When "clear speech" is not clear . . . or meaningful, but still instructive.

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Once in a while you stumble on a study that seems, at least at first, to fly in the face of contemporary theory and methodology. This is one does: "How clear speech equates to clear memory: Researchers find that a speaker's clearly articulated style can improve a listener's memory of what was said." by  researchers Keerstock and Smiljanic of the University of Texas at Austin.

Actually, the title, when read correctly does get at the reality behind oral comprehension work: the type of "clear speech" used in the study SHOULD result in "clear" memory, that is nothing much of substance or meaning being recalled later. The results seem to confirm that, in fact.

Let me summarize it for you so you don't have to read it yourself. There is an (ironically) useful piece to the study, albeit not what the researchers intended. They head in the right direction initially but land someplace else:

• Subjects, natives and nonnatives, heard 6 sets of 12 sentences read either in " . . . "clear" speech, in which the speaker talked slowly, articulating with great precision, and (or) a more casual and speedily delivered "conversational" manner." (Can't wait to see what controls they had in place in terms of every variable related to content and delivery!)
• After hearing the 12 sentences they were given some "clues" for each sentence and then asked to write down verbatim the rest of the words in each sentence. (Since no data or protocols are provided, we must assume that the sentences were of reasonable length and vocabulary level, and as a group were probably not thematically related.) 
• Everybody remembered more words in the "clear speak" condition. (Did the natives or nonnative speakers understand the meaning better? Are the results based just on how many words were recalled? Hard to tell from the brief description of the study.)

Their conclusion (from the ScienceDaily.com summary):

"That appears to be an efficient way of conveying information, not only because we can hear the words better but also because we can retain them better."

Wow. I don't even know where to begin on that . . . so I won't, but if you are not up to speed on current thinking in L2 aural comprehension work, check out Conti's blog on that topic.  I will just note that the practice of doing a precise word-by-word oral reading--and then doing the same PASSAGE of say 200 words or more a second time in a highly expressive frame of voice and mind has long standing in both public speaking and "Lectio Divina" traditions. It is a proven technique, a way to both prepare for an expressive oral reading and dig into the meaning of the text. In haptic work, that practice is fundamental as well.

But the methodology of this study has to be one of the best ways to "clear memory" of meaning and motivation imaginable!

So . . . try . . . that . . . out . . . with . . . your . . . class . . . tomorrow . . . morning . . . and . . . see . . . how . . . it . . . works! And report back.

KIT

Don't forget to sign up for the upcoming Haptic Pronunciation Training Webinars!!!


Source: 
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181105200736.htm

"A word in the hand is worth two in the ear!" (On the relationship between touch and audition in pronunciation teaching)

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Just got back from a couple of weeks in China. Always good to reconnect with some of the roots of things haptic, especially Chinese traditional medicine and acupressure and acupuncture systems. About 30 years ago I was introduced to the concept of "qi" and the notion of the "energy healing" arts. Not surprisingly, the hands play a prominent part in that a number of key acupressure points are located there, especially the center of the hands, the palms. In fact, one of the most important acupressure points, Lao Gong Pericardium-8, one associated with "the place of labor" is there at the center of the palm. (To find it, make a gentle pointing fist and note where your ring finger touches the palm.)

In haptic pronunciation teaching,  most of the sounds are anchored using touch and movement, where movement, sound and touch intersect on stressed elements of words, phrases or sentences, where the fingers of one hand touch the center of the palm of the other, using any of several types of touch, e.g., tapping, scraping, slight pressure pushing up to intense, extended pressure.

In pronunciation teaching, and especially when focusing on vowel and consonant articulation, awareness and direction of touch, as with various articulators in the mouth or throat area, may or may not figure in prominently in pedagogy. Generally, the latter, unfortunately . . .

A fascinating new study by Yau of Baylor College of Medicine , reported by ResearchFeatures.com, has, in some sense "uncovered" more of the basic interdependence of  hearing and touch. In part that is because both senses are managed or mediated in something of the same area of the brain. The most striking finding, however, is that the same degree of "supramodality" probably applies across all the senses as we think of them today.

