Saturday, April 7, 2012

Stick! (How to make pronunciation work stick!)

The 2007 Best Seller, Made to Stick, by Heath and Heath, presents a good model for not only selling products and ideas--it is at least as useful as a template for what we do when we do it well. (Three earlier posts have referred to the use of the term "stick" in various fields, including Haptics. For each of H and H's six categories I have added a note elaborating what means for haptic-integrated instruction.

  • Simplicity - For both instructor and student. Tasks, objectives and scaffolding must be transparent. Attention should be managed consistently and effectively. 
  • Unexpectedness - Lessons should be engaging and "surprising", involving extensive experiential learning not normally associated with traditional pronunciation instruction. 
  • Concreteness - Tasks should be somatically grounded, body-based, with clear criterion and resonant "felt sense."
  • Credibility - Learners must experience rapid initial achievement and should be provided with a minimal, reasonable theoretical framework.
  • Emotion - Learners should be both very much at ease with the work while, at the same time, emotionally in control--with just the right balance of enthusiasm and composure.
  • Stories - The focus of the work is on pronunciation in context, conversational narratives, either 12-line dialogues or materials used in "regular" classes--along with a good collection of success stories and relevant analogies. 
Stick!  That is a not a bad term (or metaphor) for what happens when we do it well as well. (More on that in an upcoming post on the EHIEP theoretical framework and methodology.) As a possible new brand identity for the general HICP model--with accompanying textural logo, how well would Stick! stick? 

3 comments:

  1. SUCCES - that may stick! I am assuming "stick" is not an acronym like HESSI or EHIEP, and I've been thinking of it more as, "What's your schtick?"
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtick

    ReplyDelete
  2. I concur! SUCCES = Somatic Ultra Compelling Contact Energizing Shtick. That works! Working on some ideas for logos now, in fact.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I suppose SUCCES could work - doesn't it conflict a bit with the Chinese immigrant program S.U.C.C.E.S.S.?

    ReplyDelete