Fixing your eyes on better pronunciation--or before it!

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Early on in the development of haptic pronunciation teaching, we began by borrowing a number of techniques from Observed Experiential Integration therapy, developed by Rick Bradshaw and colleagues about 20 years ago. OEI has proved to be particularly effective in the treatment of PTSD.  In OEI one of the basic techniques is the use of eye tracking, that is therapists carefully control the eye movements of patients, in some cases stopping at places in the visual field to "massage" points through various loops and depth of field tracking.

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We discovered that attempting to control students' eye movement, having them follow with their eyes the track of the gestures across the visual field being used to anchor sounds during pronunciation work, that although memory for sounds seemed better, the holding of attention for such extended lengths of time could be really counterproductive. In some cases, students even became slightly dizzy or disoriented after only a few minutes. (And, in retrospect, we were WAY out of our league . . . )

Consequently, attention shifted to visual focus on only the terminal point in the gestural movement where the stressed syllable of the word or phrase was located, where the hands touched. We have been using that protocol for about a decade.

Now comes a fascinating study by Badde et al., "Oculomotor freezing reflects tactile temporal expectation and aids tactile perception" summarized by ScienceDaily.com, that helps refine our understanding of the relationship between eye movement and touch in focusing attention. In essence, what the research demonstrated was that by stopping or holding eye movement just prior to a when subject was to touch a targeted object, the intensity of the tactile sensation was significantly enhanced. Or, the converse: random eye movement prior to touch tended to diffuse or undermine the impact of touch. That helps explain something . . .

The rationale for haptic pronunciation teaching is, essentially, that the strategic use of touch both successfully manages gesture and focuses much more effectively the placement of stressed syllables in words accompanying the gesture in gesture synchronized speech. In almost all cases, the eyes focus in on the hand about to be touched--just prior to what we term the: TAG (touch-activated ganglia) where touch literally "brings together" or assembles the sound, body movement, vocal resonance and iwth graphic visual schema and meaning of the word or phoneme, itself.

In other words, the momentary freezing of eye movement an instant before the touch event should greatly intensify the resulting impact and later recall produced by the pedagogical strategy. We knew it worked, just didn't really understand why. Now we do.

Put your current pronunciation system on hold for bit . . . and get (at least a bit) haptic!

Original source:
Stephanie Badde, Caroline F. Myers, Shlomit Yuval-Greenberg, Marisa Carrasco. Oculomotor freezing reflects tactile temporal expectation and aids tactile perception. Nature Communications, 2020; 11 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-17160-1

Haptic pronunciation teaching (un)masked!

A student just asked the question: How can I teach pronunciation in a mask? Where he is, already back in the classroom, he and most of his students are wearing masks. It can be difficult enough when you can't see your students' faces, let alone when they can't see yours! The end of pronunciation teaching as we know it? No, not at all. Here's how . . .

In 2014, I was in the Middle East doing teacher training workshops. I was scheduled to do one at a women's college. NEVER occurred to me that the (150) students might be wearing burqas . . . which almost all of them were, covered, head to foot. One of the most successful and well received sessions I have ever done. (See the blogpost on that for more detail as to how it happened and my thoughts as to why it seemed to go so well!) 

With the exception of most consonants and a few features of vowels, most everything else of real importance in pronunciation work can be done in a mask . . . haptically. By that I mean, taught "from scratch," except where the learner has relatively little idea of where things in the vocal track have to go and touch to come up with a vowel or consonant sound.

Suprasegmentals (rhythm, stress and intonation) done in masks is a piece of cake, in fact, maybe even preferable in some cases. If you haven't already, go to www.actonhaptic.com and watch the demo videos. Even for vowels, you can do correction and feedback in a mask effectively, as long as the learner has the basic physical routine stored "in there" somewhere that can be recalled.

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Doing a new demonstration shortly of more ideas on effective "masked" pronunciation as part of the upcoming webinars. July 24th and 25th. Contact info@actonhaptic.com for reservations.

The sound of gesture: Ending of gesture use in language (and pronunciation) teaching

Quick reminder:  Only one week to sign up for the next haptic pronunciation teaching webinars! 

Sometimes getting a rise (ing pitch) out of students is the answer . . . This is one of those studies that you read where a number of miscellaneous pieces of a puzzle momentarily seem to come together for you. The research, by Pouw and colleagues at the Donders Institute. “Acoustic information about upper limb movement in voicing”, summarized by Neurosciencenews.com, is, well . . . useful.

In essence, what they "found" was that at or around the terminal point of a gesture, where the movement stops, the pitch of the voice goes up slightly (for a number of physiological reasons). Subjects, with eyes closed, could still in many cases identify the gesture being used, based on parameters of the pitch change that accompanied the nonsense words. The summary is what is fun and actually helpful, however.

From the summary:

"These findings go against the assumption that gestures basically only serve to depict or point out something. “It contributes to the understanding that there is a closer relationship between spoken language and gestures. Hand gestures may have been created to support the voice, to emphasize words, for example.”

Although the way the conclusion is framed might suggest that the researchers may have missed roughly three decades of extensive research on the function of gesture, from theoretical and pedagogical perspectives, it certainly works for me--and all of us who work with haptic pronunciation teaching. That describes, at least in part, what we do: "  . . . Hand gestures . . . created to support the voice, to emphasize words, for example.” Now we have even more science to back us up! (Go take a look at the demonstration videos on www.actonhaptic.com, if you haven't before.) 

