HICPR
Haptic-integrated Clinical Pronunciation Research and Teaching
Sunday, September 29, 2024
Almost do it yourself (with a little help from Gen AI) English Accent and Pronunciation Course!
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
A new, short--but terrific-- course in Haptic Pronunciation Teaching
For all of you whose bodies are just dying to teach pronunciation "whole-bodily" and haptically . . .good news! I'll be offering a special 6-hour KINETIK Method seminar, four saturdays, 12-1:30 EST, October 19th to November 9th. $200 USD. There will be a couple of hours of optional homework assigned and all sessions will be recorded in case you miss one. Here are the topics covered:
- October 19th - Fluency and rhythm
- October 26th - Stress and vowels
- November 2nd - Intonation and consonants
- November 9th - Integration of change in spontaneous conversation
This would be especially good for those teaching CLB levels 4~6. The course will follow the first half of the coming 10-week (Haptic) English Accent and Pronunciation Course. Will also be offering courses for CLB 1~3 and 7~9 levels next spring.
Course includes pre-publication draft of "Manual of Haptic Pronunciation Teaching," including access to new v7.0 instructional videos.
For more information, get in touch--soon!
wracton@gmail.com.
More detail shortly!
Saturday, September 21, 2024
(Embodied) Post-grad IELTS Speaking (6.0 or 5.0) to get work in Canada? Bon chance!
Have you seen this?
Among other actions taken to cut back on the number of international students coming to Canada, there are new langauge proficiency rules going into effect effective in November to get post graduate work permits (PGWP):
CORRECTION: AN EARLIER VERSION REPORTED THAT GRADS NEED AN IELTS SCORE OF 6 ON ALL BANDS. THAT IS INCORRECT. THE "OFFICIAL' ANNOUNCEMENT INDICATES THAT ONLY AN "AVERAGE" SCORE OF 6 IS REQUIRED, MUCH LESS PROBLEMATIC!
University Graduates: IELTS 6 (CLB 7)College Graduates: IELTs 5 (CLB 5)
The candidate uses a range of pronunciation features but the control is not consistent throughout the test. There might be mispronunciation of words or sounds which reduces the clarity. However, the meaning of what is being said is generally clear throughout the test.
As utterly goofy as that sounds, I think they have a point, They question is. . . how? They obviously have to practice active speaking . . outloud. In a sense their competence/performnce gaps can be very problematic. What is needed, in many cases, is an approach that is more "body-centered," much like what is done in good public speaking courses. Have been working with learners like this for decades who are capable of carrying on a conversaion or speaking in public . . . but they just haven't had to.
That approach involves extensive (embodied) oral reading, structured self-analysis of recorded spontaneous speaking samples as homework, emphasis on rhythm, stress and intonation--and an occasional consonant or two if really problematic. Embodied here refers to systematic management of movement, gesture and touch in practice, in private, with key carry over to spontaneous speaking, especially when under pressure, like on the IELTS. "It works" by anchoring both the sound or words being spoken more effectively and the emotion or affect, especially the confidence and posturing that is rather easily the focus of the embodied oral reading.
You are asking, how can I sign up for that. Glad you asked! The next one begins on October 3rd! Still time to register. Even if you just have time for half that course, it'll help. "I'll else" wouldn't tell you so, eh!
Sunday, September 8, 2024
(Haptic) English Accent and Pronunciation Course - Begins October 3rd!
In case you missed the course announcement, HERE a quick video guide to it, and THE LINK to the course description! It is a new design, created especially for really busy, disciplined people.
It is a 10-week, online, almost self-study course, WITH THE FIRST TWO LESSONS FREE!
It does require a brief Zoom interview to actually join the course. (Just to make sure it is a good fit for you!)
Enrolment is limited to 30 students. (So sign on soon!)
For more information or to schedule an interview, email: wracton@gmail.com
Check it out!
Sunday, August 25, 2024
New! (Haptic) English Accent and Pronunciation Course!
Better, confident pronunciation in three months
- Course dates: October 3rd ~ December 18th (10 Lessons)
- Created for students who really want to improve their accent or pronunciation but do not have the time or schedule to attend a regular course--and are pretty good at studying on their own.
