New "NewBees'" Haptic Pronunciation course!

Want to teach pronunciation but have no training and no time in class to do it even if you knew how? 

We have a great new course for you: Acton Haptic Pronunciation: Content Complement System (AHP-CCS). 

It has been created so that you can use haptic pronunciation techniques (gesture controlled by touch) to:

• Improve memory for content you are teaching (in speaking, listening, reading, grammar, vocabulary, stories, concepts, etc.)
• Improve expressiveness, emphasis, and intelligibility
• Improve impact of modeling, feedback and correction
• Improve class engagement on Zoom
• Provide a way to work with pronunciation (on the spot) in any type of class

Specifics: 

• (Ideally) You study with another person who teaches the same type of student 
• 12 week course/4 modules/12 lessons. 
• The first ones begin on 3/25 and others can start anytime after when there are minimum of two students who want to do the course. 
• 60 minutes of practice on your own per week 
• 30 minutes of homework (on your own or with your friend) per week
• a 45 minute Zoom session each week, the two you, (Usually on Saturday) working with a  "Haptician" who also has experience teaching students of that age and level 
• Haptician: Trained by Bill Acton in the Haptic Pronunciation Teaching (HaPT)

• Cost: 
• 1 person ($1600 CAD each) - not recommended, but possible. 
• 2 people together ($800 CAD each or $ per 200 module) - best plan, especially if you are friends! 
• 3 people together ($600 CAD each or $150 per module) - OK if you are working together!  
• 4 people together ($400 CAD each or $100 per module) 
• (Locals.com subscription, $5 CAD monthly, also required to take an AHP-CCS course)

Designed for those 

• with little or no previous training in phonetics or pronunciation teaching
• who are teaching content classes or language classes
• teaching students of any age or proficiency
• have a colleague or friend that they can do the class with (if not, maybe we can find one for you!) 
• who have two or three hours a week for the course
• who would like to be part of a community of people who love teaching pronunciation and other things!
• on a tight budget!

More details: 

• Weekly Zoom sessions focus on how to use the pedagogical movement patterns (PMPs) of the lesson in your class
•  Both you and your friend should ideally be teaching or have taught the same kind of students if at all possible
• Certificate awarded after completion of the last Module!
• All materials furnished
• Basic training materials are designed to be used with students of any age and proficiency level, in class or out of class. 

Courses begin on 3/25/2021

For more information: Contact info@actonhaptic.com and go to actonhaptic@Locals.com

Killing Pronunciation 14: One tip at a time (or better still . . . "pho-nunciation")

Nice new book just out by Mark Hancock, 50 tips for teaching pronunciation. Currently it is only available in hardcopy, but you can preview it off that link, the latest addition to Scott Thornbury's "Tips" series. Other than the fact that it has the "wrong" vowel system (British), it is very cool. 

It is, however, also a perfect candidate for the 14th in our "Killing" series. In that spirit, it might also be characterized, to paraphrase the 'death by a thousand cuts' notion as: Death (of pronunciation teaching) by a thousand tips.

 Hancock's book is a pretty comprehensive, self-guided short course in itself in teaching pronunciation. (I have it as recommended in my graduate applied phonology course.) The title is misleading, however. It is not just a random set of techniques; it is a relatively systematic set of principles, "tips," if you will. It is actually, read front to back, a pronunciation teaching method. 

It represents the state of the art in the field today: Go big or go home . . . either you invest a considerable amount of time in training to bring pronunciation teaching into your classroom, so you can integrate it in or teach a free standing class, or you avoid it entirely or use a few relatively ineffective techniques here and there and call it a day. In truth, there is very little middle ground left, especially with curriculum priorities in most teaching institutions, especially K-12, that allow precious little space, if any, for attention to pronunciation.  

So . . . Hancock's book is on the right track: it adds up to a method. (Since we are supposed to be all "post-method" now, Hancock probably didn't dare mention that, but I can, of course!) And the reason I do, is that Haptic Pronunciation Teaching (HaPT) is also a coherent method, one best learned from front to back, but the differences are:

• Although you can "do" our course, yourself, and take it to the classroom, you don't have to. You can just stream the lessons to your students and let me do the initial teaching and you do the follow up. 
• 50 Tips is designed so that you can do it on your own. The HaPT system almost has to be learned "in community." Actually, you go through the course with two or three other newbees, guided by an experienced "Haptician," somebody who is certified in HaPT and is available to help out and "test" you at each benchmark. 
• 50 Tips is great for coming up with quick, mini-lessons, integrating in pronunciation here and there and getting a basic background in pronunciation teaching. HaPT can be used the same (old fashioned way) but it is really aimed at using pronunciation (or what we call "phonunciation") to enhance memory for regular course content, expressiveness, emphasis and (surprise!) pronunciation intelligibility. 
• The new HaPT method, coming out next month,  Acton Haptic Pronunciation: Content Complement System (CCS, for short), focuses on "phonunciation," not pronunciation. You can use it any time you are working with content, a story, a dialogue, a word list, a song, a set of instructions. Basically, you embed HaPT techniques (gestures anchored by touch) in almost anything to enhance it and make it more memorable. 
• CCS has been created for those with no background in pronunciation teaching and (typically) no time during the week to do it effectively. 
• Keep in touch for more announcements. It will roll out first here and then actually go live on Locals. Go join up now and be part of the Acton Haptic Pronunciation Community when it happens! 
• 

Out of sight!. . . Speechless! . . .Hands on teaching of the "grammar" of phonology and pronunciation