What can I say? I'll just stop right there. Anything more would just be but an empty gesture . . .

Source:
“Acoustic information about upper limb movement in voicing”. by Wim Pouw, Alexandra Paxton, Steven J. Harrison, and James A. Dixon. PNAS doi:10.1073/pnas.2004163117

Cognitive Restructuring of Pronunci-o-phobia - (and Alexa-phobia): Hear, hear! (Just don't peek!)

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Caveat emptor: If you are emotionally co-dependent on Alexa, you might want to "ALEXA, STOP ME!" at this point. We love you, but you are lost . . .

New study by "a team of researchers at Penn State" (Summarized by ScienceDaily.com) explored the idea of using ALEXA to help you "cognitively restructuring" your public speaking anxiety, Anxious about public speaking? Your smart speaker could help. Actually what they did was to compare two different ALEXAs in talking you through/out of some of your public speaking, pre-speech anxiety, a more social one with a less social one. (Fasten your seat belt . . . ) Subjects who engaged with the former felt less stressed at the prospect of the giving a speech. From the summary from the researchers:

"People are not simply anthropomorphizing the machine, but are responding to increased sociability by feeling a sense of closeness with the machine, which is associated with lowered speech anxiety . . . Alexa is one of those things that lives in our homes, . . As such, it occupies a somewhat intimate space in our lives. It's often a conversation partner, so why not use it for other things rather than just answering factual questions?"

Houston, we have a problem. Several, in fact. For instance, if ALEXA can do that, imagine what a real person online, just audio only, could accomplish! Forget Zoom and SKYPE! I'd predict that that may even account for some, if not a great deal, of the reduction in anxiety alone. In that condition, a real person might be exponentially more effective . . . worth checking on, I'd think. In addition, from the brief report we get no indication as to what ALEXA actually said, only that "she" was more socially engaging in one condition, than the other. 

What it does suggest, however, is that we should be able to use the same general strategy in dealing with the well-researched anxiety on the part of  instructors and students toward pronunciation work. The impact of a person facing you as you try to modify your pronunciation is important. For many learners, they literally have to close their eyes to repeat a phrase with a different articulation--or at least dis-focus their eyes momentarily. That is is an especially critical dimension of haptic and general gesture techniques in pronunciation teaching. 

This idea is explored in Webinar II in the upcoming Haptic Teaching Webinars I and II, June 5th and 6th. Please join us! (Contact info@actonhaptic.com to reserve you place!) 

And if you'd like to continue this discussion, give me a call . . . Keep in Touch!

Source:
Penn State. (2020, April 25). Anxious about public speaking? Your smart speaker could help. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 18, 2020 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200425094114.htm

Killing pronunciation 12: Memory for new pronunciation: Better heard (or felt) but not seen!

Another in our series of practices that undermine effective pronunciation instruction!

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(Maybe) bad news from visual neuroscience: You may have to dump those IPA charts, multi-colored vowel charts, technicolor xrays of the inside of mouth, dancing avatars--and even haptic vowel clocks! Well . . . actually, it may be better to think of those visual gadgets as something you use briefly in introducing sounds, for example, but then dispose of them or conceptually background them as quickly as possible.

New study by Davis et al at University of Connecticut, Making It Harder to “See” Meaning: The More You See Something, the More Its Conceptual Representation Is Susceptible to Visual Interference, summarized by Neurosciencenews.com, suggests that visual schemas of vowel sounds, for example, could be counter productive--unless of course, you close your eyes . . . but then you can't see the chart in front of you, of course. 

Subjects were basically confronted with a task where they had to try and recall a visual image or physical sensation or sound while being presented with visual activity or images in their immediate visual field. The visual "clutter" interfered substantially with their ability to recall the other visual "object" or image, but it did not impact their recall of other sensory "image" (auditory, tactile or kinesthetic) representation, such as non-visual concepts like volume or heat, or energy, etc.

We have had blogposts in the past that looked at research where it was discovered that it is more difficult to "change the channel," such that if a student is mispronouncing a sound, many times just trying to repeat the correct sound instead, with out introducing a new sensual or movement-set to accompany the new sound is not effective. In other words, an "object" in one sensory modality is difficult to just "replace," you must work around it, in effect, attaching other sensory information to it (cf multi-modal or multi-sensory instruction.)

So, according to the research, what is the problem with a vowel chart? Basically this: the target sound may be primarily accessed through the visual image, depending on the learner's cognitive preferences. I only "know" or suspect that from years of tutoring and asking students to "talk aloud" me through their strategies for remembering pronunciation of new words. It is overwhelming by way of the orthographic representation, the "letter" itself, or its place in a vowel chart or listing of some kind. (Check that out yourself with your students.)

So . .  what's the problem? If your "trail of bread crumbs" back to a new sound in memory is through a visual image of some kind, then if you have any clutter in your visual field that is the least distracting as you try to recall the sound, you are going to be much less efficient, to put it mildly. That doesn't mean you can't teach using charts, etc., but you'd better be engaging more of the multisensory system when you do or your learners' access to those sounds may be very inefficient, at best--or downgrade their importance in your method appropriately. 

In our haptic work we have known for a decade that our learners are very susceptible to being distracted by things going on in their visual field that pull their attention away from experiencing the body movement and "vibrations" in targeted parts of their bodies. Good to see "new-ol' science" is catching up with us!

I've got a feeling Davis et al are on to something there! I've also got a feeling that there are a few of you out there who may "see" some issues here that you are going to have to respond to!!!