- Fees: $300 USD ($420 CAD) - First two lessons are FREE!
Features of the course:
- Designed for post-secondary-age, nonnative English speaking learners
- Haptic (makes extensive use of body movement, gesture and touch)
- Materials provided'
- 80% attendance required to receive certificate
- Oral interview required to take the course.
- The course is based on the latest neuroscientific research on how the brain and voice and body must work together for optimal performance and memory
Weekly (online) schedule:
- Thursday, anytime – view 30-minute recorded lecture.
- Daily homework of 20-30 minutes.
- The following Wednesday (at 9 a.m. PST or 6 p.m. PST) attend live, feedback class on Zoom. (You can also view the recorded session, beginning Friday morning.)
For additional information or to schedule an enrollment interview email: wracton@gmail.com.
Bill Acton, PhD, is an internationally recognized expert in the field of pronunciation teaching. His unique style of teaching pronunciation, developed over the last 40 years, the KINETIK Method, makes leaning and changing pronunciation more efficient, memorable--and fun! For more about Bill's research and publications goto his website: www.actonhaptic.com.
----
Some Definitions:
- Accent could use improvement: Makes you difficult to understand sometimes when you speak quickly or are a little stressed!
- Pronunciation needs improvement: Makes you difficult to understand sometimes, even when you speak slowly.
SO . . . how does this work? How can this work?
The key is something close to full-body engagement in the process, very much in the spirit of the Lessac method which featured both embodied speaking and extensive oral reading during homework. This course is primarily focused on "hacks," as opposed to "widgets," which come in only the last couple of lessons. Hacks encourage improvement indirectly, the usual stuff of homework, applied outside of conversational interaction, like rhythm exercises or word lists. Widgets, on the other hand are techniques we can use to alter or enhance our speech, moment by moment, without interfering much with thinking or coherence, like slowing down your rate of speaking or modifiing your posture, etc.
Most of the work in this course involves various types of embodied oral reading, that is text that is synchronized with especially designed. gesture and touch, called Movement, tone and touch techniques (MT3s). MT3s provide an extraordinary quality of ongoing attention and emotional engagement that should strengthen the learner's ability to change articulation of sounds and sound patterns and recall that later, plus integrate change improvement into their spontaneous speech. In addition, most of the readings involve confidence-building routines and and related voice resonance techniques.
*Group, class and school rates available.
Wednesday, May 15, 2024
Haptic (pronunciation) hacks and widgets!
Doing a fun, one hour, webinar with CATESOL on Friday at noon PST! :
Embodied Pronunciation Part 2: Haptic Hacks and Widgets
Here is the program description:Following up on Marsha Chan’s webinar of April 19th, Embodied Pronunciation Part 1: Harnessing Your Inner Power, in this session Bill Acton will focus specifically on a core set of embodied pronunciation techniques which use both gesture and touch.
“Hacks” are techniques which are used to indirectly impact speaking accuracy and fluency, such as “fixing” a vowel or consonant, or drills relating to intonation, rhythm and stress.
“Widgets” are techniques which, in principle, can impact the learner’s fluency and intelligibility almost immediately such as moving a “body part” or the entire body--plus touch, to the rhythm of one’s voice as one is speaking, especially in describing a scene in one’s visual field or a highly defined and easily recalled past-experience. (Actors, politicians, voice trainers—and accomplished liars-- often use a range of such “widgets” in their practice.)
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
How do you "get" the rhythm of a new language? Can you?
Clker.com |
The research found "pronounced" differences in the subjects of the study in terms of how quickly they could lock on to (or sync their body with) the rhythm of speech samples. Earlier research by the same team had established the general correlation between rhythmic sense and pronunciation accuracy. This study extends those findings considerably, implying that language learning more broadly considered may hang on perception of rhythm. The nexus of connections of rhythmic processing in the brain and grammatical structure has long been recognized and investigated.
Of course, to quote my favorite Bertrand Russell quip: a difference that doesn't make a difference . . . doesn't make a difference, the critical thresholds on the rhythm perception continuum were not investigated but the existence of such barriers or facilitation points seems obvious. Any experienced language instructor who works with speaking in almost any context "knows" learners who fit both ends of the scale. The question is: what can be done for the naturally "rhythmically challenged?"
