If you haven't done a video of yourself teaching in the last couple of years, you might do that before you read the rest of this post. Better still, doing pronunciation or conversation work where you, up front, are providing at least some of the pronunciation models. (I have a rubric for that for my grad students. If you'd like a copy, email me.)
I'll be doing a new workshop, "Modeling and correcting pronunciation in and out of class," based on the idea that as an instructor, really any kind, but especially one doing (haptic) pronunciation, your dynamic pedagogical body image (DPBI) e.g., Iverson, 2012, your visual model, your physical presence, movement and gesture in the classroom, from several perspectives, are worth considering carefully. How you dress, your pronunciation and accent, the coordination of your speech with your overall body movement in providing models of language and general postural presentation, all have meaning. When, as in haptic pronunciation work, you are asking students to synchronize some of their speech and gesture with yours, the nature of what is in front of them visually, can obviously contribute to or detract from instructional effectiveness.
In haptic work, in principle, all aspects of pronunciation can be represented/portrayed or embodied using gesture and body movement. From that perspective then, just modeling a word, or phrase or clause, or passage, involves choreography, demonstrating both the sound but also the gestural complex that represents it. (to see examples of the earlier v4.5 version of the haptic system, check out the models on the website).
The same goes for in-class correction or required homework on the form attended to in class or self-correction by the student. The instructor may present the more appropriate form first, choreographed, and then have the student or students "do" the targeted piece of language/text together (never "repeat after me", always "let's do that together.") All key, necessary pronunciation work is to be embedded, practiced, synchronized with gesture for at least a week or so as homework to insure some degree of anchoring in memory and spontaneous speaking, or at least aural comprehension.
For most kinds of instruction what you look like and how you move can be pretty much irrelevant--one of the reasons I love online teaching!!! For some, however, it does, even if it means just cutting down on "clutter" in the visual field up front.
v5.0 will be out before long. This is, nonetheless, a good first step . . . continually taking a "good look" up front at the dynamic model you are providing for your students, and yourself.
As it haptens, I’ve been to Acton school, so I get this!
ReplyDeleteNeurophysiologically . . . or for other reasons, there are those both instructors and students who can not feel comfortable with extensive gesturing in public. Over the years we have worked out a number of ways to accommodate almost everybody. Instructors do not have to, themselves, train students in the haptic "pedagogical movement patterns" (they can let the HaPT-Eng video of me doing the training, train their students). Students, for their part do not have to gesture along with their instructors (or me!) as long as they are paying attention and have some integrated task following the presentation. v5.0 is based on the idea that most, if not all, initial training should be done using video, not in person, face to face, either mine or ones instructors have created themselves. Stay tuned
ReplyDeleteIt might be an idea to offer the same phrase(s) said/performed by three or more native English speakers who agree with this approach. In this way, learners would be more able to synthesize the movements before reproducing them. Further, there are micro-distinctions between speakers/actors, one of which might connect better with the learner.
ReplyDelete