Haptic Pronunciation Teaching Webinars!

The first new, v5.0 "double webinar" is set to go, October 2nd and November 21st, 1930~2100 hours, Pacific Standard Time. Reserve your place now. (No deposit required.) Fee: 40 CAD

The webinars are highly experiential and participatory. You'll need

•  a hands free set up, 
• preferably projected on a TV screen, laptop or iPad of some kind, but a handheld with a BIG screen is OK, too 
• positioned at eye level  
• Wireless headsets or no headset at all are best, but headsets with a long cord are adequate, 
• since you have to stand up and "dance" on several occasions! 

The 75 minute, recorded sessions are followed by 15 minute Q and A.
Enrolment is limited to 50 participants in each webinar. There may be some time-zone restrictions, depending on early registration. Reserve your place now at: william.acton@twu.ca

Webinar topics 

• Introduction to Haptic Pronunciation Teaching
• Dictionary use for pronunciation
• North American English vowels
• Syllables and phrase grouping
• Intonation 
• Haptic homework
• Select consonants
• Fluency and linking
• Conversation rhythm and pausing
• Advanced intonation and secondary stress
• Classroom correction, feedback integration techniques

Webinars can be offered exclusively for one English teaching organization, as well as "on the ground," f2f one-day workshops.  (Contact: info@actonhaptic.com for information on group packages.)

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The noncredit haptic pronunciation course meets in a weekly 1-hour webinar and includes about two  hours of practice following the session. Course completion requires passing a certification test which includes a video test. 

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The graduate course, Ling 611 - Applied phonology, is a 3-credit online seminar. It is composed of three relatively equal streams: (a) the haptic pronunciation teaching, which is essentially the same as the noncredit course, (b) a phonological analysis of learner data stream, and (c) a theory and methods of applied linguistics stream with focus on speaking, listening and pronunciation. There is a combination of synchronous and asynchronous meetings and assignments. 

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The "story" of pronunciation teaching: Engaging Preambles

One of the potential advantages of having taught pronunciation for a few years (in my case, almost 50) is that you have on hand a near endless supply of "success stories" from former students, no matter what you are teaching, ways to introduce and (hopefully) motivate yourself and students at the "drop of a hat."

Was reminded of that recently after viewing a plenary by one of the great storytellers in our field, Mario Rinvolucri. Although he does not talk about the use of stories as "preambles" in instruction per se in that talk or in this nice piece in TeachingEnglish.org,  I'm sure he'd concur with their value as such. Several other studies of storytelling in the field cover a wide range of classroom possibilities, but none that I have been able to find examine the "preamble" function.

My introduction to this function of storytelling was the work of Milton Erickson, back in the 1980s. (One of my all time favorite books on that was Erickson's classic "My voice will go with you." Here is an example of one of Erickson's stories done by Bill O'Hanlon (The audio of the originals with Erickson actually telling the stories is available but less accessible.)

I'll begin with one of my favorite personal "pronunciation preambles." Please add one of yours. Let's see where this story takes us!

Better pronunciation: over night!

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I did a 1-hour workshop at a Korean University for about 400 undergraduates. The objective was to improve the rhythm of their spoken English . . .  overnight. All of them had conversations classes the next morning. (Important note: Only one of about 6 of the conversation teachers came to the workshop, although all were invited.) I trained the students to act like they were boxing when they spoke along first with easy dialogues on the screen and then, before we finished, with simple roleplays, in pairs. It got a little chaotic, as you can imagine, but they loved it! And just before I concluded the workshop, I gave them a "secret mission" . . . The next morning, in their speaking classes they were to use the same feeling in their upper bodies--without punching the air as boxing, as they were speaking in class WITHOUT LETTING ON TO THEIR TEACHERS THAT ANYTHING WAS DIFFERENT. I heard some amazing stories back. In the classes that pulled it off, the teachers were stunned by the difference in the rhythm and energy . . . and even playfulness evident in the speaking of the class.

Never fails. To see the basic technique, go here and check out the RFC demo.

Give us your best Pronunciation Preamble!

Recipe for curing (Chinese) distaste for pronunciation teaching

Have trouble selling your students on pronunciation, developing an 'appetite" for it? Research by Madzharov, Self-Control and Touch: When Does Direct Versus Indirect Touch Increase Hedonic Evaluations and Consumption of Food, summarized by Science Direct, suggests that you may just need to give at least the more self-controlled among them a "hands-on" taste of it to get them to buy in. To quote the abstract:

"The present paper presents four studies that explore how sampling and eating food by touching it directly with hands affects hedonic evaluations and consumption volume."

What they found, however, was that for only the high self-control, disciplined consumers that they perceived the food to be better tasting and they were disposed to eat more of it. For the other subjects (like me maybe!), adding touch did not appear to contribute or enhance either taste or appetite for the food samples in the study. Why that should be the case, was not clear, other than the possibility that in the less self-controlled consumers, the executive control centers of the brain were offline already in terms of the direct, unfettered attraction of FOOD!

A few years ago, had a visiting scholar from China here with us for a year. It took almost the entire time for her to get me to understand how to get Chinese students to buy in to (haptic) pronunciation teaching, specifically, but, in general, more integrated, communicative pronunciation work. My "mistake" had been trying to convince relatively high-control consumers of pronunciation teaching in this case, to first be more like me, less high-control and more experiential as learners.