A number of studies have demonstrated the benefit of early focus on the rhythm in acquiring an L2, but the direct connection to the underlying process involved has never been clear. In other words, the implications are that working with rhythm just for rhythm's sake for the FUN of it--not directly tied to the structure of the text in the lesson or specific words or lexical constructions . . . may still be highly beneficial. So get out your guitar, raps and books of poetry . . . just for the embodied experience of "getting" the rhythm of the L2. (You knew that!) You now have Neuroscience's permission! Go for it!(and you come join us who do embodied rhythm the haptic pronunciation teaching way, of course!)
Source: Sjuls, G.S., Vulchanova, M.D. & Assaneo, M.F. Replication of population-level differences in auditory-motor synchronization ability in a Norwegian-speaking population. Commun Psychol 1, 47 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-023-00049-2
Sunday, March 10, 2024
What to do for falling student confidence!
One of the joys of teaching is all those times when you stumble on a wonderful technique . . . almost by accident, when the lesson that you designed goes way beyond your objectives for it. The research literature is filled with reports of classroom procedures that inspire/develop confidence, (cf. Cadiz-Gabejan, 2021 . . . but not this one in this field.
For you to be able to do this technique with your students tomorrow, I need to give you little primers on haptic pronunciation teaching (HPT) and Observed Experiential Integration (OEI) therapy.
HPT, basically, uses gesture and touch to enhance memory and expressiveness by generally having a gesture terminate on a stressed syllable where the hands touch. The gesture can have several functions such as rhythmic or intonation patterns, or specific vowels or consonants. (For examples of some of the Movement, tone and touch techniques, goto: www.actonhaptic.com/HaPT.)
One of the techniques, used to create the deep falling tone at the end of a conversational turn, for example, has the learner move one hand from in front of the eyes down to about the level of the solar plexus, with the eyes following. The voice also falls as low as possible, in some creating the "creaky" voice quality. One of the students, in working with the practice dialogs "discovered" that she felt more and more confident by using that move . . . beyond the exercises. Her general demeanor and speaking "presence" made that evident as well from that point on.
I had seen a somewhat analogous technique used about 20 years ago in observing psychologists working with Observed Experiential Integration (OEI) therapy, where the patient basically followed the hand movement of the clinician across the visual field, terminating about the same place, sometimes along with the clinician's voice, sometimes their own, but the effect was the same: a sense of calm and confidence. That location in the visual field, down and to the right, seemed to act as an anchor for a sense of at least temporarily closing down, calm or resting.
Many systems use similar anchoring for a myriad of purposes. In this case, we were working with a basic sentence-final falling tone--that just keeps falling until it "hits bottom." Have been using it for the last two years in various ways, such as short passages or conversational gambits, with pretty striking results Here is a short video clip from the KINETIK training video series. Give it a try and let me know how it works in your class (as I'm CONFIDENT that it will!)
v7.0 will be available sometime later this spring or early summer.
Keep in touch!
Bill
Tuesday, February 13, 2024
The "Fly-Chi": All you need is a little embodied, fluent rhythm--for "supra" vowels and consonants!
Saturday, December 16, 2023
"Ward off" (at least some) miscommunication in your English conversation teaching
For anybody serious about pronunciation teaching, Nigel Ward's excellent 2019 book, Prosodic patterns of English conversation, is a must. (Full disclosure: I just "rediscovered" the book myself last year, having incorporated aspects of Ward's work for years but had not connected much to his overall framework!) I'm doing a workshop on February 24th at the BCTEAL Regional Conference using Ward's work, "Nine "touching" conversational pronunciation patterns your students should not be without!
The book gets a little technical in places but the pedagogical applications are very clear and immediately applicable. Here are some examples of the "patterns." The first six are from Ward; the other four are relatively "standard" intonation patterns taught by most methods in some form. The haptic application of Ward's prosodic patterns includes accompanying gesture and touch, hence the "touching" term in the workshop title.
- Bookends - "That's really very interesting. (Two stressed words with a valley in the middle.)
