TESOL 2014: Why didn't they mention THIS?

As evident in the previous post, it was a good conference for Hapticians and friends. If you work at it and go to a conference with focus, that'll always be the case. A few more post-Portland thoughts:

• The 50/50 rule held. Half of the presentations you attend are good. Half of those involve something that you can take back to your school or classroom. (The other half you can still learn from!)
• Of the roughly 2 dozen refereed presentations related to speaking, listening and pronunciation, a little more than half a dozen provided practical training and techniques. Three of those were haptic. (There were another couple dozen or so unrefereed publishers' sessions pitching books, software and materials.) The others were research-based.
• The three haptic presentations (General workshop, intonation workshop and "fight club" demonstration) were not only packed, but fun. We have do much more of that.
• The reaction to our haptic work was better than in the past, in part because we are getting better at presenting it. We are better now at scaffolding in the "body" training so that few in the audience cannot keep up. (Has taken us a long time to get that right.)
• Haptic work is highly relational. At a conference, when you are trying to connect with your audience, that is great. In the classroom, using the haptic video system (AH-EPS) may be a better strategy, depending on your level of training in pronunciation teaching and the nature of the crowd in front of you. (See several earlier posts on that!)



Clip art;
Clker

• The word, haptic, is finally getting out. That has been our primary objective for the last two years. It is apparently spreading a little better "horizontally" than "vertically" . . . After our workshop, one of the participants came up to me very much excited about what she had just experienced. She begins by commenting that the day before she had been to two workshops on pronunciation by "experts" in the field. Then (using emphatic gesture) she says:

 "Why didn't they mention THIS!!!"

Good question.

Good report on haptic presentations at TESOL 2014!

Haptic Thursday
at TESOL 2014

As mentioned in an earlier blogpost, on the first day of the conference we did all 4 "haptic" pronunciation teaching sessions back to back. (Fellow hapticians had submitted about 16 proposals; that 25% were accepted is about the average for TESOL.) A few general notes on the sessions and responses we received:

A. Audience response was, as usual--and for the most part--very enthusiastic!
B. In two of the sessions, the basic haptic workshop and fluency demonstration, the rooms were jammed with about 100+ people, with many not being able to get in.
C. In the haptic research session and the nonnative-speaker intonation sessions, there were between 30 and 50 participants. (The reference list from those is now available on the website." Many great comments and networking followed for the rest of the conference.

My favourite comments: "That was just . . . fun!" and "Best workshop I've gone to in years!" If you missed us, join us at Cornerstone University next weekend, BCTEAL and TESL Canada in May--or TESOL 2015 in Toronto next March!

Keep in touch!

TESOL-Portland 2014 "Haptic" Schedule!

Let's just call Thursday, Haptic Pronunciation Day, this week at the TESOL convention!

9:30 -11:15 - Convention Center, F152 - Workshop: Essentials of haptic (kinaesthetic+tactile)-integrated pronunciation instruction (Kielstra, Baker, Burri, Rauser, Teaman and Acton)

11:30 - 12:45 - Convention Center, Room F152 - Research-oriented session: Exploring research supporting haptic (movement + touch) pronunciation teaching (Rauser, Acton and Burri)

1:00 pm–2:45 - Convention Center, D134 - Workshop: Teaching basic English intonation by non-native English speaking teachers (Lam, Hong, and Takatsu)

3:00 pm–3:45 - Convention Center, B110 - Practice-oriented session: Speak fast; speak easy: The Fight Club technique (Kielstra and Teaman)

TESL Canada 2014 haptic pronunciation teaching proposals accepted!!!

Credit: TESLCA

This is big! We will be doing at least four "haptic" presentations at the upcoming TESL Canada annual conference in Regina, Saskachewan, May 8, 2014:

Workshop: Basics of Haptic (movement + touch) Integrated Pronunciation Instruction”
    Rauser, VanDyke, Lam and Acton

Teaching linking with touch and Taichi
    Hong, Kliuyeva and Hoekstra

Haptic phonetics for pronunciation teaching
     McWilliams and Makarova

Using haptic-integrated pronunciation with the Academic Word List

    Moulden, Peace and Zeng

If you are going to be there, join us! If not, be happy to send you a copies of the proposals or connect you up with the presenters. As reported earlier, there are also going to be 4 haptic pronunciation teaching presentations at TESOL in Portland in March:

Workshop: Essentials of haptic (kinesthetic+tactile)-integrated pronunciation instruction     Kielstra, Baker, Burri, Rauser, Teaman and Acton

Practice-oriented session: Speak fast; speak easy: The Fight Club technique
     Burns, Serena and Kielstra

Research-oriented session: Exploring research supporting haptic (movement + touch) pronunciation teaching
    Rauser, Acton and Burri

Workshop: Teaching basic English intonation by non-native English speaking teachers
    Lam, Zeng, Hong, Takatsu and Donkor

Keep in touch! (AH-EPS v2.0 will roll out next week!) 

Haptic pronunciation teaching presentations at TESOL 2014 in Portland!

