Zoom(h)aptic: Haptic Pronunciation Teaching online

Keeping in touch doing pronunciation online with your students a problem? We've been working with what we call "haptic videos" for over a decade. Basically by that we mean using video models that learners move along with and in the process use gestures that are mediated and regulated by touch. (The touch usually occurs in the path of a speech-synchronized gesture where the stressed syllable in the word or phrase is articulated.) 

Just read a fun piece by Powers and Parisi on Techcrunch.com (hat tip to haptician Skye Playsted) The hype, haplessness and hope of haptics in the COVID-19 era, I'll focus a bit on the latter! What they get to is a number of haptic technologies, some of which at least promise to help us touch during COVID so we don't pass on something, such as virtual bank "touch" screens that feel to your fingers like you are actually touching the buttons when, in fact, you aren't. They also mention the sort of thing we have been following here for years such as haptic prosthetics, full-body suits and vests and gaming consoles. 

What we have discovered in doing haptic pronunciation teaching online for the last few years is that having learners "dance" along with us haptically, with extensive use of gesture and touch as they repeat or speaking spontaneously from various perspectives, is that the work really does "connect" us. Because the gesture complexes (pedagogical movement patterns - PMPs) are very easy to teach and conduct on Zoom, for instance, everybody (or every body) should get the sense of greater participation and what we term "haptic presence." 

Years of research on mirror neurons has demonstrated that if you are paying careful attention to the motions of another your brain is experiencing much of what is happening as if you, yourself, were the source of the action. What that means is that after students have been introduced to the gestural patterns--by doing them along with select phrases, when they see them again, it should (and generally does from our experience) resonate with them. In informal experiments where we ask students NOT to move along with us, they report that their bodies generally cannot help but move along to some degree. (That is a doctoral degree research project for any haptician who is interested!!!)

So . . . pack up your mirror neurons and go over the www.actonhaptic.com and look at the demonstration videos. And, while you are at it, check our our latest webinar with IATEFL on HaPT! After you do, come back and we'll sign you up for some HaPT training. Right now we are still in v4.5 but v5.0 "ActonHaptic Pronunciation Complement" will be rolling out later this fall!