HICPR: July 2023

Sunday, July 16, 2023

BCTEAL Online Collaborative Attending Skills Training Seminar

Still time to sign up for the next British Columbia Teachers of English as an Additional Language (BCTEAL) seminar (See description below!)

9/23/2023 - 10/28/2023
9:30 AM - 11:30 AM Pacific

$100 for members and $150 for non-members

To enroll: https://www.bcteal.org/

Here's the official description:

"Attending skills training, as developed initially by psychologists about 70 years ago, in essence, teaches learners (or counselors) to be good listeners while keeping a conversation going. This version of the training, a seminar for teachers of nonnative speakers, developed originally by Acton & Cope (1999), provides the skills and classroom procedures for

Creating groups of three or four students, who
Carry on an engaging, short conversations, and then
Review those conversations with their instructor, exploring the strategies used and key pragmatic features of the interaction and the story, itself.

The system can be done either face to face or online with students. Each session includes small breakout rooms and (modest) homework assignment, along with an optional reading list. All sessions will be recorded, so if the Saturday morning schedule doesn't work for you, you can still watch the videos!

Note: Each week a set of strategies will be introduced that, ideally, participants take to their classrooms and then report back the following week. This is the first time for me to do this seminar online (hence the nominal fee), something of a "Beta test." The plan is to offer it three or four times annually to the public and also make it available to individual schools and institutions. Join us! Bill

Acton, W. & Cope, C. (1999). Cooperative attending skills training for ESL students, in JALT Applied Materials volume, Kluge, D. and S. McGuire (Eds.), Cooperative language teaching in Japan, pp. 50-66.

Van Dyke, A. & Acton, W. (2022b). Role-play and dialogic meta-pragmatics in developing and assessing pragmatic competence, in Pedagogical Linguistics, available online DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/pl.22004.van

Van Dyke, A. & Acton, W. (2022a). Spontaneous classroom engagement facilitating development of L2 pragmatic competence: A naturalistic study. Pedagogical Linguistics 3(1) 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1075/pl.20011.van

Saturday, July 8, 2023

A Super Somewhat "Solipsistic" Solo Method for Greatly Improving English Speaking Fluency!

COURSE closed! But we are opening another soon! Keep in touch!

I know what you are thinking . . .well, actually,"solipsistically" speaking, I probably don't, of course! But, anyway, this is a remarkable new course offering, one designed for learners in a somewhat unique but actually very common niche:

The 9-week online course, Acton Haptic English Fluency Training (HFT), is designed especially for non-native English-speaking adults who

Do not have the opportunity for much, if any English, face-to-face conversation in their daily lives but
Who want to keep improving, nonetheless,
Who have an IELTS reading ability of about 4.0 or above, and
Do not have a lot of cash to work with!

HFT features Embodied Oral Reading to develop English fluency and confidence

· Embodied Oral Reading is done out loud, in private, using stories that are accompanied by special gestures which use concepts and vocabulary that students are already familiar with, essentially, what they can understand, but perhaps may not be able to talk about fluently.

· HFT provides the student with a set of skills which once learned they can continue improving with beyond the course. It is especially recommended, for example, for students who do not have access to conversational English currently, such as

o Undergraduate and graduate students in programs not taught primarily in English

o Parents whose spoken English is not strong and whose children are in public schools in North America

o New immigrants and family members who cannot currently access English instruction

o Students who are in religious studies where they will serve in a language other than English, but where being able to read Scripture in English in public is essential,

o Retired “senior” English L2 speakers who may be “home alone” in some sense much of the time but would value spending 3-4 hours weekly to develop the clarity of their spoken English.

· It is based on extensive research (and decades of teaching experience) in oral reading methodology and the well-known "Lectio Divina" tradition in meditation practice, using extensive oral reading as homework—not in a class.

· The key neuroscience-based innovation of HFT is the precise use of gestures and touch in the visual field. Synchronized with speech, these multimodality gestures create optimal conditions for attention, learning, retention and recall.

· Course work is done individually, with four or five, 30-minute homework assignments and a live 75-minute zoom feedback meeting weekly, usually on Friday evening. (which is also recorded for later access, if necessary.)

The emphasis is on improving the English that learners understand well but do no speak with the same level of success.

Learners finish the course being able to speak more rhythmically, more expressively, more precisely and with greater confidence.

There are several possible story and text types that students can choose to use in their embodied oral readings (EORs):

General academic English (for high school learners and older)
General business English (for adults)
General workplace English
General seminary/Bible-based English (for students in Christian ministry or training)
General informal conversation-based English (especially good for parents whose children's English is better than theirs!)
General instructional language used in teaching (for non-native English speaking teachers)
Personalized, story-based English (for those want to improve just for the love of English)

Course includes:

Introduction and 8, 1-week lessons which include
Weekly 30-minute recorded lessons
Weekly 60-minute follow up, live (or recorded) lesson
Daily, 20-30 minute homework assignments

Syllabus

Week 1 - Introduction
Week 2 - Rhythm 1
Week 3 - Fluency 1
Week 4 - Vowels 1
Week 5 - Vowels 2
Week 6 - Consonants (th, w/y, r/l and f/v)
Week 7 - Intonation
Week 8 - Rhythm 2 (Rhythm, linking and pausing)
Week 9 - Fluency 2 (Expressiveness and confidence)

Example Unit:

Monday, view recorded lesson
Tuesday, do homework
Wednesday, do homework
Thursday, do homework
Friday, follow up lesson live on Zoom (usually, 18:00 PST)
Saturday, do homework
Sunday: TAKE THE DAY OFF!!!

