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Programme Aims

The Master of Speech Therapy (MST) programme cultivates graduates who are able to practise as speech therapists in Hong Kong and serve as speech therapy advocates in mainland China and the Macau SAR. The programme is designed to equip students with the professional and academic knowledge base, clinical and research skills, and attitudes and ethics required to function effectively as entry-level speech therapists. The curriculum offers a unique approach to education and training in Cantonese, Mandarin and English, addressing speech therapy in both Chinese and bilingual contexts. As speech therapy Master’s level programmes are widely adopted as entry-level degrees in countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, the MST programme provides an alternative pathway for Bachelor’s degree holders to enter the speech therapy profession.

Characteristics

The MST teaching team is composed of academic and teaching staff with considerable teaching experience, proven research track records and extensive clinical expertise. We adopt a hybrid teaching and learning approach: traditional lectures are conducted in the first year, and the problem based learning (PBL) approach is adopted in the second year. This enhances the integration of learning across courses and enables students to put their theoretical knowledge into practice.

A vital part of the training for speech therapists involves supervised clinical practice. A Speech Therapy Unit (STU) has been established on the PolyU campus. The STU offers a platform for both in-house teaching and research purposes through a service interface. For more details, please visit the STU’s website here.

The clinical placements in the MST programme are scheduled to occur throughout the whole programme, lasting for 2.5 years, to cover the assessment and treatment of speech, language, literacy, voice, fluency and swallowing disorders of clinical populations across the life span from infancy to old age. To prepare students to work in different speech therapy service settings upon graduation, clinical placements are arranged not only at STU, but also with the support of clinical education partners such as the Hospital Authority, non-government organisations, special and mainstream schools, as well as other community service providers.

Recognition & Prospects

The MST programme is the first speech therapy training programme in Hong Kong to be awarded the status of ‘Full Endorsement’ for five years by the Hong Kong Institute of Speech Therapists (HKIST) since the start of the institution-based assessment scheme in 2018. With the HKIST’s endorsement, MST graduates (including those who graduated before 2018), are eligible to apply to become ‘Members of the Register of Speech Therapists accredited by the Department of Health’.

Speech therapists provide assessment, treatment and consultation for individuals of different age groups with communication or swallowing disorders. To address the demand for speech therapy services across the lifespan, the government has committed to creating hundreds of new speech therapist posts in both child and adult service settings in the last few years. The manpower requirement of speech therapists is anticipated to grow further with the implementation of new rehabilitation initiatives associated with the ageing trend of the Hong Kong population.