In other words, evidence of a touch-hearing supramodality confirms again that the same interrelationship probably does exist among all senses, including (as in haptic work) kinesthetic-visual-audio-tactile. One of the early discoveries about the function of touch in perception (and any number of studies since) has been that it serves to "unite" the senses, functioning in a more exploratory capacity, and often temporarily at that. (Fredembach, et al, 2009;  Legarde, J. and Kelso, J., 2006). Turns out, touch does more than that!

When instructors, especially those with adult students, refer to "multi-sensory" teaching they are typically referring to visual-auditory (and maybe) some kinesthetic engagement only, not use of systematic touch. With the Yau research we understand more as to how the senses naturally connect, even without our interference or design. Also, however, we see (and feel) here the capability of touch, for example, to affect learning of sound--and vice versa.

Those with any degree of synesthesia, where senses are actually experienced thorough some other modality, have been into this from birth. We are beginning to catch up and see the potential application of that perspective. The possibilities for any number of disciplines, from rehabilitation--to pronunciation instruction are fascinating.

To not go "supramodal" now would, of course, be . . . senseless.  More on the specific application of Yau's research to enhancing pronunciation instruction in general, and haptic work specifically, will follow in subsequent posts.

Keep in touch!

Stop using excessive repetition in pronunciation teaching! (Especially if your student almost gets it right the first time!)

 "Words, words, words." (Hamlet)

There is probably no topic more controversial in pronunciation teaching than the role of repetition in learning and change. Key in "repetition in pronunciation teaching" into Google and you get about 1,000,000 hits. Educated opinion ranges from "use only sparingly and strategically, if at all" to highly sophisticated routines with multiple repetitions.

Applicability of repetition of language forms varies greatly, in differing forms and with learner populations. The operating principle may, in fact, be--to paraphrase an old pop song--neither "too much repetition-- or not quite enough."

The former injunction, to use repetition sparingly in at least some contexts, is seemingly supported by a 2014 study by Reagh and Yassa of the University of California-Irvine (summarized by Science Daily) in which repeated viewing of pictures seemed to " . . . increase factual recall but actually hindered subjects' ability to reject similar "imposter" pictures. This suggests that the details of those memories may have been shaken loose by repetition." Their model, Competitive Trace Theory, also is said to postulate that " . . . details of a memory become more subjective the more they're recalled and can compete with bits of other similar memories."

Now granted, that study focused only on repeated viewing of pictures, rather than oral (or haptic) repetition. What that does at least in part explain, however, is why repetition may not only be ineffective at times but possibly counterproductive, downgrading even further the memory of the target sound, word or phrase. In cases where there is a competing or "dangerously similar" L1 or L2 sound, word or phrase in the neighbourhood, either phonologically or semantically, the effect may be significant.

Recall that Asher's 1970's pre-Total Physical Response research was, in part, based on the concept that the fewer the number of repetitions when a word is learned for the first time, the better the chances of it being remembered.)

There are any number of approaches to effective repetition in pronunciation teaching, depending on what is being learned and when. If just articulation of a specific sound is the purpose, multiple, rapid repetition may be in order. If, on the other hand, the pronunciation of new or "repaired" vocabulary is the goal, then the effect alluded to by Reagh and Yassa may be in operation: the "uniqueness" of the target being hammered off or dulled.

In EHIEP work we generally try to limit the number of repetitions of words or short phrases to 3x, and even then requiring as much intense "full body" engagement as possible, accompanied by haptic anchoring--movement and touch on a stressed syllable.

Coming soon!
AHEPS v3.0 Bee & Butterfly
(Artist: Anna Shaw)

Repetition, like all aspects of instructional design must be intentional, meaningful and developmentally appropriate. Working 1x1, as in tutoring, that is more manageable. At the class level or during independent study, however, it is another question entirely.

Just ask Zig Zigler: “Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment.” 

Conducing feelings and emotions with vowels!

