KINETIK Method Roll Out Video and What's Next!

Go to the Roll Out Video

The development of the KINETIK Method was inspired by classroom teachers who not only had little or no background in pronunciation teaching but also were given no space for it in their lessons and, in many cases, had been “ordered” not to waste time on it. Given the generally disembodied and “out of context” nature of much of what passes for pronunciation work in integrated textbooks today and advice from leading methodologists on how to “work in” pronunciation or just teach it in a class by itself, it can be difficult to justify carving out time and resources for it.

 

The KINETIK innovation: Aspects of what is traditionally thought of as pronunciation, when “delivered” by the body, primarily with gesture and touch, actually become more immediately valuable and relevant to the learner by:

• · Greatly enhancing memory for the text as it is spoken
• · Allowing a broader range of expressiveness to be attended to
• · Providing greater attention, or emphasis to places of interest in the text
• · Improving clarity—what is normally thought of as the role of pronunciation

Of course, in reality all those, and more, are the “job” of the sound system of the language, especially rhythm, stress and intonation.

KINETIK employs the “Movement, Tone and Touch Techniques” (MT3s) developed by Haptic Pronunciation Teaching, in working with any and all texts, stories, narratives, dialogues, word lists, instructions (and even drills!) Any time or place one of those functions is needed during a lesson or homework, the KINETIK Method consistently . . . delivers, through use of a variety of “Embodied Oral Reading” frameworks. The MT3s serve as a “handy,” integrated “complement” to your lesson content.

After watching the four-part video, I hope you’ll not only join us at the weekly “Hapticanar” (Sign up on the Actonhaptic.com mailing list to be updated on that.), but also become part of the Acton Haptic Community on Locals (Actonhaptic@locals.com), even if you are not teaching in the classroom now. Membership is free but supporters get all kinds of goodies, and our eternal gratitude!

Please do pass on the word, forward this email on to friends and colleagues. Invitations for the June 8th Hapticanar will be sent shortly!

And above all, just KEEP in TOUCH!

 
Bill

KINETIK Method Roll Out Day: The Course, of course!

 The Roll Out Video will be "out" later today. You can engage with it here and on other social media, of course! I'll be on Locals.com (actonhaptic@locals.com) for my follow up for the  most  part. The bottom line of the previous post, and the "bottom line" of the KINETIK Method is the Certificate course (of course!) Just to give you an idea of what the content of this content-based teaching certificate course is about, here is a sketch of the curriculum: Module One (Basic Rhythm, Basic Fluency, and some basic consonants; Module Two (Single vowels, double vowels and some basic consonants; Module three (Basic intonation, Advanced intonation, Basic integration, and linking); Module Four (Advanced rhythm and fluency, Secondary and unstressed vowels, Advanced/spontaneous integration) The course ends with brief review and certification test modules. Each module takes three weeks or so. (See the previous post for more details.) Classes begin whenever 3-5 students sign up who can meet together weekly for an hour on Zoom! Bring along 2 or 3 friends from work and you are ready to roll!

Today's post from Locals.com (actonhaptic@locals.com) is also listed here on the Roll Out blog page, along with the previous 22 posts! Here are links to the recent blogpost with details on the method, and more on the Acton Haptic Community on the new, upgraded actonhaptic.com website.

Penultimate KINETIK Method Roll Out Day 22: Your KINETIK TBD List!

 The KINETIK Method Roll Out video will be out tomorrow! (Tomorrow's blog post will include all details on the video.) Here's your Haptic TBD list:

1. Watch and share the Introductory Video with your network!

2. Go to actonhaptic.com and get on our mailing list. (We'll automatically send you invitations for the weekly Hapticanars.) While you are there, check out all the information there on KINETIK and the Acton Haptic Community.

3. Join us every Tuesday at 5 p.m., beginning June 8th, for Dr Bill's Weekly Haptic Technique Hapticanars (30 minute workshop and 20 minute Q&A) on Webinarjam.com. 

4. Sign up for the Acton Haptic Community at actonhaptic@locals.com. Signing up is free but if you become a supporter for $5 monthly or more, in addition to being able to be involved in the conversation there you get:

• Downloads of Hapticanars
• Downloads of 5-minute student training videos for each lesson
• Downloads of special features, including interviews with experienced "Hapticians"

5. Sign up for the 3-month, KINETIK Method Teacher Certification Course. (For details, go to the website, www. actonhaptic.com.) 

