HICPR: accent improvement

Showing posts with label accent improvement. Show all posts

Saturday, June 21, 2025

EAPIC AI, AI, AI, AI! (Summer 2025, English Accent and Pronunciation Improvement Course)

The summer course begins with a short recorded introduction available on Youtube, June 26th! (See fuller course description here.) It includes a new AI-generated personalized homework feature (AI, AI, AI, AI!) The link and outline will be available here on the blog.

In about two months make good progress in improving your English accent or pronunciation and be trained in how to keep on after the course--in about 30 minutes a day. This is a 10-week course:

The recorded, 20-minute weekly training lessons are free, available Thursdays on Youtube and Vimeo.
Personalized homework is created by students using Gen-AI (your choice of program; I use Perplexity.) Here is an example of what the AI-generated homework looks like.
The next week on Wednesday at 8 p.m. EST there is a live, optional 60-minute Zoom feedback session on that lesson for those students enrolled in the course (for $200 USD) or teachers who'd like to learn more about the system. The feedback sessions are also recorded.

To really benefit from the course, you should do the assigned daily homework and attend the optional feedback sections. The course officially begins Thursday June 26th, but you can join it anytime and still get caught up! For more info or to enrol, contact me directly: wracton@gmail.com

Keep in touch!

Bill

Monday, July 1, 2013

(AH-EPS) Instructor Accent Enhancement Course!

Have just finished work on a new course for nonnative English-speaking instructors--or native English speaking instructors who would like to add a more "standard" (North American) dialect to their speaking repertoire. It focuses on accent, rather than general pronunciation or intelligibility. It involves the following:

ACTONHAPTIC

Done individually; requires SKYPE or similar video chat technology
10 modules; 4, 30-45 minute assignments per module
10, 30-minute post-module SKYPE sessions (5 with Bill Acton; 5 with one of his colleagues)
Includes all materials (both books and DVD sets)
Initial screening questionnaire submission and 5-minute narrative video speech sample required.
You can begin at any time, and, with approval, may take one break in the course of up to 3 weeks.
Once the course commences, however, its effectiveness depends critically upon consistent regular practice. (Just like you demand of your students!)

The main differences between this course and one we use with non-instructional professionals are that
(a) Assignments from the Instructors Guide are included with each module.
(b) More attention is paid to vowel quality, secondary and unstressed syllables, word-level segmentals, and personal, professional word list development.
(c) Completion of minimum of 3 (of 4) assignments per module is required before the post-module SKYPE video consultation. (In the professional version, only one assignment is required.)

Cost: $960 CAD. Interested? Email us (info@actonhaptic.com) for further information. Enrolment is limited to 10 at any one time.

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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.)