Killing Pronunciation 9: Reappraising negative attitudes toward pronunciation

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 Maybe the most consistent finding of research on pronunciation teaching is that (at least from instructors who have yet to recover from structuralism, "communicative language teaching" or cognitive phonology) there are a lot of negatives associated with it (e.g., Baker, 2015 and many others). My approach has always been to stay calm and train teachers in how to do pronunciation well, figuring that success will eventually get them past all the noise out there.

I may have to reappraise that line of march, especially with my Chinese students. Maybe I could do more to attack those negative feelings and perceptions directly. But how?

New research by Wu, Guo, Tang, Shi, and Luo reported in Role of Creativity in the Effectiveness of Cognitive Reappraisal suggests a way to do just that: a little instructor-directed and controlled creativity, something I suspect that only a team from the Beijing Key Laboratory of Learning and Cognition, The Collaborative Innovation Center for Capital Education Development, Department of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China and the Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China--could possibly pull off!

In essence, they confirmed that subjects recognized creativity as a potentially powerful antidote to negative emotions, something that has been established empirically for some time. What was fascinating, however, was that subjects negative feelings about the targeted video scenes could only be "affected" substantially by being led through creative exercises. In other words, they couldn't get past the negatives by doing something creative on their own, themselves, without help. Wow.

Instructor-conducted / creativity-driven / negative attitudes /  toward pronunciation teaching repair/reappraisal (INPRR pronounced: In-P-RR). What a concept! Well, actually, much of what passes for creativity training is instructor-centered, not designed to provide you with the tools but to guide you in thinking outside of the box so  you know what it feels like when it happens. I was really into that for a couple of decades in pronunciation teacher training, in fact. There are still those in the field, like Marsha Chan, who do that well, the "there are all kinds of really creative, fun things you can do when teaching  pronunciation" shtick. Working with kids, that plays well; with adults, on the whole I have always thought it is at best counter productive.  (The reasons for that have been developed on the blog extensively.)

However, I may have it wrong. But rather than training teacher trainees in creative techniques to use in the classroom, I should be doing creative activities with them that address their underlying negative feelings (fear, self doubt, etc.) directly. Some suggestions, most of which I have seen over the years at conferences or on the web. I'll get things started with a few that are research-based (and reported on the blog recently) and then you help by adding to the list your best INPR:

• Have them list all those negative pronunciation-induced emotions on the top of cookies or in chocolate and eat them.
• Lead them in doing your basic OEI switching technique to defuse the emotion if it is really strong. (Done with only one student at a time, in private, however.)
• Have them talk about themselves fearing pronunciation in the 3rd person (See Gollum Speak)
•  Lead them in coming up with a list of all the ways they might overcome such emotions and then have select students read out each expressively and dramatically in their heaviest L1 accent (I like that one!)
• Have them share with each other in pairs their negative feelings toward pronunciation holding a hot beverage. That one is incredibly powerful.
• Then have them report back to the class in pantomime, having the rest of the class guess what it is. 
• You stand up in front of the class and begin listing verbally the unrealistic fears your students may have about pronunciation or those that they may have now but will be "gone" at the end of the course. Also have a list on the board of epithets appropriate for shouting down goofy ideas which the students produce after you state each, possibly accompanied by gesture. 
• Come to class dressed as Sigmund Freud or your neighborhood therapist. Sit in a comfortable chair and answer their questions chewing on a pipe, suggesting hilariously funny solutions to their fears. (I sat in on one of those in Japan that was priceless and exceedingly effective, I think.)
• Have a "Love me, love my accent day" in class where students intentionally speak with stereo-typically heavy accent. (Have seen that recommended a number of times.)

Your turn! I'll award a set of the v4.5 AHEPS DVDs to the contributor of the best one!

Source: 
Retrieved September 18, 2017 from http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01598/full

4 rituals for improving how students feel about their pronunciation

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It is getting to the point now that whenever you need advice on all things related to feeling or doing better, your default is your local "neuroscientist".  A favorite venue of mine for such pop and entertaining council--other than Amy Farrah  Fowler on Big Bang Theory-- is Businessinsider.com. In what is better read as simply "tongue-in-cheek", Eric Barker has a fun piece entitled, "4 rituals that will make you a happier person."