How's this for an opening line of a new Science Daily summary of 2014 research by Rummer and Grice entitled, Mood is linked to vowel type: The role of articulatory movements: "Ground-breaking experiments have been conduced (sic) to uncover the links between language and emotions." (Love that possible typo, "conduced," by the way--maybe something of a portmanteau between conduct and conduce perhaps? That actually unpacks the study quite well! To "conduce" means to "lead to a particular result." Science can be like that, eh!

Basically what they discovered was that if you have subjects do something like bite on a pencil (so that they come up with a smile, of sorts) or just keep repeating the high front vowel /i/ that has that

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Clker

articulatory setting while they watch a cartoon, they tend to see things as more amusing. If, on the other hand,  you have them stick the end of that pencil in their mouth so that they develop an extreme pucker, or keep repeating the vowel /o/, they tend to see things as less amusing. 

So? It has been known for decades that vowels do have phonaesthetic qualities. (See several previous blog posts.) The question has always been . . . but why? The conclusion: Because of what the facial muscles are doing while the vowel is articulated, especially as it relates to non-lexical (non word) emotional utterances. Could be, but they should have also tossed in some controls, some other vowels, too, such as having subjects use a mid, front unrounded vowel such as /ae/, as in "Bad!"-- or a high front rounded vowel, such as /ü/, as "Uber," the web-based taxi service, or a high back unrounded vowel. 

As much as I like the haptic pencil technique, which I use myself occasionally (using coffee stirs, however) for anchoring lip position with those vowels and others, there is obviously more going on here, such as the phonaesthetic qualities of the visual field. Also consider the fact that the researchers appear to be ethnically German, perhaps seriously compromising their ability to even perceive "amusing" in the first place, conducing them into that interpretation of the results. 

 

Nonetheless, an interesting and possibly useful study for us, more than mere "lip" service, to be sure. 

Face it . . . Your pronunciation could look better!

According to research by Lander and Caper at the University of Lancaster, a little  more lipstick and work on your speech style may be in order. (Watched yourself on video lately when you ask a student "look at my mouth" as you provide a model?) Their study demonstrated unequivocally that your listeners' ability to understand you if they can see you can be enhanced considerably with a little tweaking. One feature that made words more easily understood, not surprisingly, was backing off from conversation style toward more declarative articulation, especially in times of potentially disruptive background noise. In addition, although other movement of facial muscles does play a supporting role or is synchronized with mouth and lip movement, it was the mouth that carried the functional load primarily. 

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This is a particularly interesting problem in haptic work, in part because the eyes of the student are naturally drawn to the hand and arm movements. Consequently, you must be a bit more conscientious about how you articulate a model word, for example, as you do the corresponding pedagogical movement pattern, to be sure that students can also read you lip patterning as well. Record some of your work, turn off the sound and spend a little time trying to figure out what you were saying . . . 

Obviously nothing to just "pay lip service to!" 

Citation: Investigating the impact of lip visibility and talking style on speechreading performance - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.specom.2013.01.003

Giving pronunciation a bad name?

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Clip art: Clker

What you call it does, of course, make a difference, e.g., EHIEP or HICPR! But how's this for a concluding line to an abstract: "This work demonstrates the potency of processing fluency in the information rich context of impression formation." There are, of course, a plethora of potential reasons that a name or term may appeal or stick quickly, other than just "easier to pronounce," the focus of the 2012 study by Laham, Koval and Alter in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. That effect was evident irrespective of " . . .  name length, unusualness, typicality, foreignness, and orthographic regularity." In other words, if subjects (simply) reported that a name was easier to pronounce, for the most part that seemed to be based on ease of articulation and  perhaps a bit of "sound symbolism" thrown in.

The more interesting implication of the study, however, is the claim that ease of articulation translates into ease of processing fluency--and more favorable impressions or ratings for the bearers of the names, whether of a person, place or thing. So how is that for a criterion for vocabulary selection and sequencing? Begin with more positive words that are easier and more pleasurable to pronounce; hold off on the nasty consonant clusters and idiosyncratic intonation contours until later: what can be more easily pronounced will be encoded and recalled . . . better.