It has always been a problem for some, not just the Chinese students, to buy into highly gesture-based instruction. But touch was another thing entirely. Most any student can "get it", how touch can enhance learning and memory-- and be coaxed into trying some of the gestural, kinaethetic techniques. Probably for several reasons, one being that the functions of touch in the haptic system are to (1) carefully control gesture use, and (2) intensify the connection between the gesture and lexical or phonological target, the word or sound process. Also, it was  (3) much easier to present the general, popular research on the contribution of touch to experience and learning, and (4) the concept of somehow getting a learner to work in their least dominant modality, a basic construct in hypnosis, for example, can be the most effective or powerful.

The assumption here is that the metacognitively self-controlled are less likely to be influenced by immediate feelings or impressions, but once that "barrier" is bridged, as touch does so effectively, the relatively novel sensual experience for them has greater impact. Think: men and the power of perfume . . .

In other words focusing initially on the touch that concluded every gesture made a difference. Have been doing that ever since. Students are much more receptive to trying the gestural techniques once they feel that they have sufficient understanding . . . and then once they have tried it, focusing more on touch than on gesture . .  they are "hooked" . . . being more able and amenable to sense the power of embodiment in learning pronunciation from then on.

If you have a taste for pronunciation work with Chinese students, what is your recipe?

Keep in touch . . .

Original Source:

Author links open overlay panel

Madzharov, A. Self-Control and Touch: When Does Direct Versus Indirect Touch Increase Hedonic Evaluations and Consumption of Food Journal of Retailing Volume 95, Issue 4, December 2019, Pages 170-185 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2019.10.009

Becoming a great (haptic), "good looking" pronunciation teacher: Modeling

If your are in the Vancouver, British Columbia next month, join us at the joint 2020 BCTEAL and Image Conference. Always a great get together.

If you haven't done a video of yourself teaching in the last couple of years, you might do that before you read the rest of this post. Better still, doing pronunciation or conversation work where you, up front, are providing at least some of the pronunciation models. (I have a rubric for that for my grad students. If you'd like a copy, email me.) 

I'll be doing a new workshop, "Modeling and correcting pronunciation in and out of class," based on the idea that as an instructor, really any kind, but especially one doing (haptic) pronunciation, your dynamic pedagogical body image (DPBI) e.g., Iverson, 2012, your visual model, your physical presence, movement and gesture in the classroom, from several perspectives, are worth considering carefully. How you dress, your pronunciation and accent, the coordination of your speech with your overall body movement in providing models of language and general postural presentation, all have meaning. When, as in haptic pronunciation work, you are asking students to synchronize some of their speech and gesture with yours, the nature of what is in front of them visually, can obviously contribute to or detract from instructional effectiveness.

In haptic work, in principle, all aspects of pronunciation can be represented/portrayed or embodied using gesture and body movement. From that perspective then, just modeling a word, or phrase or clause, or passage, involves choreography, demonstrating both the sound but also the gestural complex that represents it. (to see examples of the earlier v4.5 version of the haptic system, check out the models on the website).

The same goes for in-class correction or required homework on the form attended to in class or self-correction by the student. The instructor may present the more appropriate form first, choreographed, and then have the student or students "do" the targeted piece of language/text together (never "repeat after me", always "let's do that together.") All key, necessary pronunciation work is to be embedded, practiced, synchronized with gesture for at least a week or so as homework to insure some degree of anchoring in memory and spontaneous speaking, or at least aural comprehension.

For most kinds of instruction what you look like and how you move can be pretty much irrelevant--one of the reasons I love online teaching!!! For some, however, it does, even if it means just cutting down on "clutter" in the visual field up front.

v5.0 will be out before long. This is, nonetheless, a good first step . . . continually taking a "good look" up front at the dynamic model you are providing for your students, and yourself.

What mouse circadian memory should remind us of (in recalling pronunciation or anything learned earlier)

Mystery partially solved. In doing research on homework efficiency and compliance in pronunciation teaching, something I had never taken all that seriously: If given an option, almost all students seem to prefer to do pronunciation practice/homework after supper, or later, rather than in the morning, before class. (Is that the case with your students as well?) Maybe it is a matter of priorities, save the least important for last; wait until you are incapable of doing much of anything else. (Earlier, when "homework" was mostly mindless drill, that probably made sense.) In fact, for no empirical reason really, other than the possibility of more immediate follow up, we have for years suggested learners do just that . . . schedule pronunciation work later in the day. There is, of course, overwhelming evidence that a good night's sleep does wonders for learning consolidation and memory.

Now an extraordinary study by Hasegawa et al., reported in ScienceDaily, demonstrating that mice,

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at least (and by extension probably all us caffeine-addicted academics), have periods in the day when they are not as good at remembering things as others. Specifically, that period (for mice) just before or around the time they would usually wake up. No surprise there, eh! But what is a surprise is that the contrast is so striking during that brief interval: their memory, especially for recent training, is almost . . . nonexistent. Later, it is "back." Why so? The researchers end the piece wondering why mice--and us probably--would have evolved with that temporary "black hole" in our functional system.

I can tell them. When I first wake up the last thing I want to think about is the training or encounters of yesterday. Give my subconscious a little more time to process that while I attend to my more immediate concerns of survival, for example.

There is also lots of research focusing on learning efficiency of school-age students during different parts of the day, especially those who really don't get going until about noon. Why not the same consideration for when language learning students practice and the types of practice required? Good question.