I recommend you read it, if only to get a good picture of where we are headed and how neuroscience is being hijacked by pop psychology, or vice versa . . . 

Those "rituals" are:

• Ask why you feel down. (Once you identify the cause, your brain will automatically make you feel better.)
• Label negative feelings.(That will relocate them in a part of the brain that generally doesn't mess with feelings.)
• Make that decision. (As long as your brain is being managed by the executive center, you are in command and feeling powerful.)
• Touch people. I have always been a fan of oxytocin. Touch, all kinds, including hugging generates it.  

Notice that the first three are not all that far off from the magician's (or psychologist's) basic technique of distracting the audience away from the trick--looking someplace else or looking at the problem through a lens or two to knock off or defuse the negative feelings. 

So, how might this work for changing pronunciation or at least taking on more positive attitudes toward it? For example (avoiding micro-aggressions to the extent possible):

Question: Why do you feel down?  
Answer: Your pronunciation is bad; not inferior, just bad.

Question: Why the negative feelings?
Answer: I have unrealistic expectations or you are a bad teacher.

Question: What decision should you make? 
Answer: Get in touch with my local "haptician" (who teaches pronunciation haptically) or consult my local neuroscientist so I can at least feel better about my pronunciation . . .

Question: How can I get in(to) touch?
Answer: Start here, of course!

Putting the festive and 'fʌn' back in (pronunciation) teaching and testing: The Taylor Swift effect!

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Following an earlier, tongue-in-cheek post on excessive "fear of micro-aggression" in pronunciation teaching, we have an almost equally "deep" (or surreal) potential antidote for the most obvious kind of macro-aggression: testing! Developed by a sociology instructor, Dougherty, at Baylor University (Summarized by ScienceDaily.com) the trick is basically just to bring in "balloons, streamers, treats and music" and call tests "Learning celebrations." There was a little more to it than that, of course--including making items on tests "amusing" . . .  (Of course, just not taking undergraduate sociology too seriously in the first place might be a good place to begin as well.)

But Dougherty does have a point--other than simply bribing students with sugar and creating an atmosphere of "unbearable lightness of being." My son tells a great story of one of his graduate instructors, a phenomenally good lecturer and world famous researcher, who would always serve students homemade cookies before handing out class evaluations and then would play guitar and sing to them while they filled them out--but noting up front that he was in no way attempting to influence their responses . . . 

Making learning fun works, but creating a test that is also a true, formative, fun leaning experience is extraordinary. From the summary, however, it is not at all clear how the sociology test actually contributed to the overall objectives and "delivery" of the course, other than a modest 2 point (out of 100) increase in mean score across semesters. 

I love my work; teaching, for me, is often fun. Making a class "fun and entertaining" is too easy. Making the intrinsic learning experience rewarding and perceived as "fun"--through what is accomplished or learned--is a different matter entirely, although sometimes related. That is especially the case with pronunciation teaching, where the basic tools of explanation and drill and controlled practice are often very difficult to enliven or make at all meaningful. 

In other words, if you can't figure out a way to seriously "embody" fun in the classwork itself, you can at least use Dougherty's approach--which is precisely what so many experienced pronunciation teachers do--especially those trained in earlier affective and holistic methods, such as drama, poetry and music: create a high-energy, fast-moving, entertaining experience to rub off on the grind of mechanical body work required. 

That "rub off" effect is now very well researched in marketing. You may have seen stories in the media where any product in close proximity to a life-size picture of Taylor Swift--regardless of age or whether or not the customer knew who she was--sold better, significantly.  

Your other alternative, of course, is just to "Be Haptic!"

Full citation:

Baylor University. "Tests vs. Fests: Students in 'learning celebrations' rather than exams scored higher and enjoyed themselves." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 25 June 2015. .

