"Breathtaking" running and (haptic pronunciation) teaching!

Caveat emptor: Being a runner, I tend to find research "on the run" first which I "test" during my morning 5k and then often gets applied to (haptic) pronunciation teaching and beyond. Here is a great piece unpacking the role of breathing from several perspectives: Breath Tools: A Synthesis of Evidence-Based Breathing Strategies to Enhance Human Running, by Harbour et al.,published in Frontiers in Physiology summarized by Neurosciencenews.com. If your running or teaching needs an immediate boost, there is a great place to  . . . run to! 

息 Breathing, in many species, including us, has been shown to have a myriad of functions and potential benefits, one of them, the coordination of breathing with gesture related to utterance of sounds as in stressed or emphasized words. In principle, anytime we require a gesture to be synchronized with a sound, taking a breath either fully or in shallow manner prior to the gesture is almost inevitable and unavoidable. 

息 In Pouw and Fuchs (2022).“Origins of vocal-entangled gesture,” we see the inseparable linkage and 
"co-development" over time evident between language, thought and gesture. From a functional perspective their perspective that at any moment in time when a thought, word or gesture is realized, all three had in effect emanated from the same point of origin in the brain and remain very much connected neurophysiologically (and conceptually.) In other words, to affect one dimension is to touch or move the other two (including breathing)--our human, ad hoc analytic systems and intuitions not withstanding. 

息 In KINETIK and haptic pronunciation teaching, in many contexts, we focus learners attention on the breath and general upper torso movement accompanying the breath, as the diaphragm drops, drawing the air in and chest up toward the shoulders, expands. (The shoulders do NOT rise, but remain relaxed.) One purpose is, of course, to capture the learners attention and focus on the task, but, of course, other systems are affected and engaged accordingly. Memory for what is in focus improves, gestures become better defined and synchronized with the words or processes involved, and, consistently, learners become better at alternating between high focus and "relaxed alertness." It is almost, well . . . breathtaking, moment by moment. 

Source: 

Harbour E, Stöggl T, Schwameder H and Finkenzeller T (2022) Breath Tools: A Synthesis of Evidence-Based Breathing Strategies to Enhance Human Running. Front. Physiol. 13:813243. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2022.813243

Pouw. W. and Fuchs, S. (2022).“Origins of vocal-entangled gesture” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, Volume 141, October 2022, 104836 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104836

Flicking off unstressed (and less stressed) vowels in English!

Some vowels just get no respect (or much attention in teaching!)--but they should! 

If you are in Des Moines, Washington this Saturday, come to the 2022 WAESOL conference for our workshop, "Stressing and teaching unstressed and secondarily-stressed vowels in English." This is something of an update and reprise of a workshop I did in 2014. Since then the relevance of working with "backgrounded" vowels has become much more evident in the field, e.g., Szigetvár (2021).

There are many occasions when having students work on an unstressed vowel briefly, such as the 'e' in the word 'the' as in the noun phrase, 'in the circus.' Although for some, just being able to hear the vowel quality in that vowel is sufficient for their purposes--many can almost immediately begin using it in speaking. For others, especially those who are highly "auditory-kinesthetic" (such as myself) experience actually producing the sound may be enormously helpful if not essential. 

The "flicking off" refers to the near-haptic, dismissal-like gesture used in anchoring unstressed vowels, something of quick thumb "flick" in the direction of the vowel in a version of the IPA chart used in the KINETIK Method. It is termed "near-haptic" in that the thumb does not actually touch the other hand, as is case in all the usual "Movement, tone and touch techniques" (MT3s) in the KINETIK method. 

If you can't join us, the video will be available on the other side. 

Keep in touch!

Bill

PTSD: Pronunciation Teaching Somatically (Experienced and) Delivered

Learning and teaching pronunciation does not have to be traumatic, although for some it just may be! There is, however, a great deal to be learned from body-based treatments of PTSD and related traumas that apply to our field--especially in terms of directionality, what comes first, methodologically, in therapy or teaching. 

Not sure how I missed this extraordinary (and extensive) review last year, (2021) "Somatic experiencing – effectiveness and key factors of a body-oriented trauma therapy: a scoping literature review, " by Kuhfuss, Maldei, Hetmanek and Baumann of University of Tier. 

Excerpts from the abstract and conclusion: 

• "The body-oriented therapeutic approach Somatic Experiencing® (SE) treats post-traumatic symptoms by changing the interoceptive and proprioceptive sensations associated with the traumatic experience. Findings provide preliminary evidence for positive effects of SE on PTSD-related symptoms."
• "Moreover, initial evidence suggests that SE has a positive impact on affective and somatic symptoms and measures of well-being in both traumatized and non-traumatized samples. Practitioners and clients identified resource-orientation and use of touch as method-specific key factors of SE."
• "It provides promising findings indicating that SE might be effective in reducing traumatic stress, affective disorders, and somatic symptoms and in improving life quality . . . SE seems to be characterized in particular by its cross-cultural applicability and its combinability with other therapeutic procedures."