- \ ------- \
- Down step - "Dinner's ready!" (Drop down of a minor third)
- ----- ___
- "Creaky voice - "I'm out of here. (Voice falls to near F1 of voice, with "creaky" effect)
- \\
- Strong clip - "Stop it!" (Strong stress with "clipped" second word)
- --- |
- Late rise - "I love that TEAM!" (Final rise-fall showing enthusiasm or energy)
- / /
- "I'm good." - "I'm good." (Quick step up with clipped stressed word; conversation ending)
- _--|
- Fall (2 types)
- I'm coming back next week. (Fall with slight release at the end.)
- \.
- I'm coming back next week if I have time to. (Fall mid-sentence w/o release)
- \ \.
- Fall-rise - "Are you serious?" (Pattern suggesting skepticism in this case.)
- \ /
- Rise - "Are you serious?" ( A "simple" question, generally expecting yes/no response.)
- /
What makes Ward's approach somewhat unique is that the context for using "prosodic conversational patterns" is, of course, in conversation, not taught in isolation. Haptic uses that as a point of departure and embodies the patterns as well. Join us at the University of Victoria in February, or check back for the recording in early April!
Thursday, December 7, 2023
Metanoic English pronunciation training for the brain!
- May not be able to attend a scheduled pronunciation or public speaking course
- May have pronunciation problems that are difficult to change or lack confidence in speaking in English at work or school.
- Is a combination of public speaking and pronunciation work.
- Contains individualized training on vocabulary and pronunciation most useful for each student.
- Includes training in oral reading techniques which are effective for ongoing self-study and improvement.
Class format
A. View30-minute recorded lesson on Monday or Tuesday
B. Do 30 minutes of homework each day.
C. Meet with instructor on Zoom for 1-hour follow up class on Friday afternoon at 4 p.m. (PST). (The session is recorded so it can also be viewed on Saturday or Sunday, if necessary.)
*Initial Zoom interview required before enrolling for the course.
Instructors: William Acton and Eileen McWilliams of the Trinity Western University MATESOL
To enroll, contact: William.acton@twu.ca
For additional information on EFPC: www.actonhaptic.com/efpc
Certificate is awarded upon successful course completion.
Materials provided. - Course fee: $500 CAD
Monday, November 27, 2023
Better pronunciation at your fingertips!
New favorite terms: viscoelastic and deformation. Recent research by Hannes, Ingvars and Roland, "Memory at your fingertips: how viscoelasticity affects tactile neuron signaling," helps explain the power of touch, especially as it relates to interpretation of intensity (from several perspectives) and memory--in haptic pronunciation teaching (HaPT)--and elsewhere.
Just heard of a great technique from a fiend, a professional vocal artist and instructor. While attending a clinic held by a renowned opera singer and instructor, herself, was required sing a brief piece, in part, to demonstrate her professional "voice" to the seminar. The mentor, although apparently impressed with what she had heard, could see (and hear) that there was much more there. She asked my friend to sing some of the piece again, but this time to engage her fingers on the table as if she were playing the piano, accompanying herself. The result was . . . astounding . . . her expressiveness, engagement, projection of the piece and her persona were almost overpowering, even for the other members of the seminar. How did that work? (Watch the hands of a great opera singer sometime!)
In the Saal et al study, in essence what they found was that the "history" of previous touch on a location of the skin, described as a "deformation," carried a great deal of information in interpreting current touch, and that past touch was generally as perceptually salient as the current tactile event, as critical to the brain being able to interpret it accurately. In other words, memory for touch is highly complex and dynamic in sensing whether a current impact event has "the same meaning" or different--and in what way.
In principle, in haptic pronunciation work, any sound or sound pattern can be anchored with movement and touch, touch landing on the stressed syllable of a word or word of a phrase or clause. As developed in an earlier post, there are about a dozen types of touch in the system, each location on the hands or upper body in the visual field target for one or more touch types--and sounds. What the Hannes et al study clarifies is how, for example, three vowel sounds in HaPT such as [i]. [I] and[iy] which are located in the same place in the visual field (as high, front vowels) can still have very different somatic (feeling-based) identities based on distinct types of touch. (See demonstrations.)