Context rehabilitation in (or as a substitute for) pronunciation and accent work

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Part of the system I wrote about in 1984 (Acton 1984) included the almost tongue-in-cheek notion of "context rehabilitation." (See recent, relatively accurate, 2014, outline of that article by Polinedrio and Colon). The idea was to very proactively train students in how to influence the attitudes of their supervisors and co-workers as regards their  improving comprehensibility--while at the same time making substantive, noticeable changes in intelligibility as soon as possible in the program, of course! Some of that came from the early work of Rubin (1975) and others, and work on attending skills, e.g.,  Acton and Cope (1999).  

A recent, very informative review of research on the effectiveness in pronunciation instruction by Thomson and Derwing (2014) concludes with this interesting and revealing comment:  

"In immigrant situations, native speakers of the L2 can be helped to become better listeners as well (Derwing et al. 2002; Kang and Rubin 2012) . . .  Communication is a two-way street, thus L2 speakers’ interlocutors sometimes need support in building confidence that they have the skills to interact with L2 accented individuals." 

Other than the near-comma-splice, love that word "support" in that final statement. It may well be that educational campaigns and law suits to change societal attitudes toward accents will, indeed, in the long run be the most cost-efficient and effective approach to improving intercultural communication--and making much pronunciation instruction less (or ir-)relevant . . .

For a much fuller exploration of that and related themes, get a copy of a great-looking new (VERY EXPENSIVE - $176 CAD in hardcover and I can't find it in paperback yet) book, Social dynamics in second language accent (2014), edited by Levis and Moyer! (My library doesn't have it yet but most of the chapters seem to be obvious continuations of each author's best stuff.) 

Keep in touch. 

Pronunciation "Flow-ency!"

Ran across an interesting note on prerequisites for speaking fluently, posted on the website of the "Effortless English Club": "To speak English fluently, of course you must understand instantly and speak without thinking." It then goes on to pitch its program:"After only 5 hours, most of my seminar students show improvement with their English speaking. They speak more quickly and more clearly. How? Mostly by changing their feelings and beliefs– by developing strong confidence in their English speaking ability." After only 5 hours . . . Wow.

Actually, they may be on to something. We could take the idea of "speak[ing] without thinking" in several directions, including the use of mindless drill,  but what is intended (I think) is closer to "flow," as proposed by Csíkszentmihályi, the experience of "completely focused motivation" -- or being in the zone.

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We have all had the experience of at least temporarily speaking very well about something that we believe in so strongly that the words seem to flow from us almost "without thinking." (One of the parameters of holistic lie detection, on the contrary, is evidence of the interviewee "making things up" on the fly.) In our work, a protocol called the "Rhythm Fight Club"is designed to give the learner a feel for what "being centred, confident and on a roll" is like. (Preliminary findings of a research project on the process are again confirming that effect.)

A couple of nights ago, for the first time, I tried to do a 3-minute talk about haptic research and teaching using RFC "Flow-ency" accompanying or driving everything I said. In part because I had rehearsed the talk a number of times--and it is something that I probably have "completely focused motivation" about, it went very well (at least from my perspective, if not that of the audience!) At least a couple of very partisan observers agreed with that assessment!

I have experimented with the "Flow-ency" technique with learners for a number of years. Will now get it operationalized and more "teachable" as an extension of RFC. If you still haven't signed on as a haptician, try that for a couple minutes sometime with a topic that you are truly passionate about. And keep in touch.

I love it (and me) when I say it that way: Affirming pronunciation errors

The role and impact of mispronunciation are multi-faceted, from how society perceives the lack of fit to the L1, to the learner's attitude toward such forms and how it affects everything from identity to ability to recognize the problem and attempts to improve. The stance of most contemporary theorists is to attempt to downplay the need for high levels of accuracy and help the learner feel more comfortable with errors and general risk-taking, especially if they are clearly developmental in nature, reassuring all concerned that either things will get better soon with some attention to pronunciation-- or society will  eventually "mature" and be more accepting.  