6. Keep in touch!

Bill

Today's post from Locals.com (actonhaptic@locals.com) is also listed here on the Roll Out blog page, along with the previous 21 posts! Here are links to the recent blogpost with details on the method, and more on the Acton Haptic Community on the new, upgraded actonhaptic.com website.

Day 21 Roll Out: Take the KINETIK Method Pronunciation Teaching Certificate Course!

In addition to the free weekly technique hapticanar (on Webinarjam) and connecting with the Acton Haptic Community, the best way to get the full tool kit is to sign up for the certificate course, which begins anytime there are 3 or 4 students who want to do it. (See earlier post on the "KINETIK-shop Quartet.) Key features:

• Four modules, three lessons each (takes 3 to 4 months to complete)
• Each lesson takes about a week (and usually about 2~3 hours, total)
• The pieces of a lesson: (a) Do the Hapticanar, (b) Do the 10-minute training video, the one your students would do, (c) Find someplace within a text or story in one of your lessons where the technique from the Hapticanar would "work," that is improve clarity, memory or expressiveness, and then (d) meet on Zoom later that week with 3 or 4 other students and a haptician (like Bill) to review your plan. 
• The cost is variable, from about $300 up to to $1600 USD depending on how many students are in the class. (Special arrangements available for schools and larger groups.) 

More about that on the 25th! 

Today's post from Locals.com (actonhaptic@locals.com) is also listed here on the Roll Out blog page, along with the previous 20 posts! Here are links to the recent blogpost with details on the method, and more on the Acton Haptic Community on the new, upgraded actonhaptic.com website.

KINETIK Method Roll Out Day 20: The story, telling!

One great feature of the KINETIK method is that the materials are absolutely free . . . in fact, there aren't any, because you provide them, text from your course teaching materials that are what we call "context-rich." By that we mean that pronunciation techniques are used to produce greater clarity (sort of like traditional pronunciation work) or greater emphasis, expressiveness or nuance WITHIN course materials that are good stories, in some sense, vived, memorable narratives of some kind. (Might even be a tightly organized set of theme-based vocabulary . . . but usually not.) In other words, KINETIC method is situated or target in dialogues, a readings, a sets of instructions, scripts from listening tasks, even students' draft compositions . . . where the "story" is . . . telling.

Today's post from Locals.com (actonhaptic@locals.com) is also listed here on the Roll Out blog page, along with the previous 19 posts! Here are links to the recent blogpost with details on the method, and more on the Acton Haptic Community on the new, upgraded actonhaptic.com website

Roll Out Day 19: The KINETIK-shop Quartet (way of learning to do haptic!)

In the KINETIK Teacher Training Certificate Course, (a) after you do a little reading, and (b) a little "full body" training just like what your students will do, (c) you get together with three other teacher trainees and a certified Haptician (like me) on Zoom and (d) go over your homework, a piece of text from your regular course-content materials that has been "choreographed" with haptic Movement, tone and touch techniques (MT3s). Each session concludes with the "Happytic Dance" embodying the technique from the lesson, the one you were introduced to in the weekly "Hapticanar" (haptic + webinar)!

Today's post from Locals.com (actonhaptic@locals.com) is also listed here on the Roll Out blog page, along with the previous 18 posts! Here are links to the recent blogpost with details on the method, and more on the Acton Haptic Community on the new, upgraded actonhaptic.com website

KINETIK Roll Out Day 18: The walkabout-talkabout . . .

 . . .  for improving memory (for content and pronunciation). Check out this great summary from Neuroscience News on a study by Reser et al at Monash University, Ancient Australian Aboriginal Memory Tool Superior to ‘Memory Palace’ Learning. The bottom line parallel to pronunciation teaching:  content (or pronunciation focus) embedded in a good story in a good "place" is more memorable than just being the focus of a loosely connected class mini-lesson sitting in the third row . . . 

Today's post from Locals.com (actonhaptic@locals.com) is also listed here on the Roll Out blog page, along with the previous 17 posts! Here are links to the recent blogpost with details on the method, and more on the Acton Haptic Community on the new, upgraded actonhaptic.com website

Roll KINETIK Out Day 17! - Haptic Pronunciation teaching "Pas de deux"

To  quote one of my favorite lines from one of my all time favorite country western songs, "I could have missed the pain, but I'd have had to miss the dance." One "dance" in haptic pronunciation teaching happens when instructor and students move in synchrony as they do a Movement, tone and touch technique (MT3) to model, correct or provide feedback on some bit(s) of language in class--one of the two dozen or so that I'll be introducing each week in the Hapticanars, in fact.  