SE therapy, in essence, targets the specific body sensations associated with trauma, "from the body up," so to speak. For example, past trauma may be triggered, experienced throughout the (See the matrix at somatictherapy.com) body, e.g., eyes, hands, feet arms, skin tone, blood pressure, breathing muscles, all of which can be managed and moderated consciously with training. The effect, in part, is to change the emotional loading of the past experience and ultimately its ongoing impact on spontaneous, real time functioning. 

So how does that translate into pronunciation teaching? One obvious connection is that if the learner is provided with a rich, physically engaging experience in the body synchronized with a sound or a sound pattern, the chance of the sound being remembered should be enhanced greatly. (Wow . . . all that earlier "physicality" in teaching sounds may have been on to something, when it came to anchoring a sound in memory!) 

The KINETIK method, like many other highly somatic or kinesthetic approaches is based on 

• Lessac's notion of "training the body first," early attention to and emphasis on body engagement
• Observed Experiential Integration therapy (especially effective in treating PTSD)
• and extensive use of haptic techniques (gesture + touch) from Haptic Pronunciation Teaching

What is the relatively radical key here is that the method, itself, places great importance on the directionality overcoming barriers to learning by using body awareness, in some sense like Mindfulness training, while directly connecting the "feeling" to the concept or event--rather than the converse. 

Are you headed in the right direction as well? 

Source;

Kuhfuß M, Maldei T, Hetmanek A, Baumann N. Somatic experiencing - effectiveness and key factors of a body-oriented trauma therapy: a scoping literature review. Eur J Psychotraumatol. 2021 Jul 12;12(1):1929023. doi: 10.1080/20008198.2021.1929023. PMID: 34290845; PMCID: PMC8276649.

What comes next in pronunciation teaching! (Why being in touch is so important!)

An intriguing new study by researchers at East Anglia University, Aix-Marseille University and Maastricht University, summarized by Neurosciencenews.com: How the Sounds We Hear Help Us Predict How Things Feel,  (title and actual empirical findings to be revealed later, with no link to the actual study, itself, other than a note that it will appear in Cerebral Cortex)

I am, nonetheless, delighted to take their word for it since I LOVE the conclusions and find them "touching!" Apparently they have uncovered yet another "new" type of connection between sound and touch or tactile processing. The key finding from the summary:  

“ . . . research shows that parts of our brains, which were thought to only respond when we touch objects, are also involved when we listen to specific sounds associated with touching objects. (Italics, mine.) This supports the idea that a key role of these brain areas is to predict what we might experience next, from whatever sensory stream is currently available.”

Across this unique, recently discovered circuit, for example, when we hear a sound, like that of a single consonant, the brain in principle simultaneously connects it with the physical sensations (touch, vocal resonance, micro-movements involved in producing it) associated with articulating it. If the focus is a word, on the other hand, we assume that other multiple, analogous circuits come into play that link to other dimensions. But the "touch" circuit has those unique properties. 

So what might that mean in the classroom, especially pronunciation and effectiveness? (I'll get to haptic pronunciation later, of course!) For one thing, (NO SURPRISE HERE!) a sound may be associated with the somatic (body) sensations in the vocal tract but not necessarily with a the concept, or phoneme, the phonological complex/nexus and the graphemic representation, itself. It is as if the sound points at the body, not the "brain" as a whole. 

 

On the other "hand," any number of other words could have have virtually identical "points of impact" on the body, associated with the same vowel "sound." The same may apply to a word articulated simultaneously with a gesture, or any experience associated with a sound, one heard or self-generated. That circuit connects the auditory image to at least the "body," but not necessarily one concept. 

Then what is the "workaround" for bringing together the multisensory event termed a "word," or for  example, assuming that it has been learned truly "multi-sensorialy," that is with as many senses as possible, or at least a "quorum level," vividly or intensely engaged as possible? 

In a sense, the "answer" is in the question: consistent, rich multisensory engagement. There are an almost infinite number of ways to accomplish that, of course, but haptic pronunciation teaching, based on touch-anchored speech-synchronized gesture attempts to do that, systematically. In principle, any sound, word or sound process can be experienced as a nexus involving: 

• the physical sensation of articulating the sound/process
• the auditory features of the sound (acoustic)
• a concept (in the case of a word or, in come cases, patterns of pitch movement)
• a gesture that involves hands touching with each other or the body, in some manner that mimics either the nature of the sensations involved in articulation or the "shape" of the concept itself, such as hands rising on a rising pitch or intonation, or hands positioned high in the visual field to represent a "high" vowel.  

According to the study, the use of haptic, touch-anchored gesture should strengthen considerably the connection between the concept associated with the gesture and the sound by "pointing" to the body-sensations involved in articulating the sound.

 And, of course, from our perspective, KINETIK (method) is what is coming next! 

 Source: https://neurosciencenews.com/auditory-tactile-processing-21279/