There were at least a dozen explicitly "haptic" pronunciation teaching proposals that were submitted for the convention that I am aware of. (See earlier blogpost on that.) There are also always a number of other "near-haptic" presentations that focus on kinaesthetic techniques and those that involve touch+movement-based procedures indirectly. I'll report on those later, once the program is published. This year, four being done by myself and "haptician" colleagues were accepted:

Workshop: Essentials of haptic (kinesthetic+tactile)-integrated pronunciation instruction

    Kielstra, Baker, Burri, Rauser, Teaman and Acton

Practice-oriented session: Speak fast; speak easy: The Fight Club technique 

   Burns, Serena and Kielstra

Research-oriented session: Exploring research supporting haptic (movement + touch) pronunciation teaching

   Rauser, Acton and Burri

Workshop: Teaching basic English intonation by non-native English speaking teachers

   Lam, Zeng, Hong, Takatsu and Donkor

If you know of any others, please let us know!

See you there!

13 Haptic pronunciation teaching proposals for TESOL 2014!

The Team (of about 30 Hapticians and Hapticians-in-training) has submitted 13 proposals for the 2014 TESOL conference in Portland, in March 2014. Here is are some of the titles/topics:

• Workshop: Essentials of Haptic (kinesthetic+tactile)-integrated pronunciation instruction 
• Workshop: Using haptic-integrated pronunciation with the Academic Word List
• Workshop: Haptic consonant repair
• Workshop: Teaching English intonation by non-native speakers
• Practice-oriented session: Haptic pronunciation modeling with pre-literate L2 adults and children 
• Practice-oriented session: Haptic-integrated pronunciation homework
• Practice-oriented session: Speak fast; speak easy: The Butterfly Technique
• Practice-oriented session: Conversational rhythm: The Fight Club
• Discussion session: Haptic-integrated pronunciation teaching discussion (NNS/EFL)
• Discussion session: Haptic-integrated pronunciation teaching discussion (NS/ESL)
• Research-oriented session: Research basis of haptic-integrated pronunciation instruction
• Research-oriented session: Empirical study of two haptic-integrated protocols
• Research-oriented session: Haptic phonetics for phonetics instruction

Typically we get word on which has been accepted in early October. If you'd like further details on any of those proposals, let me know. (Actonhaptic@gmail.com)

Haptic Pronunciation Teaching @ TESOL 2014 in Portland!

Time to start preparing our proposals for TESOL 2014 in Portland! TESOL 2013 in Dallas will be hard to beat but Portland is also a great venue--and it is a much shorter drive from Vancouver, of course!
At Dallas we had four haptic events: (a) a PCI, (b) a workshop EHIEP intonation for NNS instructors, (c) a workshop a haptic approach for working with the Academic Word List, and (d) a "Breakfast with the Stars," where I got free burritos for talking with a dozen or so around the table about EHIEP!

If you are thinking about going to Portland next March, here are a few of the topics that we have been considering. If you'd like to join as a co-presenter--or do one or something else yourself--let us know:

A. Another PCI on basic of haptic-integrated pronunciation teaching.
B. A paper re-interpreting previous research on gesture in SLA to show how haptic engagement has been there but, in many respects, just "not noticed." (my current project, but would love to share that w/somebody!)
C. Workshop on haptic anchoring of vocabulary (more general than the one last year on AWL)
D. Reports on ongoing research on the effectiveness of EHIEP techniques
E. A workshop on pronunciation homework, with haptic focus
F. Another NNS instructor-oriented workshop on "expressiveness" (i.e., more advanced intonation)
G. fMRI-based study on basic haptic anchoring
H. Haptic approach to teaching contrastive vowel systems in pronunciation teaching
I. Haptic phonetics (I may do that one or get a colleague here to do it!!!)
J. Haptic pronunciation discussion group (usually @ 7:00 a.m.)
K. A booth in the exhibition area (We will have an AH-EPS booth there to sell AH-EPS, of course, but will also try to figure out how to promote and sell other haptic "devices" and instructional programs.
L. Aerobic haptic demonstration (That went so well at BCTEAL in Vancouver that we have to do it at Portland, too!)
M. Poster sessions (There are any number of pieces of the basic EHIEP approach that could be done very effectively in a poster format.
N. Electronic village presentation of AH-EPS (absolutely essential this year.)
O. EHIEP and L2 identity embodiment (a former grad student has great data on that one)
P. Haptic pronunciation modelling in elementary ESL/EFL work (I'm doing a plenary in Korea in January on that topic
Q. Application of HICP principles to the teaching of sound systems of other languages.
R. Workshop on annotating written dialogue (especially with haptic parameters) for use in pronunciation teaching
S. Action research report on EHIEP protocol implementation in college EFL class (the data is available for that now)
T. Research summary report on the basis of HICP (similar to the one Karen Rauser and myself just did in Vancouver)
U. Demonstrations of AH-EPS (a freebee because we'll be paying for a booth at the convention)
V. Demonstrations at the AH-EPS booth throughout the conference (You can't up that on your CV, but it will be fun!)
W. Workshop on basic haptic pronunciation teaching techniques
X. Workshop on using haptic pronunciation techniques with graduate students
Y. Workshop on making your own haptic videos
Z. Get together of "hapticians" who are members of IAHICPR (Was supposed to have an organizational meeting at Dallas but we were having too much fun!)

I could go on . . . but I've run out of letters . . .KIT