The study, “Feeling Phonology: The Conventionalization of Phonology in Protactile Communities in the United States" by Edwards of Saint Louis University and Brentari of the University of Chicago, could be something a game changer for us in haptic pronunciation teaching. (It will be published in Language shortly, but, we'll assume that the tantalizing neuroscience summary is correct for the time being!)  From the summary: 

In order to uncover the emergence of new grammatical structure in protactile language, pairs of DeafBlind research participants were asked to describe three objects to one another: a lollipop, a jack (the kind children use to play the game ‘jacks’) and a complex wooden toy with movable arms, magnets, and magnetized pieces.  . . . They found that the early stages of the conventionalization of protactile phonology involve assigning specific grammatical roles to the hands (and arms) of Signer 1 (the conveyer of information) and Signer 2 (the receiver of information). It is the clear and consistent articulatory forms used by each of the four hands that launches the grammar in this case and allows for the rapid exchange of information.

Let me try to translate: Signer 1, using only touch, is passing on a "description" of each object to Signer 2. The four hands involved quickly assume their respective "grammatical functions" in conveying the critical information about the objects. That level of detail is not unpacked in the summary, but we can assume that that is referring to functions such as agent, object, action (verb-like), conjunction (joining), descriptor (adjectival, adverbial), etc. 

In effect, in haptic pronunciation, where the hands of the instructor, for example, moving through the visual field with speech synchronized gesture, depict the embodied nature of a phrase or word, such as "I'm speechless!" --which is simultaneously mirrored by the student in receiving that information, the functionality of the hands and arms of each in the interaction is quite analogous. 

For example, one hand/arm may trace out the path of an intonation contour, whereas the other hand serves as the "landing point" for the other hand ono the stressed element in the phrase. Given the general structure of English grammar, that landing point is also generally the place where the sound system and new information intersect. (New information tends to be near the end of a phrase or sentence.) 

Although sight and sound are involved, the fundamental "vehicle" for the engagement is the movement of the hands and arms, culminating in the hands touching in various ways on the stressed syllable in the phrase or word--mirrored and modulated also by the mirror neurons in the brain of the both participants. Each part of the process or mechanism has its own basic function or purpose in conveying the information. Add to that the notion that every pedagogical gesture used can be performed at differing speeds or pitches or volume, and the roles of the instructor's hands and arms, and those of the students, can take on a wide range of subtle meanings and responsibilities. 

Cannot wait to "lay my hands on" that article!

Keep in touch!

Killing pronunciation 13: Mastering mastery learning, teddy bears and other nonsense!

Good news for those who still believe that their students just need lots and lots of exposure to the language in meaningful contexts--and that their brains miraculously keep track of situations filled with incomplete, seemingly random bits of data that eventually result in the emergence in the mind of words and structures--without the requirement to mastery one word at a time or "get" a grammar structure the first time they encounter it. In fact, in many contexts, mastery learning, seen from this perspective, may have just the opposite effect: destruction of the delicate, potentially associative links of words and actions across situations. 

It is analogous to reading an engaging blog post that has all kinds of interesting "facts" or observations but that doesn't appear to make any sense, at least at the moment. Read on, Dear Reader . . . 

Interesting study, "Learning vocabulary and grammar from cross-situational statistics," by Rebuschat, Monaghan, and Schoetensack, in Cognition in the prestigous journal, no less, reported by Neurosciencenews.com. Their conclusion: 

“We have discovered that the chicken-and-egg problem of learning language can be solved just by hearing lots of language and applying some very simple but very powerful learning to this. Our brains are clearly geared up to keep track of these links between words and the world. We know that infants already have the same power to their learning as adults, and we are confident that young children acquire language using the same types of learning as the adults in our study.”'

And what was that type of learning that was evident in the subjects of the study? In essence they "learned" an artificial language created for the experiment (simply) by looking at a picture of action or a scene while listening to it being talked about. Just that. With repeated iterations, the subjects gradually made sense of what they had heard in terms of being able to associate words with images or concepts and being able to identify the basics of the underlying grammar or syntax of the language. 

The researchers "associate" that innate ability with how babies learn language, where to them words like "teddy bear" and all the other meaningless babble around them begin to connect across situations, where the same combinations of sounds keep showing up, etc. The fascinating finding . . . or claim . . . is that the brain has enormous capacity for holding the information inherent in situations somewhat in "limbo" for a time without requiring instant, meaningful connection to what was encountered earlier.--much more so than current language learning theory generally credits it with. 

The key to the study, however, is that the depicted action and associated objects that the subjects were observing, as the babble poured in, was, itself, meaningful in some broad sense, so that the sound complex was associated with the situation, not the abstracted concept or word, per se. The "very powerful learning" being referred to is what they term, "cross-situational statistical learning." What a perfect metaphor. Recall your first statistics course, the flooding of your brain initially with totally disembodied nonsense that only could be applied meaningfully after multiple passes and luck.   

This is (potentially) big, implying as it does more of a theoretical basis for immersion-based language learning and other less deductive practice. For us in pronunciation work, it suggests that more highly intentional focus of learner attention on both sound and context is critical. It is especially common practice to teach pronunciation without regard to the learner encountering the target of instruction in meaningful, memorable context or story. (If you are looking for a way to better anchor pronunciation to context--and the body--we have more good news for you! Check out the recent IATEFL Pronsig haptic pronunciation teaching webinar) 

If that doesn't make sense now . . .  it will later, eh!