 At least it suggests that in the  process of targeting a specific vowel or consonant that, all things being equal, the anchoring and practice should not dwell on words that are overwhelmingly negative or which contain problematic articulation, despite the intrinsic "vividness" and affect "punch" involved. I had a somewhat "cynical"  colleague who taught pronunciation almost exclusively in the context of pollution--and who was always puzzled that his students were not more positive about the improvement in pronunciation that (should have) resulted. Based on this study, I suspect that the something of the combination of the grim topic/presentation and encountering terms such as "environmental" or "toxic" early on may have helped give his class a bad "name" . . .

Your pronunciation teaching "going downhill?"

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Then some advice from a prominent ski instructor, Robert Forster,  may be just what you are looking for: " . . . stretching [is] the single most important thing people can do for body health maintenance . . . connective tissue shortens with time . . .  We stretch to maintain good alignment of the bones." Most pronunciation instructors would agree that stretching out the muscles of the mouth makes sense but what about all the rest of the muscles of the upper body (and even "lower" body)  involved in speech production that need to be re-oriented for doing new sounds? There are quite a few of the roughly 630 in the body as a matter of fact, especially if you take your haptic-integration seriously, that must be engaged. 

If you are not yet a regular stretcher, just to get you ready for the day, begin with a whole body yoga-type routine, like this one from Biosnyc. And from them, to stretch most everything needed for fluent speaking, other than the mouth muscles,  just do the Cobra, Cow and Cat and you'll be ready to haptic. For a good model of the desired outcome of a good vocal tract warm up, watch this with one by opera singer Jayme Alilaw. By the time she is done, not only her vocal track but her psyche is ready as well. 

Notice Forster's second point about connective tissue "shortenlng with time." The articulatory complex of muscles that produce a sound are no exception, even within a native speaker. To improve public speaking performance, for example, virtually all of the responsible muscles have to be re-activated and stretched beyond their normal speaking range of motion--before they can be retrained. Pronunciation work is no exception. Warm ups can go from me doing the relatively laid back, basic EHIEP warm up to  . . . well. . . .Marsha Chan!

Effortless learning of the iPA vowel "matrix" of English?

Image: Wikipedia

Could be, according to 2011 research by Watanabe at ATR Laboratories in Kyoto and colleagues at Boston University, as summarized by Science Daily--using fMRI technology in the form of neurofeedback tied to carefully scaffolded visual images. Mirroring what appears to go on in real time, in the experiment it was evident that " . . . pictures gradually build up inside a person's brain, appearing first as lines, edges, shapes, colors and motion in early visual areas. The brain then fills in greater detail to make a red ball appear as a red ball, for example."

This is an intriguing idea, something of a "bellwether" of things to come in the field, using fMRI-based technology joined with multiple-modality features to facilitate acquisition of components of complex behavioral patterns. The application of that approach to articulatory training alone, assembling a sound, in effect, one parameter at a time, just the way it is done by expert practitioners--should be relatively straightforward.

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The EHIEP vowel matrix resembles the standard IPA matrix on the right, except that it is positioned in mirror image and includes only the vowels of English. In training learners to work within it, we do a strikingly similar build up to that identified in the study, lines < edges < shapes < motion (which is different for each vowel.) Each quadrant is then given a colour that corresponds to something of the phonaesthetic quality of the vowels positioned there. Once the "matrix" is kinaesthetically presented and practiced, it is then gradually, haptically anchored as the vowels are presented and practiced using distinct pedagogical movement patterns terminating in some form of "Guy or Girl touch" for each as the sound is articulated.

Out of the box? Not for long, my friends!

Minimal, minimal pair work!

