European Cochlear Implant Users Symposium

I'm in Helsinki for the European Cochlear Implant Users (EURO-CIU) Symposium. The EURO-CIU Symposium brings together Cochlear Implant users and professionals around Finland and Europe. The Symposium brings together presented who will focus on six topics related to living with a cochlear implant: Health Economics, Music and Cognitive Development, Peer Support and Rehabilitation, Accessibility to Education and Lifelong Learning, Multilingualism, and Design for All.

My keynote presentation was "Hei! 你好! !مرحبا: Language acquisition in a multilingual world". As the conference was multilingual my presentation was simultaneously interpreted into spoken Finnish and Finnish Sign Language and real-time captioned in Finnish and English. 

Here is the abstract:

The growing diversity of D/deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) learners creates challenges for educators and clinicians. With close to 8,000 language spoken in the world and increasing levels of mobility, the linguistic diversity of DHH learners accessing education and therapy services has never been greater. This presentation will describe parental and professional perspectives on choices about communication mode and language use for DHH children. Current perspectives on multilingualism, focusing on spoken language multilingualism, will be described and related to DHH learners and their families, and the educators and clinicians who work with them. The available research describing the speech and language outcomes for DHH children living and learning in multilingual environments will also be summarized. The need for interdisciplinary collaboration for supporting, assessing, and monitoring the speech and language development of DHH multilingual learners will be discussed.