- {i] is performed as a brief hold of the hands as the vowel is articulated.
- [I[ is performed as a quick, sharp tap touch, as the vowel is articulated.
- [iy] involves 2 motions, an initial glancing scratch of the fingernails of the right hand up across the palm of the left hand as the core vowel [i] is articulated, followed by the right hand fingers gliding to the top of the fingers fingers of the left hand and stopping there as the [y] offglide is articulated.
In the same way, the potentially "tactemic" finger touch points around the upper body and visual field provide strong, memorable anchors for varied sounds, words and sound patterns or processes. The tactile memory and touch differentiation in the hands is striking. If you'd like to learn more about the KINETIK system, we'd be happy to "give you a hand," of course!
Source: Saal Hannes P., Birznieks I,, Johansson Roland S. (2023) Memory at your fingertips: how viscoelasticity affects tactile neuron signaling eLife 12:RP89616 https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.89616.1
Wednesday, August 9, 2023
Talk (to) Yourself into Improved English Fluency! (an almost DO-IT-YOURSELF course!)
Clker.com |
A few excerpts from the HFT course description:
The 9-week course is designed especially for non-native English-speaking adults who do not have the opportunity for much, if any English, face-to-face conversation in their daily lives but who want to keep improving, nonetheless. (and who have an IELTS reading ability of about 4.0 or above.) HFT provides the student with a set of skills so that they can continue improving after the course, working with other readings of interest to them. It is recommended, for example, for students who are not studying spoken/conversational English currently.
It is based on extensive research (and decades of teaching experience) in oral reading methodology and the well-known "Lectio Divina" tradition in meditation practice, using extensive oral reading as homework—not in a class. The key neuroscience-based innovation of HFT is the precise use of gestures and touch in the visual field, synchronized with speech, creating optimal conditions for attention, learning, retention and recall.
Course work is done individually, with four or five, 30-minute homework assignments and a live 75-minute zoom feedback meeting weekly, usually on Friday evening. (which is also recorded for later access, if necessary.)
Next course: January ~ March, 2024
·Cost for individuals: $350 USD, materials included, but for a school, for example, (maximum of 100 students) the cost per student can be as low as $25 USD.
A teacher training course in Haptic Pronunciation Teaching is also available (See www.actonhaptic/KINETIK
To enroll or for more info, go to www.actonhaptic/hft or contact Bill Acton at wracton@gmail.com
Sunday, July 16, 2023
BCTEAL Online Collaborative Attending Skills Training Seminar
Still time to sign up for the next British Columbia Teachers of English as an Additional Language (BCTEAL) seminar (See description below!)
9/23/2023 - 10/28/2023
9:30 AM - 11:30 AM Pacific
$100 for members and $150 for non-members
To enroll: https://www.bcteal.org/
Here's the official description:
"Attending skills training, as developed initially by psychologists about 70 years ago, in essence, teaches learners (or counselors) to be good listeners while keeping a conversation going. This version of the training, a seminar for teachers of nonnative speakers, developed originally by Acton & Cope (1999), provides the skills and classroom procedures for
- Creating groups of three or four students, who
- Carry on an engaging, short conversations, and then
- Review those conversations with their instructor, exploring the strategies used and key pragmatic features of the interaction and the story, itself.
The system can be done either face to face or online with students. Each session includes small breakout rooms and (modest) homework assignment, along with an optional reading list. All sessions will be recorded, so if the Saturday morning schedule doesn't work for you, you can still watch the videos!
Note: Each week a set of strategies will be introduced that, ideally, participants take to their classrooms and then report back the following week. This is the first time for me to do this seminar online (hence the nominal fee), something of a "Beta test." The plan is to offer it three or four times annually to the public and also make it available to individual schools and institutions. Join us! Bill
Acton, W. & Cope, C. (1999). Cooperative attending skills training for ESL students, in JALT Applied Materials volume, Kluge, D. and S. McGuire (Eds.), Cooperative language teaching in Japan, pp. 50-66.Van Dyke, A. & Acton, W. (2022b). Role-play and dialogic meta-pragmatics in developing and assessing pragmatic competence, in Pedagogical Linguistics, available online DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/pl.22004.van
Van Dyke, A. & Acton, W. (2022a). Spontaneous classroom engagement facilitating development of L2 pragmatic competence: A naturalistic study. Pedagogical Linguistics 3(1) 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1075/pl.20011.van
Saturday, July 8, 2023
A Super Somewhat "Solipsistic" Solo Method for Greatly Improving English Speaking Fluency!