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Now assuming that assuming a more "healthy" attitude toward your errors is beneficial . . .  (Who could argue with that or define adequately what that might mean?) . . . how would you, as instructor, best facilitate that? Recent research by Legault and  Inzlicht of the University of Toronto, and Al-Khindi of Johns Hopkins University, reported in Science Daily, looking at the impact of self-affirmation on response to, and productive engagement with, mistakes, suggests some classroom strategies that may be helpful. In the study, subjects that did a paper and pencil exercise where they listed and briefly justified what they identified were their most important values were subsequently able to perform better on a task that required responding quickly to errors and making appropriate adjustments. (Another treatment group did a similar values-based task but focused, instead, on why the values at the lower end of the ranking were not that significant for them. )

Here is where the Cognitive Phonologists and many contemporary embodiment theorists have it absolutely correct. There are any number of good techniques for setting up that "affirmative" frame of mind or attitude, not just toward errors, but general L2 identity. In AH-EPS, the precision upper body movements and vocal resonance should serve something of the same function. (Our students consistently report tangible changes in self-confidence and "body image.") You're going to love it when you do it this way--make no mistake about it!

Pronunciation feedback: the quicker, the better?

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The research on corrective feedback in language learning is extensive. The conclusions are a mixed bag, at best. I do not recall seeing a study that measured the effect of anticipated feedback, whether immediate or postponed in the literature. I had missed this 2010 study by Kettle and Haubi of the University of Alberta (summarized by Science Daily) where they looked at the impact on test scores when subjects thought that they'd be given immediate, rather than delayed feedback. Those in the first group estimated their performance to be somewhat lower but did better than the latter group, which tended to overestimate their final score.

Pronunciation feedback in general tends to be more postponed, often in the form of notes to the student or critique of audio recordings. In class, real time responses to mispronunciations are less in fashion than during earlier periods when oral accuracy was strongly promoted and learners were often pressed to speak more in class and be immediately corrected than today. In survey after survey, learners desire more spontaneous correction and instructors appear less and less likely to comply.

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A solution to that, one that we (and many others) have developed in haptic-integrated work, is to use a set of gesture-based signals (perhaps including a vowel number) to alert the learner effectively to problematic pronunciation without requiring excessive public performance. That way the learner can immediately note the problem and either deal with it "internally" or go back and work on it later, perhaps talking with the instructor or another source privately, if necessary. Just the impact of that anticipatory attitude on motivation, according to the research, is worth the cost of tuition. Can hardly wait, eh?

Situating pronunciation practice with "directed thinking?"

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So how do you get learners to regularly practice their pronunciation, either as homework or using self-directed spontaneous strategies? There are many approaches, from pleasure to pain, but the most widely tried are strategies such as "getting them to focus on the L2 identity or think about either why they should do it or what their desired outcome will be." Turns out those approaches may not be the best way to do it.

In a  2007 study of strategies for enhancing exercise engagement by sedentary college sophomores by Eyck, Gresky and Lord (summarized by Science Daily), it was found that "directed thinking" about what they could do to increase the likelihood of their being able to do their conditioning routines, that is the actions they could take to facilitate that activity--rather than why they should (desirable outcomes) or the exercises, themselves--produced significantly better results. They had been instructed to first create a list of such beneficial or enabling activities that they could do and then daily, at a regular time, mentally review the list for eight weeks. Exercise persistence and increased levels of conditioning followed.

Perhaps most importantly, the approach of Eyck et al. addresses what are often the most common impediments to practice: scheduling conflicts and manageable "temptations." (May be one reason I have worked with so few "fossilized" accountants over the years!) Having learners plan their week's practice in class is often effective, as is working with the pragmatics of "context management," i.e., how to set up people around you to practice on. From that perspective, there should be no excuse for no practice. 

