HICPR: Stop practicing pronunciation! (If your students can explore it!)

Saturday, July 5, 2014

Stop practicing pronunciation! (If your students can explore it!)

This is a follow up on, "Stop correcting pronunciation! (If your students can afford it!)," based on a post by Tabaczynski. Question: Does (more) practice make perfect, or at least make one better than the competition? A couple recent summaries of meta-analyses by Science Digest add support to Tabaczynksi's argument, suggesting . . . well . . . maybe not so much.

Macnamara, Hambrick and Oswald (2014) note that:

"Practice accounted for about 26% of individual differences in performance for games, about 21% of individual differences in music, and about 18% of individual differences in sports. But it only accounted for about 4% of individual differences in education and less than 1% of individual differences in performance in professions."

Stafford and Dewar (2013) add that:

"Game play data revealed that those players who seemed to learn more quickly had either spaced out their practice or had more variable early performance -- suggesting they were exploring how the game works -- before going on to perform better."

Clip art:
Clker

Haptic pronunciation teaching methodology certainly aims to be more embodied, incorporating frameworks and techniques from gaming, music and sports. It is also pretty consistent with Tabaczynski's "(schematic) buckets and spaced (practice and scaffolded) retrieval" proposal.

Think I'll stop right there . . .

4 comments:

Tom TabaczynskiJuly 5, 2014 at 8:24 AM
The authors of "Make It Stick", whom I follow in my piece, do discuss the issue of memorisation and practice and when it's appropriate. It's not clear what practice means in 'education'. They do cite an experiment of using retrieval practice in a school which did make a significant difference, but their argument is precisely that retrieval practice is not utilised in education and that it should be (the main point of the book), so persumably a meta-study of non-existent methodology isn't going to show anything. I would say that the same might be said for the professions.

So the conclusion to be drawn might be that the reason that practice makes a difference in games, music, and sport is that it is in fact utilised in these field, and that it should be utilised education and the professions. Morevoer, the main question is really what kind of practice: repetition or retrieval practice. Mere repetition, eg., by reviewing the material, they argue, doesn't work.
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Tom TabaczynskiJuly 5, 2014 at 8:28 AM
Thought provoking post, Bill. The question of practice is an interesting one. I did notice that you don't recommend excessive repetiiton in individual sessions, but there are spaced out sessions for each module with a good amount of repetition over a couple of weeks.

The authors of "Make It Stick", whom I follow in my piece, do discuss the issue of memorisation and practice and when it's appropriate. It's not clear what practice means in 'education'. They do cite an experiment of using retrieval practice in a school which did make a significant difference, but their argument is precisely that retrieval practice in the form of low-stakes quizzes is not utilised in education and that it should be (one of the main points of the book), so persumably a meta-study of non-existent methodology isn't going to show anything. I would say that the same might be said for the professions.

So the conclusion to be drawn might be that the reason that practice makes a difference in games, music, and sport is that it is in fact utilised in these fields, and that it should be utilised education and the professions. Moreover, the main question is really what kind of practice: repetition or retrieval practice. Mere repetition, eg., by reviewing the material, they argue, doesn't work (another major point of the book).
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Bill ActonJuly 6, 2014 at 6:26 PM
Point well taken. I highly recommend "Make it Stick"http://www.amazon.ca/Make-It-Stick-Successful-Learning/dp/0674729013. The two studies cited did NOT imply that practice was not beneficial in pronunciation work, only that more does not necessarily translate into better results. In the next blogpost, I'll take the same Idea and relate to the practice of assigning pronunciation homework--and then not following up on it or even being interested in what goes on "out there."
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Tom TabaczynskiJuly 6, 2014 at 8:40 PM
Just had a closer look at the article you cite and had this thought: authors of Make It Stick make the same criticism of the 10,000 hour rule, but draw a completely different conclusion: it's the KIND of practice that makes the difference: spaced, retrieval and mixed up, as opposed to mere reviewing and repetition.

As for "what goes out 'out there'", I'd be interested in your thoughts on the use of completion tracking feature of Moodle for monitoring what does on.

btw. I think you can delete my earlier comment above.
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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.)