A yearly event hosted by Thomas More University called International Days was conducted virtually on March 3, 2021. Faculty members of the UST Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) Department Judith A. Damian, department chair of SLP and Czarina Maximo, part-time faculty of SLP, were among the speakers.
Group 2, composed of Dorien Vandenborre, Ineke Wilssens, Catherine Cornette, Melissa Konings, Katrien De Brouwer (Thomas More), Judith Damian (UST), Lorinda Kwan (The Education University of Hong Kong), was assigned to discuss the topic: “How, as a speech-language therapist, do you examine an adult after an acquired brain injury?”
“We, lecturers from Antwerp, Manila, and Hong Kong, present you a case. In small groups you brainstorm about the content and form of your assessment: what kind of language tasks would you investigate, how do you formulate the instructions, and what attitude do you take towards an adult person. At the end, we will wrap up ideas and formulate together how an assessment can be done,” said Ms. Damian who facilitated discussions on a case of acquired adult cognitive-linguistic disorders with four different student groups.
Czarina Maximo of UST was in Group 4, together with team members Els Geypen, An Lowette (Thomas More), and Carmen Ooi (The Education University of Hong Kong). Their topic was: “The power of reading aloud. Let’s use it to build vocabulary.”
Reading aloud is a common practice in primary classrooms and a daily ritual in many young families. However, it is also a very useful and effective method for speech therapists to stimulate the language development of children.
“In the first part of this session, we briefly discussed the goals and benefits of reading aloud. Together with colleagues from the Philippines and Hong Kong, we had a look at reading aloud from different angles, such as “Do we place the same emphases or is reading aloud approached slightly differently elsewhere?”
“In the second part, we took a closer look at strategies you can use while reading aloud to teach vocabulary. All participants had the opportunity to try out these strategies in small groups.”
The culminating activity was the plenary session where Ms. Damian and Ms. Maximo had to summarize the discussions from the workshops they facilitated. It was a very fruitful and productive engagement for the students. UST SLP students who are in their third year actively participated in the workshops and demonstrated erudite discussions with the facilitators.