Good to great pronunciation: the "happiness" model

One of the most challenging aspects of pronunciation work is the "meta-communicative" function of appropriately identifying change and then predicting what is next. I was struck by the analogy between that process and aspects of this 2012 study by Sheldon of University of Missouri-Columbia (Summarized by Science Daily) that suggests that sustaining happiness involves two main factors: " . . .   the need to keep having new and positive life-changing experiences and the need to keep appreciating what you already have and not want more too soon." (The validity of the study may, of course, be compromised by the fact that it involved 481 subjects living in the Riverside, California area . . . )

The criteria underlying that definition of "happiness" are wonderfully revealing, culturally "Californian" and near debilitating. Evolving pronunciation may not be correlated with many positive "life-changing" experiences, but the question of instructor and learner awareness of what the process is and how it is going is often crucial, especially at points such as the move from "good to great." (Collins' 2005 book, Good to Great, a business classic, describes that general threshold well.) In other words, it is often not the target that is the problem, but the surreal expectations involved. Western teaching methodology in general too easily relies on motivation to finish the job--or take responsibility for failure.  

There was a time, of course, when the bar of native speaker-like pronunciation was set impossibly high--for any number of reasons-- but at least it did give one a scale to work with.  But now that at least some (informed theorists and teachers) have accepted the target of "intelligible" speech, it has become easier to "appreciate what you have and not want more . . . " 

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Until there is considerably more change in societal attitudes and human nature, however, problematic pronunciation may still interfere with the need for positive, life-changing experiences, like going from a good job to a great one--or from English class to any job. You and your students happy with that? If not, what do you expect? More importantly, what do you expect them to expect? 

Love of fatigue-inducing drill and perfect pronunciation

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There had to be a term for it. From a 2011 study by O'Hara, FRCS, summarized by Science Daily: "functional dysphonia (FD), a voice disorder in which an abnormal voice exists with no vocal pathology." Two of the key contributing factors were excessive perfectionism and fatigue. Apparently the symptoms of FD can be of several types from change in voice pitch to serious pain. Had any perfectionist students in your classes that (nearly) burned themselves out striving for an unachievable native-speaker model? What that suggests, of course, is not that the targeted model or accent is the sole source of the problem as much as the perfectionist attitude of either the learner or the methodology. Some earlier structuralist or audiolingual pronunciation approaches do, in retrospect, seem to fit that profile. The contemporary default response of resorting, instead, to ad hoc "near peer" models (although they may have the edge on almost everything but desired accent, according to Bernat) or conscious decisions to stop short of what is considered "acceptable pronunciation" by the learner on similar grounds (of fluency or shift in priorities) is probably not the answer either. Talk about functional "dys-pronunciation" . . . 

Giving pronunciation a bad name?

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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" . . .

Disgusting mispronunciation

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If there is one unassailable tenet of contemporary language and pronunciation teaching, it is that risk taking and the inevitable miscues and errors which occur are very good things. Furthermore, only mistakes interfering with "intelligibility" should be attended to, the others left relatively untouched. What "minor" differences between the L1 and L2 remain are at least not the responsibility of instruction and to many theorists are near "illegal" to either point to or even react to. In other words, pronunciation errors are for the most part a strong positive, and learners and society at large should not see or experience them as negative--unless you are still for some reason interested in actually changing or correcting them, one of the implications of research by Sherman and colleagues of the Kennedy School of Government, summarized by Science Daily.

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In that study, it was found that subjects who were higher in the personality trait of sensitivity to "disgust" were by nature better able to perceive degrees of difference in objects positioned in the light~dark spectrum. (Light~dark being associated in most cultures with pure and impure.) The effect was not apparent with other personality traits such as sensitivity to fear, etc. In other words, to detect an error or difference requires an appropriate degree of affective or emotional indexing. I think it is safe to at least speculate that the opposite effect "works" as well: encourage love of errors (or suppress negative reaction to them) and learners ability to attend to them or monitor them erodes correspondingly.

Not to sound like a "purist" here, but could it be that some of the current, renewed interest in pronunciation teaching, especially segmental (vowel and consonant) change, is but an unintended consequence of the profession's often uncritical attitude toward "error-ing"?  Disgusting . . . 

Easing the pain of pronunciation work . . .

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With a little empathy, trust and T.L.C. apparently. According to 2011 research by Michigan State University researcher Sarinopoulos and colleagues, summarized by Science Daily, "The brain scans revealed those who had the patient-centered interview showed less activity in the anterior insula . . . and also self-reported less pain . . . a good first step that puts some scientific weight behind the case for empathizing with patients, getting to know them and building trust."

