Mastering new movement (and pronunciation!): Follow through, follow up or foul up?

Mastery learning has gotten an undeservedly bad rap in many areas of education--but not fo

Clip art:
Clker

r those of us engaged in the "somatic" or bodily arts, where systematic control of movement in training is critical. In athletic or music training it is a given; in contemporary pronunciation work and elsewhere it is a decidedly mixed bag. Articulatory work with learners, for example, can be incredibly difficult. What level of mastery of a sound, for example, is adequate in a given context? More importantly, how can you get there?

A new study by Howard, Wolpert and Franklin (Summarized by Science Daily -  See complete reference below), looked at the function of follow through in learning new movement. Subjects were trained in a new hand movement (grasping and turning a handle of sorts) and a "path" to a resting state for the hand to take after the targeted movement execution. 

What they discovered was that the more inconsistent the movement on the follow-through path, the more the mastery of the targeted movement was compromised: " . . . this research suggests that this variability . . . reduces the speed of learning of the skill that is being practiced . . . "

Keep in mind that this is training in movement, although the parallel to learning in general seems striking. There are analogous practices in various disciplines. In hypnotherapy, for example, what immediately follows the focused training will always be some kind of dis-associative technique to "protect" what has been anchored from distraction and conscious "doubt" or negation.

Following up on a recent post on "distraction," after reading the study, I did a quick review of the pedagogical movement patterns (movement, or controlled gesture, plus touch on stressed vowel) that we use in haptic pronunciation teaching. About half have a prescribed follow through back to a resting posture or state. Interestingly, the ones that do NOT tend to be the more problematic. Definitely requires follow up on my part!

How well  or consistently do you "conduct" the physical side of your teaching, especially pronunciation?  

Full citation:

Ian S. Howard, Daniel M. Wolpert, David W. Franklin. The Value of the Follow-Through Derives from Motor Learning Depending on Future Actions. Current Biology, 2015 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2014.12.037

Anchoring pronunciation: Do you see what you are saying?

Clip art: Clker

Clip art: Clker

You can, in fact--if you are pronouncing a sound, word or phrase using EHIEP-like pedagogical movement patterns, PMPs (gestures across the visual field terminating in some form of touch by both hands.) Not only CAN you, according to research by Xi and colleagues at Northwestern University, summarized by Science Daily, but your eyes strongly interpret for you the "feeling of how it happens." The visual "character" of the dynamic gesture (its positioning, fluidity, distance from the eyes and texture on contact with the other hand) may well override the actual tactile feedback from your hands and proprioceptic "coordinates" of movement from your arms.

In the study, subjects were simultaneously presented with video clips that slightly contradicted what their hands and arms were doing. It was clearly demonstrated that even though subjects were also instructed to ignore the video and concentrate on the actual positioning, movement and related information about touch and weight coming from the hands, the "eyes have it." What they were seeing reinterpreted the other incoming sensory data.

As noted in earlier posts, visual can often override other modalities. What is "new" here and contributes to our understanding of how and why haptic-integration works is that the subjects' perception of the EHIEP sound-touch-movement "event" would appear to be strongly influenced by the style or flair or precision and consistency of the PMP. That has been one of key problems in creating the video models: insufficient clarity and consistency in the execution of PMPs (by me!)

This is both good news and bad news. Good, in that the PMP is, indeed, a potentially a very powerful anchor--and that the visual "feel" of each can contribute substantially to anchoring effectiveness. Bad, in that for maximal effectiveness the video/visual model needs to be exceedingly precise and consistent. (I have explored the use of Avatars instead of me but there are even bigger potential issues there.) Preparing/getting in shape now to do a new set of videos after the holidays, based on this and simular research. Can't wait to see what those feel like!

The pronunciation of vocabulary acquisition

Clip art: Clker

Clip art: Clker

There any number of studies, especially in computer assisted instruction, that include some consideration of the contribution of pronunciation instruction to vocabulary acquisition. Although it is intuitively obvious that knowing the pronunciation of a word (or attention to pronunciation while it is being learned and anchored) helps in learning its meaning and using it later--if only in writing, it is, of course, not essential, as in the case of the deaf or others who can read an L2 reasonable well but have no idea how the words are pronounced.  It has been difficult to find credible empirical research that isolates the "benefit" of pronunciation work to vocabulary acquisition. (If you know of a good study, please link it to this post.) There are many that include some kind of relatively informal student opinion response data from questionnaires on the subject such as this from Huang and colleagues at Taipei Teachers College that focus on general phonological awareness training. Likewise, the case that haptic anchoring enhances learning of new and changed sound seems a relative slam-dunk at this point but how that process also supports vocabulary acquisition may be an even more important question. Anecdotally, from our experience with the EHIEP pedagogical movement patterns and pronunciation teaching experience in general, that seems a near slam-dunk as well. So, how pronounced is your "vocabulary instruction?" More on this in upcoming posts--and hopefully a workshop at the 2013 TESOL Conference in Dallas next March! 

Haptic phonetics for pronunciation teaching

Clipart: Clker

Clipart: Clker

Most would agree that some training in phonetics is essential for both instructor and learner. How and when that is done can vary greatly, of course. (See summary article by Ashby on the LLAC website, for example.) Most consonant work in phonetics instruction involves a substantial amount of kinaesthetic and tactile engagement, directing learner awareness to points of contact and movement of various parts of the vocal tract. (In EHIEP work, the techniques used for basic consonant change are quite standard, although how that new felt sense is anchored once it is established can be quite different, more systematically L2 learner-oriented.) The haptic-based procedures for teaching the vowel system of a language have been designed for presentation and adaptation of the vowels of any language, not just English. Anchoring sounds in the visual field means positioning higher vowels relatively . . . higher, lower vowels relatively . . . lower, front vowels more to the right, and back vowels more to the left. Diphthongs and vowels with off-glides involve movement across the visual field. Tense vowels involve intense concentration on the sound without movement. Lax vowels involve a light tapping of hands with the articulation, etc. (Those are just representative of how movement and the felt sense of vowel resonance and quality can be anchored in the visual field.) I have done demonstrations of haptic-anchored versions the vowel systems of many languages and dialects, including Korean, French, Japanese, Spanish, Russian, various US dialects, often in first anchoring the learner's L1 before moving to English. Will begin posting Youtube comparative vowel systems this fall. Train the body first, but do "Phonhaptic" training right after that!