COURSE closed! But we are opening another soon! Keep in touch!
I know what you are thinking . . .well, actually,"solipsistically" speaking, I probably don't, of course! But, anyway, this is a remarkable new course offering, one designed for learners in a somewhat unique but actually very common niche:
The 9-week online course, Acton Haptic English Fluency Training (HFT), is designed especially for non-native English-speaking adults who
- Do not have the opportunity for much, if any English, face-to-face conversation in their daily lives but
- Who want to keep improving, nonetheless,
- Who have an IELTS reading ability of about 4.0 or above, and
- Do not have a lot of cash to work with!
- HFT features Embodied Oral Reading to develop English fluency and confidence
· Embodied Oral Reading is done out loud, in private, using stories that are accompanied by special gestures which use concepts and vocabulary that students are already familiar with, essentially, what they can understand, but perhaps may not be able to talk about fluently.
· HFT provides the student with a set of skills which once learned they can continue improving with beyond the course. It is especially recommended, for example, for students who do not have access to conversational English currently, such as
o Undergraduate and graduate students in programs not taught primarily in English
o Parents whose spoken English is not strong and whose children are in public schools in North America
o New immigrants and family members who cannot currently access English instruction
o Students who are in religious studies where they will serve in a language other than English, but where being able to read Scripture in English in public is essential,
o Retired “senior” English L2 speakers who may be “home alone” in some sense much of the time but would value spending 3-4 hours weekly to develop the clarity of their spoken English.
· It is based on extensive research (and decades of teaching experience) in oral reading methodology and the well-known "Lectio Divina" tradition in meditation practice, using extensive oral reading as homework—not in a class.
· The key neuroscience-based innovation of HFT is the precise use of gestures and touch in the visual field. Synchronized with speech, these multimodality gestures create optimal conditions for attention, learning, retention and recall.
· Course work is done individually, with four or five, 30-minute homework assignments and a live 75-minute zoom feedback meeting weekly, usually on Friday evening. (which is also recorded for later access, if necessary.)
- The emphasis is on improving the English that learners understand well but do no speak with the same level of success.
- Learners finish the course being able to speak more rhythmically, more expressively, more precisely and with greater confidence.
- There are several possible story and text types that students can choose to use in their embodied oral readings (EORs):
- General academic English (for high school learners and older)
- General business English (for adults)
- General workplace English
- General seminary/Bible-based English (for students in Christian ministry or training)
- General informal conversation-based English (especially good for parents whose children's English is better than theirs!)
- General instructional language used in teaching (for non-native English speaking teachers)
- Personalized, story-based English (for those want to improve just for the love of English)
- Course includes:
- Introduction and 8, 1-week lessons which include
- Weekly 30-minute recorded lessons
- Weekly 60-minute follow up, live (or recorded) lesson
- Daily, 20-30 minute homework assignments
- Syllabus
- Week 1 - Introduction
- Week 2 - Rhythm 1
- Week 3 - Fluency 1
- Week 4 - Vowels 1
- Week 5 - Vowels 2
- Week 6 - Consonants (th, w/y, r/l and f/v)
- Week 7 - Intonation
- Week 8 - Rhythm 2 (Rhythm, linking and pausing)
- Week 9 - Fluency 2 (Expressiveness and confidence)
- Example Unit:
- Monday, view recorded lesson
- Tuesday, do homework
- Wednesday, do homework
- Thursday, do homework
- Friday, follow up lesson live on Zoom (usually, 18:00 PST)
- Saturday, do homework
- Sunday: TAKE THE DAY OFF!!!