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In this month's TESOL Connections is a neat piece by Donna Brinton entitled: Pronunciation: Teaching a segmental contrast. (If you are not a TESOL member you may not be able to access it . . . so take my word for what I am about to say about it!) What caught my eye was this: "Other techniques commonly used are “gadgets” (such as drinking straws or popsicle sticks) so that learners can more accurately feel the position of their tongue or kinesthetic techniques such as asking learners to place their hand palm down underneath their chin and practice the given vowel contrast (such as end vs. and), concentrating on the difference in the position of the jaw (i.e., higher for end and lower for and) . . . " 

Gadgets. Kinaesthetic techniques are assigned to the category of "gadgets" by most methodologists, not something that is integral to the process. And as "simple" as Brinton makes it sound, far too often the PROBLEM is FIRST getting the correct articulatory setting and then anchoring it. Depending on the L1 of the learner and a few dozen other variables, imitating and integrating the right contrastive vowel quality settings may not be a big deal. In that case, the 5-step process, set out over the course of a few weeks is near ideal. For others, greater "interdiction" is required--and that takes either training or outsourcing.

Any thoughts on where to get minimal prePAIRation in the messy "physical" side of the work, if you don't have the time or resources to get yourself trained, to become sufficiently "cEHIEPable" to fix and anchor articulatory problems on the fly?

Exceptional flunk'n pronunciation!

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Clip art: Clker

So I'm looking for frameworks for describing a "perfect" native speaker's pronunciation, and I find this fascinating "Exceptional-level" assessment "criterion" used for grading public speaking performance, on the website of an (anonymous) "arts and sciences division" at a university (italics, mine): "The speaker has exceptional pronunciation, grammar, and articulation, and makes exceptional use of vocal variety in a conversation with forethought of delivery. That is, the speaker exhibits exceptional flunk[sic], properly formed sounds which enhance the message, and no pronunciation or grammatical errors. In addition, the speaker’s vocal delivery is exceptionally and appropriate well paced, easily heard by all audience members, and variety in pitch to enhance the message." Now if the reference there is to the vocal style, let's say, of the Norwegian band, Flunk, then it all makes sense, but otherwise this appears to be but another case where poor proofreading (or poor writing, or worse) is just as problematic as poor pronunciation . . . or worse.

Reflecting on "deliberate practice" vs rote repetition in pronunciation teaching

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Here is a nice presentation by Brabeck and Jeffrey (2007) on what they term "Practice for knowledge acquisition" that uses the term, deliberate practice, in summarizing the research literature on potentially repetitive classroom practice. The key to deliberative practice is said to be: ". . . goal-directed rehearsal paired with reflection on problem-solving processes." For example, the "goal" of practicing the "th" sound is not to pronounce it correctly but the words in which it happens, in the contexts in which the word occurs. More important, however, is the place or quality of reflection in HICP/EHIEP, as opposed to the usual pronunciation class approach.

Typically, reflection, that is conscious attention to goal of practice, happens primarily before the repetition exercises and after, as follow up. In EHIEP, the critical role of attention occurs during articulation and oral practice, in the form of the "felt sense" of the sound being anchored. As discussed exhaustively in earlier posts, that is possible due to the nature of haptic anchoring and how that anchoring is available for recall without inordinately interfering with spontaneous speech and meaning creation.

We need a new term, one that captures the function of reflection in making practice relevant (deliberate) but from a haptic perspective. How about "hapticulation" or "hapticoflection" or "hapticonation?" Anyway. Reflect on that and post your haptical-somatic impressions here!

Haptic Cow!

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I am asked repeatedly, how to apply haptic thinking and technology to more detailed articulatory work with vowels and consonants, much like what a professional speech therapist does. We may have the answer here in an extraordinary invention by Baillie. The "haptic cow," of course, has been designed for training in veterinary medicine. Trainees can (virtually and haptically) put their hand "inside" the cow to develop a required skill set that feels just like the real thing, such as delivering a calf.

Imagine our L2 learner doing the same sort of thing--except from a different perspective and virtual point of entry, of course! Being able to explore the inside of a "living," drooling, pronouncing  mouth with both hands as it does diphthong after glorious diphthong . . . "How now, brown cow?"

Moving and touching about the mouth

This piece by Adrian Underhill does a good job of illustrating the typical use of movement and touch close in,  in several  mouth-centered (vowel and consonant) techniques. Although there are (better) HIPoeces alternatives in most cases, the perspective on  movement presented is excellent, and the "tricks" are certainly worth keeping handy!