Back to the mice. Their "task" involved touching a level to get food. During their brief, selective memory-free zone, in exploring what is in front of them, they would touch the level longer, in effect feeling it out, figuring out what it is. If given the task later they touched it immediately and with authority. Haptic pronunciation work involves extensive use of touch in virtually all activities. Our working hypothesis, based on decades of research on tactile memory, is that touch is the link both to integration of the other senses and vividness or strength of recall of phonological element in focus. We have, however, always observed great variability in learners' reports of their experience of that touch, in terms of intensity and impact.

It is about "time" we investigated that further!


Full citation:
University of Tokyo. (2019, December 18). Forgetfulness might depend on time of day. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 5, 2020 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191218090152.htm

I like the way you move there! (Why haptic pronunciation teaching is so attractive!)

Do you like your students? Really? If you do, can they tell? If you don't, do they know? Do you like
teaching pronunciation? Does it show?

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If your answer to any of those 6 questions is "I don't know . . . ,"  A meta-analytic investigation of the relation between interpersonal attraction and enacted behavior, by Montoya, Matthew; Kershaw and Prosser, summarized by Neurosciencenews.com, may be of interest. What they did is look at a bunch of studies, done on "hundreds" of cultures, trying to find universally recognized human behaviors that signal attraction (e.g., I like you!) Those nonverbal behaviors that (they claim) are universal are: 

• Smiling
• Eye contact
• Proximity (getting close in space)
• Laughter

Now, of course, how those behaviors are actually conveyed in different cultures may be quite different, but it is a fascinating claim. The summary goes on: 

"Other behaviors showed no evidence of being related to liking, including when someone flips their hair, lifts their eyebrows, uses gestures, tilts their head, primps their clothes, maintains open body posture or leans in." (Some of those at least intuitively seem to be related to attraction, at least in North American or Northern European cultures.)

One of the other, most striking findings (to me, at least) is that mimicking (or mirroring) and head nods were only associated with attraction in English. In other words, if your nonverbal messaging or expectations of students in the classroom relies to any extent on mirroring (of you or of your mirroring of them) or head nodding--and for the native English speaking instructor it certainly will to some degree--there can be a very real affective mismatch. 

Any native English speaker who has taught in Japan, for instance, can easily have their perception of audience engagement scrambled initially, when those in the audience sit (apparently) very still, with less body movement or mirroring, and nod heads for reasons other than just understanding or attraction. 

The intriguing implication of that research, in terms of haptic pronunciation teaching and training, is that both head nods and mirroring figure in very prominently in the teaching methodology, in effect making it perhaps even more "English-centric" than we had imagined. In most instances of modeling or correction of pronunciation, for example, a student "invited" to synchronize his or her upper body movement with the instructor or other students, as they repeat the targeted word, phrase or clause together. Likewise, upper torso movement in English and in the haptic system accompanies or drives head nodding, often referred to as upper torso nods, in fact.

In other words, the basic pedagogical process of haptic pronunciation work is, itself, "attractive," involving nonverbal "synchronization" of head and body in ways that enable acquisition of at least English. The only other language that we have done some work in to date is Spanish, but its "body language" is, of course, closely related to English. 

Even if you are not entirely "attracted" to haptic yet, this research certainly lends more support for the use of mirroring in English language instruction, especially pronunciation. (Nod if you agree!)



Source:
“A meta-analytic investigation of the relation between interpersonal attraction and enacted behavior” by Montoya, R. Matthew; Kershaw, Christine; & Prosser, Julie L. in Psychological Bulleting. Published May 8 2018. doi:10.1037/bul0000148

Out of touch and "pointless" gesture use in (pronunciation) teaching

Two recently published, interesting papers illustrate potential problems and pleasures with gesture use in (pronunciation) teaching. The author(s) both, unfortunately, implicate or misrepresent haptic pronunciation training.

Note: In Haptic Pronunciation Training-English (HaPT-Eng) there is NO interpersonal touch, whatsoever. A learner's hands may touch either each other or the learner holds something, such as a ball or pencil that functions as an extension of the hand. Touch typically serves to control and standardize gesture--and integrate the senses--while amplifying the focus on stressed syllables in words or phrases.

This from Chan (2018): Embodied Pronunciation Learning: Research and Practice in special issue of the CATESOL journal on research-based pronunciation teaching:

"In discussing the use of tactile communication or haptic interventions, they (Hişmanoglu and Hişmanoglu, 2008) advise language teachers to be careful. They cite a number of researchers who distinguish high-contact, touch-oriented societies (e.g., Filipino, Latin American, Turkish) from societies that are low contact and not touch oriented (e.g., Chinese, Japanese, Korean); the former may perceive the teacher’s haptic behavior (emphasis mine)as normal while the latter may perceive it as abnormal and uncomfortable. They also point out that in Islamic cultures, touching between people (emphasis mine) of the same gender is approved, but touching between genders is not allowed. Thus, while integrating embodied pronunciation methods into instruction, teachers need to remain constantly aware of the individuals, the classroom dynamics, and the attitudes students express toward these activities."

What Chan means by the "teacher's haptic behavior" is not defined. (She most probably means simply touching--tactile, not "haptic" in the technical sense as in robotics, for example, or as we use it in HaPT-Eng, that is: gesture synchronized with speech and anchored with intra-personal touch that provides feedback to the learner.) For example, to emphasize word stress in HaPT-Eng, in a technique called the "Rhythm Fight Club", the teacher/learner may squeeze a ball on a stressed syllable, as the arm punches forward, as in boxing. .

Again: There is absolutely no "interpersonal touch" or tactile or haptic communication, body-to-body, utilized in  HaPT-Eng . . . it certainly could be, of course--acknowledging the precautions noted by Chan. 

