.

LCS professor awarded prestigious RCSLT fellowship  /  LCS wins two City University Research prizes  /  LCS achieves 96% satisfaction rate for teaching   /  LCS at the House of Commons and 10 Downing St  /  LCS awarded grant to study reading and dyslexia in deaf children  /  LCS lecturer joins board of trustees at I CAN  /  New pre-placement programme in clinical skills  /  LCS edits special journal issues on language and literacy disorders   

 

LCS professor awarded prestigious RCSLT fellowship   

Professor Jane Marshall, joint Head of Department at LCS, has been awarded a Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) Fellowship. RCSLT Fellowships acknowledge outstanding achievement in the field of speech and language therapy. Jane has been given this prestigious award for her contribution to aphasia research and scholarship. 


Jane qualified as a Speech and Language Therapist (SLT) in 1987. She undertook pioneering research in sentence processing impairments in aphasia. Her research since has investigated numerous aspects of aphasia: jargon aphasia, proper-name impairments, writing and drawing in therapy, aphasia in British Sign Language users, aphasia in bilingual people and gesture therapy for severe aphasia. You can find details of her newest project, investigating dementia in the deaf community, in collaboration with the University of Manchester, University College Lonodn and the Royal Association for the Deaf, here.


Jane’s work stands apart for its emphasis on the clinical needs of people with aphasia and their remediation. She has successfully influenced SLT practice in the area. Her work, which includes over 50 publications, and numerous presentations and invited talks, is internationally acknowledged for its exceptional standard.

 

LCS wins two City University Research prizes   

Congratulations to Wolfgang Mann and Chloe Marshall, research fellows at LCS, who have won two of City University's Research Prizes for 2009. The prizes were awarded in recognition of their significant contribution to the narrowing of the gap between deaf and hearing children’s achievements, and to City’s international reputation in sign language research.

 

Wolfgang and Chloe have worked together to develop a nonsense sign repetition test for British Sign Language (BSL), and the results of this work have been published in two peer-reviewed journals, Language Learning and Development and the International Journal of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Wolfgang currently holds a City University Research fellowship, which is enabling him to develop a web-based vocabulary assessment for BSL, while Chloe holds a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship and is exploring the link between BSL acquisition and working memory. 

 

  

LCS achieves 96% satisfaction rate for teaching   

96% of our students are satisfied with the quality of the teaching they receive on the BSc Speech and Language Therapy course, the latest National Student Survey (NSS) reveals. This national initiative canvasses all final year students in higher education in the UK. For clinical courses such as speech and language therapy there are 28 questions, relating to just about all aspects of the student learning experience, including teaching, assessment and feedback, academic support, personal development and clinical placements.

 

This year’s results show that 96% of our students were satisfied with the teaching they received, with staff enthusiasm being rated particularly highly. We also scored highly on questions relating to academic support (85%), personal development (96%) and clinical placements (87%). 88% of our students expressed overall satisfaction with the quality of the course. 

“The results of the National Student Survey are a tribute to the hard work and dedication of our academic, clinical and administrative staff.  As in previous years, they show that our teaching is particularly well received, which is also reflected in the number of teaching and learning awards won by our department.  We look forward to welcoming new students to LCS in September and ensuring that their experience is even more positive."   
 

Jane Marshall and Roberta Williams, Joint Heads of Department

The NSS shows that in comparison to other universities in the south of England, City University London is one of the best choices for studying Speech and Language Therapy, and the highest-rated in London.

 

LCS at the House of Commons and 10 Downing St   

Victoria Joffe, senior lecturer in developmental speech, language and communication impairments, was invited to the House of Commons on Tuesday 3rd November, to give a talk to the All Party Parliamentary Group for Children with Speech, Language and Communication Needs. The event was attended by the Chair of the group, Adrian Bailey, MP; Lord Ramsbotham, other Members of Parliament and representatives from the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, The Communication Trust, and the charity Kids Company. The talk focused around the nature of specific speech, language and communication impairments in children, and the impact these difficulties have on the child’s long term overall academic, educational, emotional and psychological development. Key points of discussion revolved around the need for a preschool screening measure to identify children with specific linguistic and communication difficulties as early as possible, as well as the importance of a sustained, equitable and evidence-based intervention programme to support the child, family and school.

 

Furthermore, Victoria Joffe's ELCISS (Enhancing Language In Secondary Schools) research project was praised in a speech to the House by Adrian Bailey MP: 

 

"I wish to highlight the work being done at City University by Dr Joffe and the ELCISS (enhancing language and communication in secondary school)programme. It has conducted a project in Redbridge and in Barking and Dagenham, training teaching assistants to identify pupils with communications problems and the policies needed to address them. It is too early to assess fully the outcomes of this programme, but all the evidence so far is that comprehension, speaking and confidence is improving, and antisocial and disruptive behaviour is dropping, as a result."

 

Mr Adrian Bailey, MP for West Bromwich, West.

 

 

Roberta Williams, senior lecturer in dysfluency, was invited to No.10 Downing St on December 1st. The event was a charity reception hosted by Sarah Brown in honour of the British Stammering Association. The main speakers were Leys Geddes, Chair of the BSA, and Ed Balls MP, who had a stammer himself as a child. Roberta has a long association with the BSA as a Speech and Language Therapist working with people who stammer.

