Your pronunciation teaching going off in all directions? Good!

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At least a-parent-ly! As reported in previous blogposts, semiotically, almost any framework for personality, behaviour, groups or the nature of the visual field can be positioned on north-south, east-west axes. Here's another example. A study by led by Hunter at the University of Virginia, summarized by Science Daily, provides a categorization schema for describing four "family cultures" in contemporary US. Each category " . . . represents a complex configuration of moral beliefs, values and dispositions -- often implicit and rarely articulated in daily life -- largely independent of basic demographic factors, such as race, ethnicity and social class." Here they are, followed by my interpretation of their general "direcction" in parentheses:

 A. The (American, idealistic) dreamers (27%) " . . . defined by their optimism about their children's abilities and opportunities." (North = Externally oriented, more meta-cognitive, extrovert-ish)

B. The (less educated, pragmatic) detached (21%) "Let kids be kids and let the cards fall where they may." (South = Internally oriented, less-conscious, introvert-ish) 

C. The (liberal) engaged progressives (21%) " . . . guided . . . by their own personal experience or what "feels right" to them." (East = Change oriented, creative) 

D. The (conservative/traditional) faithful (20%) " . . . seek to defend and multiply the traditional social and moral order." (West = Stability and structure-oriented) 

The four stereotypes presented in the (necessarily) brief summary are wonderfully artificial--especially in how they covertly reintroduce race, ethnicity and social class, despite the disclaimer, in the form of parenting cultures. (It is worth reading just for the entertainment value. I assume the full research report is still also worth reading for a more complete, scholarly contextualization of the study.) What is relevant is the basic set of four "directions," based on "beliefs, values and dispositions."  The "finding" of the research appears to be that the culture is fracturing, with ominous consequences, of course. Substitute in "learners" for children/kids and "cognitive/behavioural" for progressive/conservative above. 

The same principle applies to any integrated system, including pronunciation teaching, especially how it is experienced by the learner. For an interesting exercise, identify your "coordinates." (In this model a "perfect program" might  even be at 0/0, in fact, although at times in the process it may veer off radically in one direction or another for various intermediate learning outcomes) I'd position EHIEP, by design overall, generally at about 10 degrees North latitude and 20 degrees East longitude. In other words, requiring somewhat more public risk taking/performance and also more ongoing experience of change, but still not too far off center, particularly in reference to language structure and private, "inner speak." 

Getting your colleagues or students "in touch"

Following up on the last post, which focused on getting students to buy in to haptic work, this piece from Lee and Sternthal at Northwestern University makes a similar point but from a different perspective. One conclusion of that research is that the key is matching goals to level of abstraction. For example, to persuade a colleague to try EHIEP, you'd make points like these:

• It covers all the basic English sounds and processes.
• It is appropriate for all learners, even in classes of mixed ability.
• It focuses on intelligibility, not absolute accuracy.
• EHIEP focuses primarily on spoken, conversational pronunciation and style. 
• The EHIEP system, after about two months, sets up learners with a set of strategies for learning the L2, especially getting new vocabulary and working with it to anchor it firmly, and more accurate immediate recall of what was just heard in conversation.
• The EHIEP system is best taught by both instructor and class following along with the videos for the first 8 sessions, about 2 months. After that instructor and learners use the techniques in all classes where oral production is involved.
• And, should all else fail: It is based on Acton (1984) and about 30 years of his research and practice in kinaesthetic learning of L2 pronunciation. 

The application of "haptic" to the system does several things:

• It captures the complete attention of the learner, relying on whole body and whole brain procedures well established in several fields.
• Haptic techniques have been shown in many fields to enhance both encoding new skills and later recall of what was learned.
• Haptic techniques make kinaesthetic learning much more systematic and effective, by ensuring that the movements are performed in the appropriate place and manner consistently. 
• Haptic self monitoring allows learner to attend to their speech without too much distraction or concern about errors and pre-planning in real communication. 
• Haptic-based correction of mistakes is both effective and affectively "comfortable."
• Haptic anchoring (touching hands on stressed syllables) has been shown to be highly efficient in both initial learning of sounds and correction of fossilized errors. 

For students, many of whom may have only limited comprehension skills, the approach would be more like this:

• EHIEP will help you learn and remember vocabulary and pronunciation better.
• All you have to do is follow the instructions.
• It is a good way for the instructor to correct your errors. 
• It is fun, relaxing and easy to do.
• After each class video lesson, you must practice three times a week, in the morning for about 30 minutes before  you come to school. (It is better to practice every other day, not every day.)
• It is based in part on research on touch and movement in computer games and robotics--very much like Wii and iPhone!

And if those points don't work, the default position: Let your body decide. Experience it for a few lessons and then make up your mind. Almost never fails . . . 

Is there a proven, better pronunciation teaching method than HICP?

Not, yet! There has been virtually no empirical research comparing pronunciation teaching methods in the last couple of decades. Linked is a widely quoted article by Derwing and Munro from the 2005 TESOL Quarterly special issue on pronunciation (p.387) that in part explains why:

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"It is somewhat surprising that so few studies have evaluated the efficacy of pronunciation teaching . . . It is all the more remarkable because a popular current paradigm in applied linguistics is the assessment of various approaches designed to have an impact on learners’ productions in other areas of language development . . .We are not suggesting a return to a comparison of methods of the type carried out in the 1960s and 1970s. Rather, we are concerned with matching instructional content to ESL speakers’ needs. That is, we would ask whether the aspects of a learner’s speech that cause problems for intelligibility are the focus of instruction, regardless of the teaching methods employed." 

Do you get that? In other words, from that perspective, and I think that represents the general approach of the field, method in the current "Post-method" era, is (nearly) irrelevant--or there are so many ways that are seemingly equally effective that it probably makes no difference how, as long as you have the right what. The HICP/EHIEP perspective, on the contrary, is that the what is the relatively easy part; good advice on what should be taught for any given population is now readily available. The most pressing question today is how to best assist learners in getting and integrating new and "improved" sounds.

It is comforting to know that we don't have to prove the efficacy or superior effectiveness of HICP methods but we can and we will, nonetheless. Research in a wide range of related fields and several years of experience using it with many different populations suggest that it works exceedingly well. But for the time being, please do take Derwing and Munro's word for it--it's at least as good as any other method out there. Actually . . . there's no comparison!