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Several earlier posts have addressed the critical importance of trust in getting learners to (quite literally) step out of their comfort zones in mirroring the pedagogical movement patterns or gestures of kinaesthetic learning, in general, and haptic-integration in particular. Empathy is perhaps the key to achieving and maintaining that working relationship in the classroom. And one of the most important ways that empathy is signaled, of course, is with . . . synchronized body movement and its impact on brain waves. 

A number of studies have also investigated the link between empathy and learning pronunciation, for example, a 1980 study by Guiora, Acton, Erard, and Strickland, that found that a valium-induced empathy-like state in native English speaking undergraduates resulted in significantly enhanced ability to repeat impossibly difficult phrases in Thai. (Trust me on that one!)

Speaking of pronunciation: We get no respect!

 Have talked about this before, but, obviously, it deserves a little more attention!

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About a decade ago, at the TESOL conference in Long Beach, we had something of a talent show. The topic of the 12-bar blues that I wrote for that evening was the lack of respect afforded the syllable in pronunciation teaching at the time. (Actually, that hasn't changed much since!) Of course there is nothing quite as effective in making you feel better about most anything than singing the blues about it. Turns out there is now empirical evidence that that works--and how! Two studies reported in Science Daily confirm that if you just talk it out, even in the most negative of terms, it'll make you feel better about it, whatever it is. (Granted that may be yet another candidate for the "Well . . . duh!" file.) Anyway, if you want to feel better about your syllables or the fact that we "Pronunciattis" just get no respect, here's an excerpt from  the song: (If you need the other 8 verses to get all the way to feel good, email me!) 

The Syllablues

Oh, I am just a syllable
But I got this vowel in my heart. (2x)‏
Sometimes there’s a consonant
Or even a glide at the start.

Oh but suprasegmentally, you say
I become something else. (2x)‏
Not just a crummy syllable
I can be myself.

Yeah, sometimes I do get stressed, Honey,
Sometimes I don’t. (2x)‏
But when I do, Teacher
Just swish you’d take note.

Yes, my timing as a syllable
Could be more lonely and blue (2x)
If my speech stream wasn’t filled with so many . . . hot
Discourse processes like you.

Hehehe! (De-stressing with high front tense vowels!)

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This should be enough to make you smile--or at least make your students smile . . . 2009 research by Kraft and Pressman, reported by Psychological Science, appears to demonstrate that even faking a smile can be de-stressing. In pronunciation work we often tell students to smile as they pronounce high, front tense vowels, like in "Hehehe!" or when attempting to make the distinction between 's' (as in see) and 'sh' (as in she), slightly rounding the lips on the latter. I'm not saying that that is the best way to fix and s/sh problem necessarily, but sometimes it is helpful. I have also used something similar when working on word-final velar nasals, as in 'ing'. In effect just activating the muscles of the face to look and feel like a smile "orders" the brain to feel better, less stressed, physiologically. For the native speaker, we generally think of facial expression as being driven by attitude or "feelings." For nonnative speakers--and actors--it often happens in the opposite direction, taking on the paralanguage of the other results (if only temporarily) in changes in attitude and personna. Even if you don't believe that is the case, at least smile when you say it. 

Duelling (or dualist) pronunciation approaches and methods

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In a 2012 study summarizing five research studies on the potential effect of mind-body dualism on health by Frostman, Burgmer and Mussweiler, summarized by Science Daily, it was "surmised" that " . . . people primed with dualist beliefs had more reckless attitudes toward health and exercise, and also preferred (and ate) a less healthy diet than those who were primed with physicalist beliefs." It went the other way as well, subjects who were less "physical" tended to hold dualist beliefs as well. From an HICP perspective, that translates to something like: Language instructors who have dualist beliefs tend to have more ambivalent and disembodied attitudes toward pronunciation, and are generally less effective than those with more physicalist beliefs. Now, granted, that is a bit of a stretch, but in my experience it is almost that predictive. It is not a matter of whether instructors are sufficiently "cognitive" in their approach or whether they, themselves, are sufficiently "physical." It is about learner "embodiment" as a central principle of method, where the question becomes moot, where mind and body function as one, at least when it comes to anchoring change. Of course, it helps if they are all  on the same page from the beginning . . . 