 

LCS awarded grant to explore reading and dyslexia in deaf children   

Ros Herman and Penny Roy, in collaboration with Fiona Kyle from Cambridge University, have been awarded £142,157 from the Nuffield Foundation to investigate reading and dyslexia in deaf children.

 

Deaf children are widely reported to have reading difficulties. Given the genetic basis of dyslexia, some of these poor readers will also be dyslexic, but such a diagnosis is rarely, if ever, applied to deaf children. One of the challenges in identifying deaf children with dyslexia is the lack of standardised assessment data. Starting in September 2010, this study will recruit 80 Year 6 oral deaf children and assess them on selected reading measures and tests sensitive to dyslexia in order to develop norms. Test scores will be compared with the general hearing population and with a group of hearing children with dyslexia.

 

This study represents a first step towards identifying deaf dyslexics, with important implications for education and intervention.

 

LCS lecturer joins board of trustees at I CAN   

Victoria Joffe, a specialist speech and language therapist and senior lecturer at City University, has joined the board of trustees at I CAN, the children’s communication charity.
Victoria's area of clinical and research expertise include intervention in mainstream schools, with a particular focus on secondary schools, specific language impairment, special education needs and the interface between education and speech and language therapy. She is governor at the Link School, a school for children with complex speech, language and communication needs and provides a range of training workshops and insets to teachers, teaching assistants, speech and language therapists and other professionals on a range of topics, including language and communication impairments and the role of language in literacy.


Victoria says “I am delighted to be joining an organisation committed to enhancing the lives of children and young people with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN). I CAN has a strong reputation in initiating and developing new and exciting programmes of assessment and intervention, and I am looking forward to utilising my own expertise and experience in the area of speech and language therapy intervention to ensure that the programmes continue to be rigorous and evidence-based whilst meeting the needs of children with SLCN. I CAN has an essential role in supporting and advising professionals and carers involved with children and young people with SLCN, and I hope to be involved in evaluating these relationships and moving them forward in diverse and exciting ways."

 

“We are thrilled to welcome Victoria on our board of Trustees, not least because of her skills and experience in speech, language and communication development. We very much hope that I CAN will be able to draw on Victoria’s wealth of knowledge to help guide and shape some of the schools-based programmes we are developing.”

 

Virginia Beardshaw, Chief Executive of I CAN


New pre-placement programme in clinical skills   

LCS was delighted run the Clinical Skills Programme this year for all first year post graduate students. This provided students with intensive practice in foundation clinical skills, before they undertook their first clinical placement in the Spring Term. The Programme is part of our ongoing Clinical Education Project, under the leadership of Madeline Cruice, and reflects our determination to provide students with high quality clinical learning opportunities. The programme is supported by funding from the School of Community and Health Sciences.

 

Over 3 days in January 2010, the programme developed students’ skills in observation, speech and language sampling, on line recording, clinical writing and appraising others. These are all skills  required in their first placement, regardless of the setting. Throughout the programme there was a strong emphasis on relating taught theory to practice. Clinical teaching was provided by members of the Department’s clinical team: Madeline Cruice, Keena Cummins, Emma Fitzpatrick, Liz Clark, Chris Rose, Sarah Buckley, Stephanie Martin, and Marie-Therese Worthington. 

 

 

This is the third year that LCS has run the programme. Students who participated in the 2008 and 2009 pilots were overwhelmingly positive about their experiences:

 

"I feel much more prepared for placement, and very much more confident in the skills I currently have, and in knowing what to work on."

 

"I feel I am more resourced for when I enter a clinical setting, which has helped my confidence."

 

"I think I could be much more proactive in my next placement."

 

Findings from the 2008 programme were presented at the Third International Clinical Skills Conference in Prato, Italy in July 2009, and suggest that the programme has a positive impact on students’ learning (Cruice, 2009). LCS will continue to monitor the effects with each new cohort. We hope that this programme will lay the foundations for ongoing success in clinical practice, both at student level and beyond.

 

LCS edits special journal issues on language and literacy disorders   

Souhila Messaoud-Galusi and Chloe Marshall, both lecturers at LCS, have guest-edited a special issue of the eminent journal Scientific Studies of Reading, on the topic of The Overlap Between Dyslexia and Specific Language Impairment: The Role of Phonology. The issue, published in January 2010, focuses on two common developmental disorders of communication: dyslexia (an impairment of literacy) and SLI (a language impairment). Each occurs in about 5-10% of children, but the likelihood of them co-occurring in the same child is much higher than would be expected by chance.

 

In their editorial introduction, Souhila and Chloe evaluate the evidence that a phonological impairment in processing, memorising and manipulating the sounds of speech underlies both disorders, and is responsible for the overlap between them. They bring together 4 papers by respected scientists who have investigated phonological impairments in children with dyslexia and SLI across a range of languages and orthographies – English, Dutch and Cantonese.

 

Souhila and Chloe have also edited a special issue of the British Journal of Developmental Psychology, on the topic of language and literacy disorders more generally. It will appear in March 2010, and will feature 9 papers, including a study of gesture in children with SLI, the first study of SLI in British Sign Language, and a longitudinal study of the three-way relationship between language, literacy and autistic spectrum disorders.

 

If you would like further details, please contact Souhila at s.messaoud-galusi@ucl.ac.uk or Chloe at Chloe.Marshall.1@city.ac.uk.

 

 

 

 

News updated  5/2/10