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A second study, Shadowing for pronunciation development: Haptic-shadowing and IPA-shadowing, by Hamada, has a related problem with the definition of "haptic". In the nice study, subjects "shadowed" a model, that is attempted to repeat what they heard (while view a script), simultaneously, along with the model. (It is a great technique, one use extensively in the field.) The IPA group had been trained in some "light" phonetic analysis of the texts, before attempting the shadowing. The "haptic" group were trained in what was said (inaccurately) to be the Rhythm Fight Club. There was a slight main effect, nonetheless, the haptic group being a bit more comprehensible.

The version of the RFC used was not haptic; it was only kinesthetic (there was no touch involved), just using the punching gesture, itself, to anchor/emphasize designated stressed syllables in the model sentences. The kinesthetic (touchless) version of the RFC has been used in other studies with even less success! It was not designed to be used without something for the hand to squeeze on the stressed element of the word or sentence, making it haptic. In that form, the gesture use can easily become erratic and out of control--best case! One of the main--and fully justified--reasons for avoidance of gesture work by many practitioners, as well as the central focus of HaPT-Eng: controlled, systematic use of gesture in anchoring prominence in language instruction.  

But a slight tweak of the title of the Hamada piece from "haptic" to "kinesthetic", of course, would do the trick.

The good news: using just kinesthetic gesture (movement w/o touch anchoring), the main effect was discernable. The moderately "bad" news: it was not haptic--which (I am absolutely convinced) would have made the study much more significant--let alone more memorable, touching and moving . . .

Keep in touch! v5.0 of HaPT-Eng will be available later this summer!

Haptic Pronunciation Teaching Workshops in Japan!

We are now scheduling workshops in Japan between June 19th and 26th. If your school would like to host a half-day, Haptic Pronunciation Teaching workshop, let us know, as soon as possible. We have just those 7 days open.

• The workshops can be morning or afternoon, and can involve up to 200 participants. 

• A nice venue with moveable chairs (no tables) and good sound is all that is required. Materials, including access to web-based video models of all techniques presented, are provided. A video recording of the workshop is also OK. 

• There are 4 different workshops available. One for experienced teachers, one for teachers-in-training, one for teachers with little or no background in pronunciation teaching, and one for high school age learners and older.

• Cost for the workshops begins at $500 CAD (40,000 yen), depending on audience size.

• If interested, contact us by comment here or at: info@actonhaptic.com! (If your school is in some other country, we will be available for another "tour" Spring, 2019!)

Teaching EnglishL2 advanced conversation (with hand2hand prosodic and paralinguistic "comeback")

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We'll be doing a new workshop: "Pronunciation across the 'spaces' between sentences and speakers."  At the 2018 BCTEAL Conference here in Vancouver in May. Here is the summary:

This workshop introduces a set of haptic (movement + touch) based techniques for working with English discourse-level prosodic and paralanguistic bridges between participants in conversation, including, key, volume and pace. Some familiarity with teaching of L2 prosodics (basically: rhythm, stress, juncture and intonation) is recommended.

The framework is based to some extent on Prosodic Orientation in English Conversation, by Szczepek-Reed, and new features of v5.0 of the haptic pronunciation teaching system: Essential Haptic-interated English Pronunciation (EHIEP), available by August, 2018. The innovation is the use of several pedagogical movement patterns (PMPs) that help learners attend to the matches and mismatches of prosodics and paralanguage between participants in conversation that create and maintain coherence and . . . empathy across conversational turns.

For a quick glimpse of just the basic prosodic PMPs, see the demo of the AH-EPS ExIT (Expressiveness) from EHIEP v2.0.

The session is only 45 minutes long, so it will just be an experiential overview or tour of the set of speech-synchronized-gesture-and-touch techniques. The video, along with handouts, will be linked here in late May.

Join us!

Touching pronunciation teaching: a haptic Pas de trois

Wikipedia.org

For you ballet buffs this should "touch home" . . . The traditional "Pas de trois" in ballet typically involves 3 dancers who move through 5 phases: Introduction, 3 variations, each done by at least one dancer, and then a coda of some kind with all dancing.

A recent article by Lamothe in the UK Guardian, Let's touch: why physical connection between human beings matters, reminded us of some the earliest work we did in haptic pronunciation teaching that involved students working together in pairs, "conducted" by the instructor, in effect "touching" each other on focus words or stressed syllables in various ways, on various body parts.

In today's highly "touch sensitive" milieu, any kind of interpersonal touching is potentially problematic, especially "cross-gender" or "cross-power plane", but there still is an important place for it, as Lamothe argues persuasively. Maybe even in pronunciation teaching!

Here is one example from haptic pronunciation teaching. Everything in the method can be done using intra-personal and interpersonal touch, but this one is relatively easy to "see" without a video to demonstrate the interpersonal version of it:

• Students stand face to face about a foot apart. Instructor demonstrates a word or phrase, tapping her right shoulder (with left hand) on stressed syllables and left elbow (with right hand) on unstressed syllables--the "Butterfly technique". 

As teacher and students then repeat the word or phrase together,

• One student will lightly tap the other on the outside of the her right shoulder on stressed syllables (using her left hand).

• The other student will lightly tap the outside of the other student's left elbow on unstressed syllables (using her right hand). 

Note: Depending on the socio-cultural context, and depending on what the general attire of the class is, having all students use some kind of hand "disinfectant" may be in order! Likewise, pairing of students obviously requires knowing well both them individually and the interpersonal dynamics of the class. Consider competition among pairs or teams using the same technique. 

