Selecting a "sound" haptic anchor

So if you were trying to find a good anchor, you'd go to a "Pro," right? Having looked to fishing for paradigms and metaphors a couple times before, will try one more. Here is the Bass Pro Shop's criteria for a good anchor:

(1) Strong craftsmanship
(2) Can be set and re-set quickly and easily under all conditions

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(3) Good holding power (Holds well in all types of bottom: weed, rock, sand, mud.)
(4) Can be stored easily (on deck) -- compact
(5) Can be retrieved easily
(6) Can be released easily and effortlessly from the bottom.
I'm sure you can quickly extrapolate the first four parameters to haptic anchoring of pronunciation.

The 5th and 6th focus on two additional features worth elaborating. Ease of "retrieval" translates to how readily and effectively awareness of the "stored" new sound is triggered later, during conversation or listening. Probably the most important experiential benchmark in haptic-based change is when the learner becomes aware, after the fact, of either correct usage or the lingering mispronunciation. That is often experienced primarily as a body sensation, not a visual or "self-talk" auditory signal that would interfere with communication or relationships!

The final parameter, releasing the anchor, is also important. Haptic anchoring tends to fade quickly--unless practiced and re-experienced frequently--which works out just right for fast, short-term change. So, if your pronunciation teaching seems adrift,  doesn't seem to be "catching," lately, don't throw it overboard . . . just get some better (haptic) anchors.

Disembodied anchoring strategies in pronunciation work

There are good sources of recommendations on how to integrate pronunciation into classroom instruction. Here is a nice 2004 piece by Levis and Grant which covers the basic options. (I recommend reading it before continuing if you are not familiar with that general framework.) Note that after identifying those aspects of pronunciation that should be attended to and setting up teaching contexts, they identify several (mostly visual, aural/auditory, cognitive/noticing) anchoring strategies:

(a) pointing out errors or processes
(b) providing formal rules
(c) oral repetition/practice
(d) writing something down on the board or in notes
(e) student discussion or analysis
(f) impromptu oral comments linking current issue to earlier work
(g) A further assumption is that the effects of relevant context, meaningful practice, communicative "cash value" and student initiative will do the rest. You'd think it would . . .

Clip art: Clker

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Previous blogposts here have explored in great detail why adding haptic-based anchoring is potentially so much more effective than traditional approaches alone which, for the most part, either (1) stop short of guiding the learner to efficient "storage" options for new sounds (with explanations, demands to "notice" or assumptions that uptake is the learner's responsibility, not the instructor's) --or (2) simply attempt to drill the changes into submission. In subsequent posts we will consider how to "hapticulate" or embody some of the strategies described by Levis and Grant.

Pronunciation change: The feeling of what happens

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One of the books (and theorists) that has greatly influenced my thinking on teaching pronunciation, and especially the benchmarks in the process from the learner's perspective, is "The feeling of what happens: Body, emotion and the making of consciousness," by Antonio Damasio. To wildly oversimplify Damasio's main argument: the "feeling" or emotion underlying a thought, in neurological terms, happens before words or images come into awareness. At the time of the publication of the book, over a decade ago, that was a more striking assertion than it is today, of course, but he helped establish (or re-establish in Western thinking) the role of the body and embodiment in consciousness. (Another of his great books, Decartes' Error, earlier set out the philosophical position.)

How that figures in to haptic-integrated, more body-centered pronunciation teaching is that it sets up learner awareness to recognize when a targeted sound is at least being mispronounced--and does it in a way that generally does not disturb ongoing spontaneous speaking. As most would recognize, once a learner begins to recognize or notice the "old" pronunciation in oral output, the "game is afoot" (to quote Sherlock Holmes.)

The feeling, or haptic anchor of the sound will often be felt or experienced by the learner, momentarily, after the "error" occurs--but not before, interfering with thought and conversation. That post hoc (after the fact) monitoring is nearly certain to happen if the anchor has been well established with touch and movement and the learner has accepted the suggestion (in the best sense of hypnotic suggestion) that it is going to happen when constructive change is "afoot!" So "suggest" that benchmark to your students, and see what happens . . . or at least get a feel for it.

TPR (Tempered, Pre-fontal cortex Regulation) Pronunciation

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I'm often asked how HICP/EHIEP relates to Total Physical Response teaching methods. In some sense, one is a mirror image of the other. TPR, very effective in what it does well, focuses for the most part on learners connecting up movement to words and concepts--in that order. HICP, on the other hand, foregrounds movement, ideally creating an experience for the learner where all dimensions of the word are integrated simultaneously, but pedagogically, beginning with movement and then "attaching" sounds, letters and meanings.

The best way to understand what we try to achieve, however, relates to the previous post on juggling and pronunciation. What juggling creates, in part, is a temporary state where some of the conscious executive and planning functions of the brain are at least distracted or taken partially offline (The point of Nike's famous "Just do it!"logo.) Many of those functions are located in the pre-frontal cortex of the brain. By tempering the need to control, monitor and regulate emotional receptivity in the awareness of the learner, we can often capture enough focussed attention to get a sound change registered and more likely to be remembered and recalled later. If you do haptic work, you are hereby commanded to use more TPR!

Bottom-up pronunciation teaching: "Touchinami"

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Here is a 1997 article by Chela-Flores that was influential in forming my understanding of the place of rhythm in pronunciation instruction. Essentially, the position was that pronunciation instruction should be based on rhythm groups, with all other elements seen as fitting within and taught within that structure. Lessons are rhythm-centered; the felt sense of a word has a clear rhythmic identity, etc.

Now, take that concept and add on top of each rhythm group an "intonation group" as characterized nicely by Celik--and a "haptic-anchor" as developed here on this blog--and you have what, in EHIEP  work, we call a "touch-i-nami (from Japanese: touch wave)," a basic pedagogical tool: a rhythm group with a chunk of intonation "on top," well-grounded haptically in memory. Bottoms up!

Hand sensitivity (probably) matters in haptic pronunciation work

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There is a long tradition in various healing arts for "healing touch" and training in how to develop hand sensitivity and awareness of the "energy" of our hands. Hand and eye dominance seem to be parallel. For most, one's dominant eye and hand will be the more sensitive. Earlier posts reported research on analogous "hot" spots in the visual field--which have been incorporated in various ways in aspects the EHIEP/HICP model such as placement of vowel nodes and pitch levels. (We have also researched and experimented with the use of various aromatic hand creams in sensitizing mind and body.)

There are tests of hand sensitivity which may be of helpful in understanding why some learners are better than others in establishing consistent pedagogical movement patterns  in the visual field, anchored by touch. With some type of touch sensitivity training such as this one, the process of working from potent haptic anchors might be improved significantly, at least giving the "haptically challenged" a (better) hand, so to (better) speak . . .