Sounds of Zimbabwe

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is threefold. It attempts to acquaint the reader with the languages of the African country of Zimbabwe, point out the status of the profession of speechlanguage pathology in that country, and introduce a tool that has been developed to expand knowledge about the Zimbabwean child's speech development. The Sounds of Zimbabwe: Phonological Analysis and Assessment is a tool that can be used as a screening test to quickly identify a pupil's phonological errors or to maintain a detailed ongoing record of developing speech sounds. It contains forms including the basic sounds of English, Ndebele, and Shona, illustrative words, and space to write in the names of stimulus pictures to help an assessor individualize the material for use with a variety of populations. It was developed with the help of the majority of individuals in Zimbabwe concerned with the area of speech-language pathology. The purpose is to provide a practical tool that will allow individuals familiar with the language under consideration to obtain a large pool of information about speech development and deviations. It also can be used to document differences among speakers of various dialects that in Zimbabwe are far more independent than regional dialects in the United States and Canada. This area of phonological assessment and analysis, as it relates to the child's development of speech and the errors that may occur, is an area of clinical and research inquiry which began a half century ago in North America, but is only beginning now in Zimbabwe. Although speech-language pathologists in Zimbabwe may have access to the variety of normative speech-sound data derived from "correct phoneme" studies that involved children between the ages of 3 and 8 years in the United States (Preisser, Hodson, & Paden, 1988, p. 125), such information cannot, and should not, be relied on as an accurate representation of development of English in Zimbabwe and certainly would not translate to the native languages. Beginning studies in Zimbabwe will focus on speech sound emergence and use, and identify broad error patterns beginning as soon as 15 to 18 months or earlier if possible. Because the tool is easily administered, it should be possible to study a number of children longitudinally. It also should be useful in formative evaluation of progress when articulation treatment is conducted that can provide an added dimension to the study of the languages.

Language Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…Both of these require a verbal response on the part of the child but generally it is only a one-word response, and they may be more suitable for assessment of complex, hard-to-depict, vocabulary. Wolf-Schein, et al (1995) developed a phonological assessment for children aged 7 and older speaking Shona or Ndebele in Zimbabwe. Naudé, Louw, and Weideman (2007) suggest using elicited conversation to examine language development of children learning English in multilingual settings in preschools in South Africa, since they have observed that children's spontaneous conversations with each other are rarely in just one language.…”

Preliminary Planning for Training Speech and Language Therapists in Uganda

“…A lack of linguistic research about Ugandan languages means there is little information on which to base appropriate assessments and interventions. A developing service will need a research base on which to build good practice [22]. This issue is the same as in Sri Lanka where students have been integrally involved in developing language and culturally appropriate materials [19].…”