An "after thought" no longer: Embodied cognition, pronunciation instruction and warm ups!

If your pronunciation work is less than memorable or engaging, you may be missing a simple but critical step: warming up the body . . . and mind (cf., recent posts on using Mindfulness or Lessac training for that purpose.) Here's why.

A recent, readable piece by Cardona, Embodied Cognition: A Challenging Road for Clinical Neuropsychology presents a framework that parallels most contemporary models of pronunciation instruction. (Recall the name of this blog: Haptic-integrated CLINICAL pronunciation research!) The basic problem is not that the body is not adequately included or applied in therapy or instruction, but that it generally "comes last" in the process, often just to reinforce what has been "taught", at best.

That linear model has a long history, according to Cardona, in part due to " the convergence of the localizationist approaches and computational models of information processing adopted by CN (clinical neuropsychology)".  His "good news" is that research in neuroscience and embodied cognition has (finally) begun to establish more of the role of the body, relative to both thought and perception, one of parity, contributing bidirectionally to the process--as opposed to contemporary "disembodied and localization connectivist" approaches. (He might as well be talking about pronunciation teaching there.)

"Recently, embodied cognition (EC) has put the sensory-motor system on the stage of human cognitive neuroscience . . .  EC proposes that the brain systems underlying perception and action are integrated with cognition in bidirectional pathways  . . , highlighting their connection with bodily  . . . and emotional  . . .  experiences, leading to research programs aimed at demonstrating the influence of action on perception . . . and high-level cognition  . . . "  (Cardona, 2017) (The ellipted sections represent research citations in the original.) 

Pick up almost any pronunciation teaching text today and observe the order in which pronunciation features are presented and  taught. I did that recently, reviewing over two dozen recent student and methods books. Almost without exception the order was something like the following:

• perception (by focused listening) 
• explanation/cognition (by instructor), 
• possible mechanical adjustment(s), which may or may not include engagement of more of body than just the head (i.e., gesture), and then 
• oral practice of various kinds, including some communicative pair or group work 

There were occasional recommendations regarding warm ups in the instructor's notes but nothing systematic or specific as to what that should entail or how to do it. 

The relationship between perception, cognition and body action there is very much like what Cardona describes as endemic to clinical neuropsychology: the body is not adequately understood as influencing how the sound is perceived or its essential identity as a physical experience. Instead, the targeted sound or phoneme is encountered first as a linguistic construct or constructed visual image.

No wonder an intervention in class may not be efficient or remembered . . .

Clker.com

So, short of becoming a "haptician" (one who teaches pronunciation beginning with the body movement and awareness)--an excellent idea, by the way, how do you at least partially overcome the disembodiment and localization that can seriously undermine your work? A good first step is to just consistently do a good warm up before attending to pronunciation, a basic principle of haptic work, such as this one which activates a wide range of muscles, sound mechanisms and mind.

One of the best ways to understand just how warm ups work in embodying the learning process is this IADMS piece on warming up before dance practice. No matter how you teach pronunciation, just kicking off your sessions with a well-designed warmup, engaging the body and mind first, will always produce better results. It may take three or four times to get it established with your students, but the long term impact will be striking. Guaranteed . . . or your memory back!