Pleasant (physical) pronunciation practice

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Do you generally associate the word "pleasant" with "pronunciation practice?" You should--or could--according to this Penn State University study of the effect of 15 minutes or more of exercise on mood. What the research revealed was that even mild physical exercise results in a temporary "pleasant-activated feeling" which seems to encourage one to keep it up. (Earlier posts looked at the factors involved in general exercise persistence.) Beginning the day or class with a body-based warm up which might include movement and stretching of not only the vocal tract but much of the entire body, for example, (See previous post!), should get things off in a better mood. Add to that various "pleasant"  pedagogical movement patterns accompanying presentation, review, anchoring and correcting of language being focused on in the speaking or listening class and both attitude toward pronunciation--and results can't help but improve. In other words, there should be a felt sense of physical engagement and "exercise" that is ongoing, especially in speaking instruction. That is clearly the case in most good public speaking programs, some even creating an almost dance-like mood to capture the dynamic of speaker and audience rapport and communication. In my experience, even coming back to haptic or just kinesthetic engagement intermittently during a lesson achieves much the same effect. If you do a bit of systematic choreography such that you have physically active anchoring near the end of the class in some form, the overall reaction to the work of the day on the part of the students--and myself!--will inevitably be more positive. Plan on it. 

Transformation and "Transdiagnosis" of pronunciation

Clipart: Clker

Clipart: Clker

In this article from ScienceDaily, summarizing the research of Norton of the University of Houston, it is reported that "Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy" (CBT) for a client who has some "pronounced" anxiety problem--and also focuses appropriately on related psychological phenomena, such as mood, general confidence, self-image or self-awareness--will have the effect of "improving" those as well. The distinction that Norton is making is that even though normally that kind of "collateral" improvement happens anyway, it is substantially stronger when the initial diagnosis and ongoing treatment focuses on them proportionately as well. So what does that mean for pronunciation instruction, especially haptic-integrated work? Essentially, it is a reaffirmation of the "whole person" approach to instruction with one important difference. From the CBT perspective, as in Critical Phonology and other "critical" frameworks, the bottom line is that explicit, 2-way, reciprocal,  interactive connections are made in the mind of the learner between the main focus of "instruction" (in this case, pronunciation) and potential changes in related, generally affective factors such as attitude, motivation, L2 identity, etc. In other words, since a positive attitude enhances pronunciation change, the converse is also the case. As "common-sensical" as that is, the practical implications of that in the classroom are worth considering. If you can at least moderate the bad mood or negative attitude of a learners in class before pronunciation work, should you actively do that? And how? You often will not be able to simply "talk them out of it"-- but with regular, carefully choreographed, Lessac-like, body-based warm ups and haptic-based (movement and touch) exercises--you can, almost invariably. Just do it. 

Explaining haptic-integrated pronunciation work to students

We are doing a workshop today at King George International College in Vancouver. One section of the handout has a helpful set of guidelines to use in talking to students about the system:

• 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 . . .

"Happy" with your pronunciation teaching?

Clipart: Clker

In an earlier post, "New L2 identity and new pronunciation in 40 days!," it was noted that 40 days may be a minimal time period necessary to establish both exercise persistence and new identity. The linked research study summary by Shawn Anchor, and accompanying TED talk, seems to point to what may be an important motivational or affective benchmark along the way as well: 21 days. "What we found was something as simple as writing down three things you're grateful for every day for 21 days in a row significantly increases your level of optimism and it holds for the next six months. The research is amazing. It proves we actually can change." Good to know that (1)  it takes so little time, (2)  it lasts so long--and (3) we can actually change!" Granted, it may be hard to think of 60 more things to be all that haptic  (or happy) to blog about in the next 20 days, but I am optimistic  . . .