Friday, October 14, 2011

The power of PowerPoint Pronunciation

Photo credit: Wired Magazine
I love this 2003 prophetic piece from Wired Magazine (and the wonderful "visual" from AP/World Photos.) In the "competition" between visual and haptic for the attention of the learner, research linked in several earlier blog posts demonstrate convincingly that visual wins almost every time. In other words, in a very fundamental way, visual schemas can interfere with and work directly against (haptic-integrating) pronunciation change. So, before you fire up that PowerPoint for your next pronunciation lesson, stick that in your visual field (or maybe not) . . . See what I mean?

2 comments:

  1. and, of course, there is the other delightful association in the Wired piece in the title (with apologies to one who may be a distant relative, the philosopher, Lord Acton) "Power corrupts, and Powerpoint corrupts, absolutely!")

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  2. Note that I said that PPT may interfere with integrating "pronunciation change." I didn't say that it is still not a good tool for presentation and deductive pronunciation teaching strategies. (Upcoming post will deal with that distinction, yet again!)

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