Homework format:

Review one part of the video (5 minutes)
Practice the haptic gesture featured in the weekly lesson (5 minutes)
Practice the Embodied Oral Reading (EOR) in the course materials (10~15 minutes)

Record your last practice (about 2 minutes)
Review your recording (about 2 minutes)

Find some words or phrases that are not in the lesson to practice the lesson's haptic gesture with! (5 minutes)

(Optional) personalized Zoom meetings available for additional fee upon request
Customized course versions tailored for organizations of almost any size.
(Optional) Professional development credit available through Trinity Western University

Next course: October 9th ~ December 9th.
Cost: $350 USD, materials included.
To enroll or for more info, contact Bill Acton at wracton@gmail.com

Further details are available at: www.actonhaptic.com/hft
Instructors with training in haptic pronunciation teaching are invited to apply to be a collaborating instructor in these HFT courses. (Or offer the course through their school!)

What is haptic pronunciation teaching?

Basically, it is using gesture, touch and movement to teach pronunciation of English (or any language). What makes this method unique is that it is based on controlled and systematic use of gesture in doing that. (Often the problem with gesture use in language learning is that it can be "crazy" or random or intimidating or inconsistent, or not well-developed and tied to clear outcomes.)

The earlier "Essential Haptic-integrated English Pronunciation (EHIEP) approach," now KINETIK, does a better job of enhancing presentation, modelling, feedback and correction. The method is simple and easy to follow. Once a 30-minute module is finished, teacher and students have a set of techniques to use in class anytime a pronunciation problem or opportunity comes up!

Haptic Preliminaries

I often begin workshops or papers with the comment that in about 40 years in the field I have had just one idea: that the systematic use of body movement is essential to effective and efficient pronunciation instruction. That has never been more relevant than today, with the general deemphasis on pronunciation and introduction of technology into the field. From both perspectives, the "haptic" perspective approach developed here offers great promise. I can at least promise you a "moving" experience!

What is the KINETIK Method?

KINETIK is the name of the new v6.0 haptic pronunciation teaching system. About six years earlier we were using the acronym, "Haptic Integrated Pronunciation for Other/Extended Circle English Speakers" (HIPOECES)--still there in the url of this blog!

Haptic-integrated clinical pronunciation is:

A different way to learn pronunciation, based in part on Arthur Lessac’s notion of “Training the body first.” It is also based on research in the use of movement and touch in learning and training. It:

Looks somewhat like a combination of aerobics, sign language and Taichi

Provides a basic foundation for continued, self-directed pronunciation learning and classroom instruction

Designed for use by relatively untrained teachers but appropriate for all teachers (and learners) of all levels

Focuses on pronunciation used in conversation (not all words in English)

Is a highly “brain-and-body-friendly” system that promotes efficient learning of integrated tasks in general

Designed to promote integrated classroom pronunciation instruction and enable integration of conscious pronunciation work into spontaneous speaking.

Introduction

This blog was formerly named: HIPoeces (pronounced 'hI-pƏ-cIs), basically an approach to teaching English pronunciation to speakers of "outer and expanding" circle Englishes (including that population commonly termed: non-native speakers) but also compatible with the use of local models other than simply Standard" American" or RP. Using Kachru's "Inner, expanding and outer circles" model to characterize the breadth of Englishes and speakers of those, HIPoeces (now HICP) systems focus on developing haptically-centered pedagogical models and methods which can be adapted for teaching the pronunciation of various Englishes as they are spoken and taught by "owners" of those varieties.

In theory, the underlying principles can be applied to teaching the sound system of any language. Most language instructors intuitively use a great deal of movement and tactile anchoring in the classroom. The essential question is how to use that resource systematically, especially so that those learners who are less "haptic" in nature are also "moved" by the method.

Simply put, the HICP model/method is based on the idea of speaking along with arm and hand movement, not all that different from that used in sign languages. Most movement patterns are taken from either typical classroom pronunciation instruction practice or from related fields, such as psychotherapy or sports.

Most blog posts link to research that relates to the general HICP model, that is studies dealing with the role of gesture, touch, movement, learning modalities, learning in output, use of the visual field in learning, and experiential learning.

DEFINITIONS:

"Haptic" techniques- procedures that involve both movement and touch (Obvious examples include clapping hands, tapping feet, or holding an object and shaking it to the rhythm of a poem.)

"HICP techniques" - procedures that are haptic and also explicitly coordinated with phonological structures and/or discourse prosody (For example, clapping hands on primary stressed syllables in multi-syllable words, or doing a dance step on key words in conversational turns.)

"Haptic integration"- The haptic dimension probably functions as much to anchor visual and auditory material as it does to assist the learner in getting the "felt sense" of the sound or sound process. Lack of integration into spontaneous speech being such a serious potential shortcoming of instruction, haptic engagement seems a promising bridge to more accurate fluency.

"Visual field" - in HICP extensive use is made of the visual field in front of the learner. (For example, a modified version of the IPA vowel chart is anchored haptically in the imagination of the learner, directly in front of the upper body, and used for several purposes throughout the program.)