HICPR: Vancouver Haptic Pronunciation Teaching Seminar

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Vancouver Haptic Pronunciation Teaching Seminar - Cancelled!

Photo credit: 604now.com

We had planned on holding a 5-day, 40-hour, Haptic Pronunciation Teaching Seminar in Vancouver, August 4th through 8th, 2014. The plan now is to offer it again, next year at about the same time and place. (Announcement will be made later this fall!)
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The description:

By the end of the seminar, participants will be fully trained in haptic pronunciation teaching and certified to conduct teacher training using the Essential Haptic-integrated English Pronunciation System (EHIEP) and Acton Haptic English Pronunciation System (AH-EPS), the haptic video system. The venue will be the Sandman Hotel, Langley, BC, just east of Vancouver. (Hotel rates, about $130 CAD daily.)

Cost per participant: $2000 (includes breakfasts and materials.) Group discounts available.

The general structure will be:

Monday a.m. - Preliminaries and Research review
Monday p.m. - Visual field management and haptic warm ups
Tuesday a.m. - Haptic phonetics
Tuesday p.m. - English vowels and words stress schema
Wednesday a.m. - Rhythm
Wednesday p.m. - Pitch and fluency
Wednesday evening - Public seminar
Thursday a.m. - Basic Intonation
Thursday p.m. - Discourse intonation
Friday a.m. - English consonants
Friday p.m. - Teacher training protocols
Friday evening - Party

Minimum number of participants: 12; maximum, 24

We will be accepting applications until June 1st. $500 deposit due by June 15th. It the training seminar is not fully enrolled by June 15th, deposits will be returned.

If you are interested in attending, please contact us at info@actonhaptic.com. The training seminar is open to all ESL/EFL instructors who have at least two years teaching experience and recognized formal training in ESL/EFL teaching methodology. Preliminary SKYPE interview and professional references may be required.

2 comments:

Bill ActonMay 1, 2014 at 7:09 AM
For those local to the Vancouver area, beginning in late July, there may be 4-week haptic pronunciation/teacher training course, 2 hours a day, 4 days a week, designed for a group of Korean teachers here on a special program. If you'd like to join that or audit it or whatever, let me know.
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Bill ActonJuly 1, 2014 at 9:16 PM
As of July 1st, we are sill a few short of the number we need to run the seminar in August. For those who were still considering signing up, I apologize. We are now looking at moving the seminar to the first week in February, 2015. Will have announcement out on that soon. The Saturday workshop on the 8th is still a go, however! Please do join us for that if you can!
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What is haptic pronunciation teaching?

Basically, it is using gesture, touch and movement to teach pronunciation of English (or any language). What makes this method unique is that it is based on controlled and systematic use of gesture in doing that. (Often the problem with gesture use in language learning is that it can be "crazy" or random or intimidating or inconsistent, or not well-developed and tied to clear outcomes.)

The earlier "Essential Haptic-integrated English Pronunciation (EHIEP) approach," now KINETIK, does a better job of enhancing presentation, modelling, feedback and correction. The method is simple and easy to follow. Once a 30-minute module is finished, teacher and students have a set of techniques to use in class anytime a pronunciation problem or opportunity comes up!

Haptic Preliminaries

I often begin workshops or papers with the comment that in about 40 years in the field I have had just one idea: that the systematic use of body movement is essential to effective and efficient pronunciation instruction. That has never been more relevant than today, with the general deemphasis on pronunciation and introduction of technology into the field. From both perspectives, the "haptic" perspective approach developed here offers great promise. I can at least promise you a "moving" experience!

What is the KINETIK Method?

KINETIK is the name of the new v6.0 haptic pronunciation teaching system. About six years earlier we were using the acronym, "Haptic Integrated Pronunciation for Other/Extended Circle English Speakers" (HIPOECES)--still there in the url of this blog!

Haptic-integrated clinical pronunciation is:

A different way to learn pronunciation, based in part on Arthur Lessac’s notion of “Training the body first.” It is also based on research in the use of movement and touch in learning and training. It:

Looks somewhat like a combination of aerobics, sign language and Taichi

Provides a basic foundation for continued, self-directed pronunciation learning and classroom instruction

Designed for use by relatively untrained teachers but appropriate for all teachers (and learners) of all levels

Focuses on pronunciation used in conversation (not all words in English)

Is a highly “brain-and-body-friendly” system that promotes efficient learning of integrated tasks in general

Designed to promote integrated classroom pronunciation instruction and enable integration of conscious pronunciation work into spontaneous speaking.

Introduction

This blog was formerly named: HIPoeces (pronounced 'hI-pƏ-cIs), basically an approach to teaching English pronunciation to speakers of "outer and expanding" circle Englishes (including that population commonly termed: non-native speakers) but also compatible with the use of local models other than simply Standard" American" or RP. Using Kachru's "Inner, expanding and outer circles" model to characterize the breadth of Englishes and speakers of those, HIPoeces (now HICP) systems focus on developing haptically-centered pedagogical models and methods which can be adapted for teaching the pronunciation of various Englishes as they are spoken and taught by "owners" of those varieties.

In theory, the underlying principles can be applied to teaching the sound system of any language. Most language instructors intuitively use a great deal of movement and tactile anchoring in the classroom. The essential question is how to use that resource systematically, especially so that those learners who are less "haptic" in nature are also "moved" by the method.

Simply put, the HICP model/method is based on the idea of speaking along with arm and hand movement, not all that different from that used in sign languages. Most movement patterns are taken from either typical classroom pronunciation instruction practice or from related fields, such as psychotherapy or sports.

Most blog posts link to research that relates to the general HICP model, that is studies dealing with the role of gesture, touch, movement, learning modalities, learning in output, use of the visual field in learning, and experiential learning.

DEFINITIONS:

"Haptic" techniques- procedures that involve both movement and touch (Obvious examples include clapping hands, tapping feet, or holding an object and shaking it to the rhythm of a poem.)

"HICP techniques" - procedures that are haptic and also explicitly coordinated with phonological structures and/or discourse prosody (For example, clapping hands on primary stressed syllables in multi-syllable words, or doing a dance step on key words in conversational turns.)

"Haptic integration"- The haptic dimension probably functions as much to anchor visual and auditory material as it does to assist the learner in getting the "felt sense" of the sound or sound process. Lack of integration into spontaneous speech being such a serious potential shortcoming of instruction, haptic engagement seems a promising bridge to more accurate fluency.

"Visual field" - in HICP extensive use is made of the visual field in front of the learner. (For example, a modified version of the IPA vowel chart is anchored haptically in the imagination of the learner, directly in front of the upper body, and used for several purposes throughout the program.)