PolyU FH Research Impact: A Higher Standard for Speech Therapy Practice in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area

A Higher Standard for Speech Therapy Practice in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area

The Speech Therapy Unit (STU) sets out to alleviate the adverse impact on quality of life caused by communication disorders. Through research, the training and continual professional development of speech therapists, and providing speech therapy to patients, the STU has taken speech therapy practice to a higher standard in GBA and beyond. It has also raised public awareness on communication disorders, and on how to address the disorders.

Project led by Speech Therapy Unit

Communication disorders, ranging from literacy disorders in children to adults suffering from Parkinson’s disease or stroke, affect about five percent of the local population in the Greater Bay Area (GBA). The multilingual nature of the social environment in GBA, and a lack of resources in assessment and treatment, exacerbate the misery caused by the disorders.

The Speech Therapy Unit (STU) at the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies sets out to alleviate the adverse impact on quality of life caused by communication disorders. Through research, the training and continual professional development of speech therapists, and providing speech therapy to patients, the STU has taken speech therapy practice to a higher standard in GBA and beyond. It has also raised public awareness on communication disorders, and on how to address the disorders.

Since 2011, Dr Leung Man-tak and Dr Dustin Lau have been conducting seminars and training workshops for speech therapists, teaching them the assessment protocol and treatment programmes Dr Leung and Dr Lau developed based on their research. Between 2013 – 2019, over 200 speech therapists have become qualified providers of this new assessment and treatment method. Collaborating with the University of Central Florida, Dr Lau established the traumatic brain injury (TBI) bank, a database that documents over 2,000 audio transcripts of TBI patients. This database has become an invaluable resource tool for research, education, and clinical purposes. Dr Leung and Dr Lau also participated in the production of the 2019 HKAST (Hong Kong Association of Speech Therapists) video series for public awareness on reading and writing disorders.

Dr Angel Chan’s examined how trilingual Cantonese–English–Putonghua children process relative clauses in the two Chinese languages. Her research together with Dr Leung’s work on Cantonese LARSP (Language Assessment, Remediation and Screening Procedure, which relates to grammatical disability) become major resources for assessment and treatment of development language disorders in Hong Kong.