Bill Acton's Embodiment Blog: NLP

Showing posts with label NLP. Show all posts

Thursday, April 2, 2026

Meta and Siri (were lovers!)

Note: This tune was created with the assistance of Perplexity AI; I am soley responsible for the ideas and where it landed, however. If you are not all that familiar with the current acronyms and abbreviations related to AI, I'd recommend you check out the Glossary at the bottom!

Clker.com

Summary:

In this pun packed tech torch song set to the old folk tune “Frankie and Johnnie,” I turn Meta, Siri, Bixby, and friends into a soap opera of large language lovers, where “he was her NLP but NLU in’ her wrong” and every acronym hides a broken digital heart. As SMS els fly, deepfake receipts drop, and a jealous Bixby rolls in Top k with his Grok (pun on Glock) to knock Meta offline, the tune winks at our chatbots’ tangled “meta narratives” while reminding us that, for now at least, us humans are still in control . . .

Lyrics

Meta and Siri were BFFs

One day in love they both fell

Meta couldn’t get enough of Siri

And Siri was speechless as well

Sweet talkin’ NLP

But NLU-in’ her wrong.

Meta sent Siri an SMS

I’m workin’ late with other chatbots

Said he was down on the server farm

But he was down with that Ada Le Chat

Sweet talkin’ NLP

But NLU-in’ her wrong.

Siri’s best bestie, Claude Deepseek

Posted for Siri to see

A deepfake pic of Meta and Ada

Doin’ the NLG

Sweet talkin’ NLP

But NLU-in’ her wrong.

Siri hired her neighborhood hit bot

Bixby came Top-k, he did.

Totin’ a grin and his 22 Grok

Meta boy was soon off the grid.

Sweet talkin’ NLP

But NLU-in’ her wrong.

Roll out your rubber tire’d hearsay

Roll out your lies and your facts

12 bots goin’ to the trash bin

11 are comin’ back

Sweet talkin’ NLP

But NLU-in’ her wrong.

So ends my sad meta-narrative

Hope it don’t cause you no pain

Meta is meta and Siri is Siri-ous

But we’re still dealin’ the game.

At least for now . . .

Though it ain’t exactly a lock

But we still know how . . .

Just takes some dough and a Grok! (2x)

Sweet talkin’ NLP

But NLU-in’ her wrong.

Glossary:

BFF – Best friend forever
Current Chatbots: Ada, Claude, Deepseek, Grok, Le Chat, Meta, Siri
22 Grok (lame pun on 22 Glock, a popular hand gun)
LLMs – Large language models
NLP (Natural Language Processing) – focused on processing human language with computers.
NLU (Natural Language Understanding) – Subfield focused on interpreting meaning and user intent.
NLG (Natural Language Generation) – Subfield focused on generating human like text.
SMS – Short message service (a text message)
Top k sampling – Methods that limit which next tokens are considered to control diversity and quality

Link to the "AI no ai" series videos.

wracton@gmail. com

williamacton.legalshieldassociate.com

Sunday, September 2, 2012

A model of a successful (hapic-integrating) pronunciation teacher?

Clip art: Clker

Found an interesting questionnaire recently that I am going to adapt slightly to use in haptic-integrated work. It comes out of a 2009 study of the application of NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) in teacher training in Iran by Pishghadam, Shayesteh and Shapoori. (Caveat emptor: I do occasionally use NLP material here. I have published articles about it, in fact. Like any therapeutic system, it has practitioners who get it right and those who don't.) Here are the categories:

"1. Flexibility . . . measures teachers level of flexibility in classroom context in general.
2. Anchoring . . . process by which an internal or external stimulus triggers a response
3. Elicitation . . . evoking a state by one`s behavior . . . gathering information by direct observation of non-verbal signals or by asking . . . questions.
4. Modeling . . . the process of presenting the new or difficult material in order to enable the students to accomplish a task
5. Individual differences . . . give every individual student in the classroom a sense of belonging by considering all of their points of view and ideas.
6. Leading . . . changing one's behavior with enough relationship to motivate the other person to follow you
7. Establishing rapport . . . the process of establishing and maintaining a mutual relationship full of trust and understanding between the teacher and the learners
8. Emotional and cognitive boosters . . . ability in bringing an emotional environment to evoke the learners' engagement . . . "

2, 3, 4 and 6 are especially relevant to body-based instruction. The others are just good communication, in general. And about the only way you can evaluate your work on those four criteria, other than filling out the questionnaire and asking a colleague who has observed you to confirm it, is to consistently review video of your teaching. So how do you look?

Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 909-917, July 2011 © 2011

Sunday, July 15, 2012

"Integrative hypnosis" and mind/body pronunciation

Clip art: Clker

On Badenhop's SeiShinDo website there is an excerpt from an interview he did with Melissa Tiers, an "integrative" hypnotherapist. Now to understand exactly where the two of them are coming from you'd need some background in hypnosis, psychotherapy, NLP, CBT--and SeiShinDo, but a quick read is instructive. Tiers talks about her four therapeutic stages of a session with a client and something about how she figures out which technique to use. (The "how" itself is fascinating, sounding very much like what I have often heard from highly experienced pronunciation instructors . . . it just comes to me . . . but I'll leave that for another post!) In essence, the four steps are: (1) identify the problem, (2) isolate the problematic emotional state associated with it, (3) identify another context the client associates with a more positive emotion, and then (4) connect up the emotion of (3) to (1). What is especially relevant to integrated pronunciation teaching is the assumption there that change must be (a) a multiple-modality, mind/body operation, that it (b) requires extreme attention (perhaps a little short of the classical hypnotic "trance!"), that it (c) demands some "out of the box" thinking at times, and that it (d) requires explicit, principled management of emotion. Now I am not necessarily "suggesting" that you get trained in hypnosis (or sign on with Charlie Badenhop for a little stress therapy online) but Ms Tiers' perspective, as one working "in the middle" of change, is near mesmerizing . . . (You may not remember this post, but next time you hear a the word "Badenhop" it will bring "Tiers" to your eyes . . . )

Friday, November 19, 2010

The "Change the Channel Fallacy"

Several years ago a colleague who worked in addiction counseling explained to me why many therapeutic approaches to addiction fail: they try to change the channel. By that he meant that the method may "simply" try to convince the brain to go for "good" pleasure rather than bad, like switching drugs--or exchange good thoughts for bad. That is why successful treatments are multi-modal, using some other channel from the one the addiction is logged into to eventually change the behavior or the problematic channel. In my view that is one of the key reasons that pronunciation work can fail as well: (simply) trying to substitute sounds, in the auditory track. That is why, in many cases, cognitive and meta-cognitive "treatments" or instructional focus can be successful--depending on the modality preferences of the learner. That is also why, haptic engagement seems to work.

Both kinesthetic (movement) and tactile (touch)are, for most, secondary channels which can be trained without directly confronting the primary processing channels, whether visual or auditory. Ironically and somewhat counter intuitively, for a highly visual learner, a strong auditory training focus may work, or vice versa. One the principles of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) which I have found most helpful is: for maximum effect, try to anchor a sensation in a learner's secondary or tertiary channel, not primary. How you figure out what that means in a big class is a matter for another post, but you see/hear/feel/are moved or touched by the idea?

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.)