If you do have the class and context for it, try a bit of it, for instance on a few short idioms. It takes a little getting used to, but the impact of touch in this relatively simple exercise format--and the close paralinguistic "communication"-- can be very dramatic and . . . touching.

Keep in touch!

Object fusion in (pronunciation) teaching for better uptake and recall!

Your students sometimes can't remember what you so ingeniously tried to teach them? New study by D’Angelo, Noly-Gandon, Kacollja, Barense, and Ryan at the Rotman Research Institute in Ontario, Breaking down unitization: Is the whole greater than the sum of its parts?” (reported by Neurosciencenews.com) suggests an "ingenious" template for helping at least some things "click and stick" better. What you need for starters:

• 2 objects (real or imagined) (to be fused together)
• an action linking or involving them, which fuses them
• a potentially tangible, desirable consequence of that fusion

Clker.com

The example from the research of the "fusing" protocol was to visualize sticking an umbrella in the key hole of your front door to remind yourself to take your umbrella so you won't get soaking wet on the way to work tomorrow. Subjects who used that protocol, rather than just motion or action/consequence, were better at recalling the future task. Full disclosure here: the subjects were adults, age 61 to 88. Being near dead center in the middle of that distribution, myself, it certainly caught my attention! I have been using that strategy for the last two weeks or so with amazing results . . . or at least memories!

So, how might that work in pronunciation teaching? Here's an example

Consonant: th - (voiceless)
Objects: upper teeth, lower teeth, tongue
Fusion: tongue tip positioned between teeth as air blows out (action)
Consequence - better pronunciation of the th sound

Haptic pronunciation adds to the con-fusion

Vowel (low, central 'a'), done haptically (gesture + touch)
Objects: hands touch at waist level, as vowel is articulated, with jaw and tongue lowered in mouth, with strong, focused awareness of vocal resonance in the larynx and bones of the face.
Fusion: tongue and hand movement, sound, vocal resonance and touch
Consequence: better pronunciation of the 'a' sound

Key concept: It is not much of a stretch to say that our sense of touch is really our "fusion" sense, in that it serves as a nexus-agent for the others  (Fredembach, et al, 2009; Legarde and Kelso 2006). Much like the created image of the umbrella in the key hole evokes a memorable "embodied" event, probably even engaged with our tactile processing center(s), the haptic pedagogical movement pattern (PMP) should work in similar manner, either in actual physical practice or visualized.

One very effective technique, in fact, is to have learners visualize the PMP (gesture+sound+touch) without activating the voice. (Actually, when you visualize a PMP it is virtually impossible to NOT experience it, centered in your larynx or voice box.)

If this is all difficult for you to visualize or remember, try first imagining yourself whacking your forehead with your iPhone and shouting "Eureka!"

Citation:
Baycrest Center for Geriatric Care (2017, August 11). Imagining an Action-Consequence Relationship Can Boost Memory. NeuroscienceNew. Retrieved August 11, 2017 from http://neurosciencenews.com/Imagining an Action-Consequence Relationship Can Boost Memory/

Bedside manner in (pronunciation) teaching: the BATHE protocol

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Sometime the doctor-patient metaphor does work in our work!

Recovering from recent surgery here at home, and especially recalling the wonderful way that I was treated and prepared prior to the operation by the nurse in pre-op, this study, "Inpatient satisfaction improved by five-minute intervention," summarized by Augusta Free Press, published originally in Family Medicine by Pace, Somerville, Enyioha, Allen, J, Lemon and C. Allen of the University of Virginia really hit home, both as an interpersonal framework for dealing with problems in general and (naturally) pronunciation teaching!

The research looked at the effectiveness of a training system for preparing doctors better for talking with patients, bedside manner. In summary, patient satisfaction went up substantially, and time spent per patient generally went down. The acronym for the protocol is BATHE. Below is my paraphrase of what constitutes each phase of the process:

B - Start with getting concise background information with patients
A - Help them talk about how they are feeling (affect)
T - Together, review the problem (trouble)
H - Discuss how the problem is being handled.
E - Confirm your understanding of the situation and how the patient is feeling (empathy).

That is a deceptively elegant protocol. Next time you have a student (or colleague) or friend approach you with a difficult problem, keep that in mind. That also translates beautifully into pronunciation work, especially where there is appropriate attention to the body (like in haptic work, of course!) Here is how the acronym plays out in our work:

B - Start with providing a concise explanation of the target, also eliciting from students what their understanding is of what you'll be working on.
A - Anchor the target sound in a way that learners get a good "felt sense" of it, i.e., awareness and control of the sensations in the vocal track and upper body
T - Together, talk through the "cash value" and functional load of the target and practice the target sound(s) in isolation and context. 
H - Discuss how the student may be handling the problem already, or could, and what you'll do together going forward, including homework and follow up in the classroom in the future.
E - Finally, go back to brief, active, "physical" review and anchoring of the sound, also providing some realistic guidance as to the process of integrating the sound or word into their active speaking, especially the role of consistent, systematic practice.

One remarkable feature of that system, other then the operationalized empathy, of course, is the way it creates a framework for staying focused on the problem and solution. How does that map on to your own "BATHE-side manner?"

