Friday, March 14, 2014

Anchoring with touch in haptic pronunciation teaching

Sometimes it becomes necessary to define what a method or system is NOT.(See Changing Minds list in that regard.)  In a recent discussion on a professional discussion board, EHIEP was characterized as involving excessive "interpersonal touching!" Nothing could be further from the truth. Even a cursory reading of the blog or the website (which the contributor had obviously not had time to get to) would dismiss that idea. In a nutshell (no reference to the earlier comment, of course) touch dramatically increases the efficacy of gesture, among other things. Here is a list of all the touching that goes on in EHIEP:

Learner's
Clip art: Clker

  • Hands touch each other, sometimes with one hand holding a baton or pencil.
  • Hands touch either the shoulder or fore arm.
  • Hands may occasionally touch the chin or voice box.
  • Holding a coffee stirrer or tongue depressor, hands may touch lips, teeth or tongue. 

Even self-touch is "touchy" in all cultures, with many different interpretations and constraints. As you can see, the EHIEP pedagogical movement patterns (PMPs) set, where touch occurs on stressed syllables for the most part, is pretty safe stuff. We have spend years figuring out PMPs that are generally appropriate in the cultures we have worked in. So far so good.

If your find a PMP in the Demo list on the website that is potentially objectionable in some culture, PLEASE, let me know! (Will give you a free month's Vimeo.com access as a reward!)

Keep in touch!


No comments:

Post a Comment