Today's post from Locals.com (actonhaptic@locals.com) is also listed here on the Roll Out blog page, along with the previous 16 posts! Here are links to the recent blogpost with details on the method, and more on the Acton Haptic Community on the new, upgraded actonhaptic.com website

 

KINETIK Method Roll Out Day 16: Correction!

Probably the most "unique" (or really awesome) feature of Haptic Pronunciation Teaching is that in-class correction and feedback should be (almost) enjoyable and very much stress-free. Part of the reason for that is that basic "repair" or related practice or "reminders" are synchronized with gesture or some other part of the body. It is a bit like using sign language to signal change or a specific vowel, as is a common practice, except that the haptic signal connects to a set of gestures associated with sound or process. Communication in that paralinguistic channel between students and instructors, and students and students, does not seem to interfere much if at all with class activities or "thinking" or generate serious distraction or nervous, self-consciousness. 

Today's post from Locals.com (actonhaptic@locals.com) is also listed here on the Roll Out blog page, along with the previous 15 posts! Here are links to the recent blogpost with details on the method, and more on the Acton Haptic Community on the new, upgraded actonhaptic.com website

KINETIK Method Day 15 Roll Out: To gesture or not to gesture (That's not the question!)

 It is not easy to speak a language without gesturing, but you can, of course. Teaching a language without body movement also may be possible, but certainly not efficient at least at this point in development of virtual reality. In the KINETIK Method, instructors must learn to perform a set of Movement, tone and touch techniques (MT3s) that they use in modeling, feedback and correction. Students, on the other hand, depending on age and context, may or may not have to be trained or even informed about the MT3s. For young, elementary age learners, instructor MT3 are often enough; the kids pick them up naturally, their mirror neurons fully online!  For older learners, training in some MT3s may be effective, but even then only so that when the instructor uses one, the learners "get" what is being corrected or enhanced. At the "top" level, especially where fossilization has set in,  instructors and learners generally do the MT3s together whenever they are used. 

Today's post from Locals.com (actonhaptic@locals.com) is also listed here on the Roll Out blog page, along with the previous 14 posts! Here are links to the recent blogpost with details on the method, and more on the Acton Haptic Community on the new, upgraded actonhaptic.com website

Roll KINETIK Out - Day 14: Readiness for memorable and palpable pronunciation teaching!

 A key dimension of haptic pronunciation teaching and the KINETIK Method is the ramp up or preparation for an in class intervention where something in text or about it needs improving. That can take two forms, either a body-based warm up at the beginning of class where most of the body is engaged in focusing attention and getting more blood circulating where it is needed, or a very localized "activation" of some discrete areas of the upper body. In "straight" haptic (or any type of) pronunciation training, a full-body warm up is usually essential. In KINETIK, however, the Movement, Tone and Touch Techniques (MT3s) serve both functions, engaging simultaneously both the whole body and very specific "parts: of the process, e.g, hands, arms, positions in the visual field, vocal resonance. Instant "palpability!" 

Today's post from Locals.com (actonhaptic@locals.com) is also listed here on the Roll Out blog page, along with the previous 13 posts! Here are links to the recent blogpost with details on the method, and more on the Acton Haptic Community on the new, upgraded actonhaptic.com website

Roll KINETIK Out Day 13: The left hand knows what the right hand is doing!

With almost every Movement, tone and touch technique (MT3) the hands touch on a stressed syllable of a word (also, often in the stressed word in a phrase or stressed word a sentence.) When that touch happens, connections are triggered all over the brain, in fact, much more so than previously thought as recent research has demonstrated by researchers at the Max Planck Institute. In KINETIK a vowel is linked to at least an MT3, a word, a course-content context, a body and the entire milieu of the moment. Touching, eh!

Today's post from Locals.com (actonhaptic@locals.com) is also listed here on the Roll Out blog page, along with the previous 12 posts! Here are links to the recent blogpost with details on the method, and more on the Acton Haptic Community on the new, upgraded actonhaptic.com website

KINETIK Roll Out Day 12 - How can I become a "Haptician?"

 At least two ways: 

One: Show up for the free, weekly "Hapticanar" (with your body) and learn about the "Movement, tone and touch technique (MT3) of the week." For some of you, the naturally kinesthetic and dancers, just the 30-minute presentation and following Q&A will be enough for you to figure out how to train your students to use the MT3 and get some idea on how to use it in "everyday" content in your class.