Killing pronunciation 7: Talking learners (and instructors) out of pronunciation change

Credit: Anna Shaw

How do you persuade students to work on their pronunciation--or sell them on it, especially pronunciation-related homework?  If you are using more "distal senses" such as sight and/or sound, according to a new study by Elder, Schlosser, Poor, Xu of Brigham Young University, summarized by Science Daily, you may not have the right approach. If, on the other "hand", your method evokes a more "proximal" sense experience (such as movement, touch and/or taste), you are probably on the right track. (I'm sure you can see where this is headed!)

The BYU study dealt with the impact of advertising on what type of pitch and/sensory imagery seems to get you to make a commitment to buy sooner, rather than later. The actual journal title, So Close I Can Almost Sense It: The Interplay between Sensory Imagery and Psychological Distance, describes the research well. What they found, not surprisingly, is that imagery connecting to or evoking a "felt" somatic response from the body, in effect, draws you in faster, and more effectively.

That does not mean that you DO something physical, only that the imagery on a screen in this case, may get the customer or learner's brain to respond AS IF actual touch or taste was involved, generating a very real feeling or taste-related memory. That mirroring effect, in part entertained by "mirror neurons" in the brain, is well established in brain research. To the brain under most circumstances the distinction between how we feel when we observe and do can be minimal. Turns out our metaphors are more than metaphors, in other words.

Some of the variability here may have to do with our personal instructional style in bringing learners' attention to, in this case, what they need to do outside of class. How do you do that? A list somewhere in the syllabus? An oral announcement? Something written on the board? A brief oral run through of what is to be done? A brief rehearsal w/students of what is to be done? What is very important here is not the actual classroom activity but the imagery that it evokes. And the key to that is what prior schema the classroom event is linking back to--and how, in the moment, it is delivered and experienced.

Pronunciation instruction done right is both an exceedingly physical and meta-cognitive process. What haptic work attempts to do is achieve that balance consistently. There are other ways to do that, of course, but most student textbooks, for example, either don't or can't, in part because the activities are presented and taught in a purely linear fashion. Haptic is ALWAYS simultaneous--sound, movement, and cognition (haptic) engagement, in effect, communicating more intentionally with learners in pronunciation change in and with somatic (body-based) imagery.

Still not sold? Try rereading the blog in the hot tub or on an exercise ball . . .

Full citation from ScienceDaily.com:
Brigham Young University. (2017, June 28). Now or later: How taste and sound affect when you buy: The way ads play on our senses influences the timing of our purchases. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 23, 2017 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170628095858.htm

New Haptic Pronunciation Teaching "Work-inar"!

If your organization would be interested in a 2-hour, highly interactive, experiential webinar on haptic pronunciation teaching (and you should be!), we have the answer! Our new haptic "work-inar" on English pronunciation!

Dates are available beginning in mid-August. The format looks like this:

• Introduction
• Haptic learning
• English vowels and word and phrasal stress
• Rhythm groups and rhythm
• Basic intonation
• Fluency and feedback
• Conversational speed and confidence
• Advanced and discourse intonation
• Integrating "haptic" into the classroom
• Consonants galore (done haptically)
• Q&A

Like all haptic workshops and presentations, it involves a great deal of participant engagement, including mirroring of the pedagogical gestures of the presenter (Bill Acton or colleague) and occasional "dancing" to the various rhythms of the webinar.

There is no charge for this basic v4.0 EHIEP (Essential Haptic-integrated English Pronunciation) webinar--other than the usual, tasteful, low key promotion of all things ActonHaptic.com--although there may be some additional fee attached if it is extensively customized for a local population or if by agreement there is some structured follow up, etc. In late Spring 2018 v5.0 of the haptic pronunciation teaching system and webinar will be rolled out as well!

The idea right now is just to further get out the "haptic word" to the profession.

If that sounds like fun, let us know!

Bill

Good vibrations: Why the kazoo works in teaching intonation!

I frequently find reports of studies that have striking conclusions that I'd really love to believe are valid--but do not provide quite enough detail.  Here's one: Haptic learning system for learning Chinese by Jung, Hwang, and Kyung, Dept. of Digital Media, Ajou University, Korea. A neat little study, nonetheless, one that may suggest some interesting follow up.

Clker.com

The experiment was seemingly straightforward. Subjects in the control group were presented with a  traditional audio/visual presentation of a set of target words and asked to memorize them. (Nothing was published as to exactly what the subjects did on their own from that point.) The treatment group, in addition to the same audio/visual presentation, simultaneously were touching a device that provided them with "feel" or vibrations of different frequencies of the different phonemic tones of the Chinese words as they heard them. Not surprisingly, the "haptic" group performed far better on the subsequent recall test, (p<.05).

Have seen no previous study that used a similar procedure. The popular use of hand-held kazoos in teaching English intonation, however, provides something of the same varied tonal vibrations. Judy Gilbert has been a "Kazoo-enthusiast" for decades, using them in virtually every teacher training workshop. I have been skeptical of their use in the classroom, for a number of reasons, but in teacher training, they definitely have a place.

In haptic pronunciation teaching we use a strong focus on vocal resonance, trying to create as much rich vibration in the bones and sinus cavities as possible to enhance memory for sounds and words, along with controlled gestures, what we term: pedagogical movement patterns. One could easily design an analogous hand-held device that would provide something of the same kind of haptic/tactile input as in the Jung et al. study.  Just need to figure out how to get a similar "buzz" on in our EHIEP haptic research!

If you have an idea how to do that, let us know!

Source: Asia -pacific Proceedings of Applied Science and Engineering for Better Human Life, Vo l.5 (2016) pp.55-59,