- Homework format:
- Review one part of the video (5 minutes)
- Practice the haptic gesture featured in the weekly lesson (5 minutes)
- Practice the Embodied Oral Reading (EOR) in the course materials (10~15 minutes)
- Record your last practice (about 2 minutes)
- Review your recording (about 2 minutes)
- Find some words or phrases that are not in the lesson to practice the lesson's haptic gesture with! (5 minutes)
- (Optional) personalized Zoom meetings available for additional fee upon request
- Customized course versions tailored for organizations of almost any size.
- (Optional) Professional development credit available through Trinity Western University
- Next course: October 9th ~ December 9th.
- Cost: $350 USD, materials included.
- To enroll or for more info, contact Bill Acton at wracton@gmail.com
- Further details are available at: www.actonhaptic.com/hft
- Instructors with training in haptic pronunciation teaching are invited to apply to be a collaborating instructor in these HFT courses. (Or offer the course through their school!)
Tuesday, May 16, 2023
Introducing KINETIK (v7.0) Method: Enhanced memory, expressiveness, pronunciation--with ChatGPT.
Monday, April 10, 2023
Touching English Language Teaching . . . Using Touch!
This workshop reviews neuroscience-based research related to the impact touch in English language teaching, both physical/tactile touch and touch as metaphor (emotion and affect). Following that overview, participants explore the application of those principles in several areas, including enhancing memory for meaning and vocabulary, expressiveness and pronunciation teaching.
Here also is a nice excerpt from S Subramanian's 2021 book, How to feel: the science and meaning of touch, that represents the focus of the session well:
"We live in bodies that are most alive when they're open and permeable to what is around us . . . When the handrail wobbles, we know to exercise caution in the face of potential danger; a hug from a family member conveys love and comfort; the cool caress of a silk blouse is synonymous with luxury; plunging our fingers into damp earth to plant a seed makes us feel in tune with nature . . . Touch is a constant affirmation that we exist as selves, separate from our surroundings but connected to them."
Loofa, bark, hand cream and metaphor provided . . .
Friday, April 7, 2023
CAST away stress: The Forest Walkabout-Talkabout
If you are going to be at the 2023 BCTEAL Annual Conference on May 5th (at 11 a.m.) at the University of British Columbia, please join us, Angelina Van Dyke and myself, for a casual stroll together, with delightful accompanying conversation through the Arboretum for about an hour.
The teaching technique demonstrated, the "walkabout," is based on two other techniques: CAST (Collaborative Attending Skills Training) and the "walkabout," a feature of Australian culture made popular by the movie, Crocodile Dundee, when the leading actor, reported having had his marriage come apart some time back . . . because he had gone out for one in the "outback" . . . for three months! (Have reported on that technique earlier on the blog, as well.)
The CAST system, also described on the blog earlier, focuses on teaching ELLs of almost any proficiency level to carry on conversations in groups of three or four, using "attending skills," where one student tells a good story, a second facilitates the conversation, and a third takes notes on the conversation. After three or four minutes, the conversations stop and the instructor then goes around to each group and elicits examples of effective conversational discourse strategies.
In this case, students and teacher walk through the forest for about 5 minutes as students, in the small groups, walk and talk, attending to their mutually constructed stories. They pause for about 10 minutes, reflecting on the strategies used by the attender in supporting the story teller's story, and then set off again, with three other students taking on the CAST roles. The effect is dramatic, even in the relatively short 60-minute session. (The Walkabout - Talkabout works best when carried out for about 90 minutes--or more!)
(Note: Come prepared with a good little personal story to share, one known only to you that you can share in about 3 or 4 minutes!)
Tuesday, February 28, 2023
Using gesture and movement to avoid "Pop Outs" in (pronunciation) teaching!
I like this study. One of the biggest obstacles in effective teaching (of anything) are sudden distractions, when what should have "popped in" easily in a lesson . . . doesn't . . . because of what just "popped out or up." Interesting piece of research by Klink et al, on visual distraction--and a potential strategy for dealing with it, summarized by Neurosciencenews.com, Trained Brains Rapidly Suppress Visual Distractions. Title of the original study, published on PNAS: Inversion of pop-out for a distracting feature dimension in monkey visual cortex, (Ignore that term "monkey" in the original there!)