Two: Sign up for the KINETIK Method course, which, in addition to doing the Hapticanars, you (or technically, your body) do the 10-minute student training video for the MT3. Then later in the week, you and three or four other NewBees get together on Zoom or Webinarjam with me or another experienced Haptician. We look at how you could build in or integrate that MT3 into the content each of you are teaching. After you finish all lessons, about 12 weeks time, and take a REALLY easy little test, you get a beautiful certificate saying that you are now officially a Haptician and entitled to all the rights and kudos thereto! 

So . . . as we say, Keep In Touch! (KIT!)

Today's post from Locals.com (actonhaptic@locals.com) is also listed here on the Roll Out blog page, along with the previous 11 posts! Here are links to the recent blogpost with details on the method, and more on the Acton Haptic Community on the new, upgraded actonhaptic.com website

KINETIK METHOD Roll Out Day 11 - How do you learn to teach KINETIK-ly?

The same way you learn to do yoga, dance, piano or paint: You train the body first. And most importantly that training must be done in a community of at least two . . .  In time the mind joins the party, becoming one with the body in performance once a clear threshold is crossed. It isn't "difficult" to learn how to do haptic from reading about it--it is impossible. As we have learned over the years, even just watching the demonstration or training videos (www.actonhaptic.com/hapt) is not enough to "sell" the idea of embodied pronunciation teaching to most professionals. Some time ago, Nike said it best: [You] Just [have to] do it! You'll have a great opportunity to DO that soon, in fact!

Today's post from Locals.com (actonhaptic@locals.com) is also listed here on the Roll Out blog page, along with the previous 10 posts! Here are links to the recent blogpost with details on the method, and more on the Acton Haptic Community on the new, upgraded actonhaptic.com website

Rollout Countdown Day 10: CHIPS! (Covert Haptic-Integrated Pronunciation System!)

 For all of you who are handed a book and lesson plans and held to a near minute-by-minute schedule, and under no circumstances are you to waste time on pronunciation, we've got good news for you: content-based haptic pronunciation teaching. You still DO pronunciation but it doesn't LOOK like it because, with the help of the body, it is woven into other content, like oral readings, conversations, group work, your comments at the head of the class. (I'd tell you how students can be discreetly introduced to key sound concepts, too . . . but that is a secret! You'll have to join us to find out!)

Today's post from Locals.com (actonhaptic@locals.com) is also listed here on the Roll Out blog page, along with the previous 9 posts! Here are links to the recent blogpost with details on the method, and more on the Acton Haptic Community on the new, upgraded actonhaptic.com website

Count down to Roll Out of "KINETIK" Day Nine: Free Pronunciation

from disembodied, out of context, meaningless, drills, exercises, diagrams, explanations, courses and expensive textbooks: Body/embodiment-centered, content-based, haptic techniques. 

Today's post from Locals.com (actonhaptic@locals.com) is also listed here on the Roll Out blog page, along with the previous 8 posts! Here are links to the recent blogpost with details on the method, and more on the Acton Haptic Community on the new, upgraded actonhaptic.com website

Count down to Roll Out of the AHP "KINETIK Method": Day Eight!

Question: How do you learn about the, Acton Haptic Pronunciation, content-based KINETIK Method?
Simple answer(s):
A. See the links below to Locals, the blog and website!
B. join the weekly (free) webinars, beginning 5/25.
C. Become a supporter of the Acton Haptic Community (beginning on 5/20) which comes with downloads of all kinds!
D. Take the KINETIK Method course, beginning in June. (See details on the website (www.actonhaptic.com.)
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Today's post on Locals.com (actonhaptic@locals.com) is also listed here on the Roll Out blog page, along with the previous 7 posts! Here are links to the recent blogpost with details on the method, and more on the Acton Haptic Community on the new, upgraded actonhaptic.com website

Count down to Roll Out of new Acton Haptic Pronunciation Teaching "KINETIK Method": Day Seven!

Just a little more than two weeks away, on May 25th! There'll be a weekly, "Dr Bill's Weekly Embodied (haptic) Pronunciation Teaching Technique Webinar," courses and many other features. 

Today's post on Locals.com (actonhaptic@locals.com) is also listed here on the Roll Out blog page, along with the previous 6 posts! Here are links to the recent blogpost with details on the method, and more on the Acton Haptic Community on the new, upgraded actonhaptic.com website.  

Keep in touch!

Bill