In essence the "subjects" were trained as followed (from the summary):
"The researchers trained monkeys to play a video game in which they searched for a unique shape among multiple items, while a uniquely colored item tried to distract them. As soon as the monkeys found the unique shape, they made an eye movement to it to indicate their choice. After some training, monkeys became very good at this game and almost never made eye movements to the distractor."Source: Klink, P., Teeuwen, R., Lorteije, J. and P. Roelfsema. (2023). Inversion of pop-out for a distracting feature dimension in monkey visual cortex. PNAS February 22, 2023 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2210839120
Saturday, February 11, 2023
Why exact repetition may be exactly . . .wrong (in pronunciation teaching and elsewhere)
This study is potentially something of a game changer, at least conceptually. A little background. In KINETIK work we make extensive use of gesture synchronized speech. Extensive. Something we "learned" early on was that
- In modeling the gestures and getting learners to move along with us it was apparently critical to at least some learners that you try to stay in the same "track" in the visual field every time you use it in instruction.
- If you didn't, some students (possibly as much as 5%) would become disoriented, unable to synchronize their body movements with the model. Some even experienced some "motion sickness."
- In effect, the variability in the position in the visual field could be disconcerting and disruptive.
Turns out, we may have been actually approaching the problem from the wrong direction, that is doing our best to be as consistent in the patterns of the gestures we use as possible . . . was actually counterproductive!
New research by Manenti, et al, Variability in training unlocks generalization in visual perceptual learning through invariant representations, summarized by NeuroscienceNews.com, demonstrated that variability in the repeated application in the visual field/tract may actually enhance learning of the pattern, itself. It does that in part, apparently, by presenting the pattern in varying contexts, perhaps giving it potentially wider applicability.
Excerpt from the (exceptional) study:
- . . . four groups of subjects were trained to detect small differences in the orientation of a line pattern. The relevant task was to detect the clockwise or counterclockwise slope of the lines. For each of two groups, the number of lines was changed during the experiment. This was the irrelevant stimulus.
- The subjects were still able to recognize the differences in the orientation of the line pattern, even when the number of lines was changed. They were able to perform the task even when they were shown entirely new line patterns or a new position on the screen that had not appeared during training. Thus, the increase in variability did not cause the learning process to deteriorate, but rather to generalize and even improve learning performance.
- “We found that varying the number of lines during training led to better generalization of the actual task performance,”
“Variability in training unlocks generalization in visual perceptual learning through invariant representations” in BioRxiv doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.08.26.505408
Monday, February 6, 2023
Do-it-(almost by and with)-yourself: English SELF-TALK Pronunciation Improvement (ESPI)
How's your pronunciation and diction when you talk (out loud) to yourself? Probably not great, right? Well, how about using that venue/menu to help improve a learner's general English pronunciation? We are testing a new KINETIK course, English SELF-TALK Pronunciation Improvement (ESPI), that has in the past shown real promise in (also) improving the pronunciation of talk with other people as well! Wow . . . what a concept, eh!
ESPI is basically, an application of the Lessac system as presented in Lessac's 1997 book, The use and training of the human voice: A bio-dynamic approach to vocal life
Note: In that (1997) edition there is a brilliant, multi-step roadmap for the individual who wants to or must work on their own. Today's Lessac practitioners may or may not still work with that (slightly solipsistic) framework. Although the 1997 version is focused on giving native speakers of English, not nonnatives, a "healthy vocal life," derived from Lessac's career in voice training, it is easily adaptable by an experienced English language instructor. I have been using it, in some form, for about 40 years, in fact.
Research on how learners learn has always pointed to at least the prominence of learners practicing "out loud," depending on modality preferences. Why not work with that more systematically? Good idea.
The course is designed especially for a specific niche. Those who:
- Can benefit from lots of practice speaking (but not necessarily conversing with somebody else)
- Have reasonably good aural comprehension for the demands of their personal context
- Lack confidence to use what they know, what they can say if they have the time and occasion.
- Have issues with rhythm, stress and intonation
- Have a few, high functional load consonants (which they can effectively deal with by being referred to free sources on the web for personal practice, such as Accent Tutor.)