Feeling distracted, distant or drained by pronunciation work? Don't be downcast; blame your smartphone!

clker.com

It all makes sense now. I knew there had to be more (or less) going on when students are not thoroughly engaged or seemingly not attentive during pronunciation teaching, mine, especially. Two new studies, taken together, provide a depressing picture of what we are up against, but also suggest something of an antidote as well.

Tigger warning: This may be perceived as slightly more fun than (new/old) science. 

The first, summarized by ScienceDaily.com, is Dealing with digital distraction: Being ever-connected comes at a cost, studies find, by Dwyer and Dunn of The University of British Columbia. From the summary:

"Our digital lives may be making us more distracted, distant and drained . . . Results showed that people reported feeling more distracted during face-to-face interactions if they had used their smartphone compared with face-to-face interactions where they had not used their smartphone. The students also said they felt less enjoyment and interest in their interaction if they had been on their phone."

What is most interesting or relevant about the studies reported, and the related literature review, is the focus on the impact of digital smartphone use prior to what should be quite meaningful f2f  interaction--either dinner or what should have been a more intimate conversation--THE ESSENCE OF EFFECTIVE PRONUNCIATION AND OTHER FORMS OF INSTRUCTION! Somehow the digital "appetizer" made the meal and interpersonal interaction . . . well . . . considerably less appetizing.

Why should that be the case? The research on the multiple ways in which digital life can be depersonalizing and disconnecting is extensive and persuasive, but there is maybe something more "at hand" here.

A second study--which caught my eye as I was websurfing on the iPhone in the drive-through lane at Starbucks--dealt with what seem to be similar effects produced by "bad" posture, specifically studying something with head bowed, as opposed to doing the same with the text at eye level, with optimal posture: Do better in math: How your body posture may change stereotype threat response” by Peper, Harvey, Mason, and Lin of San Francisco State University, sumarized in NeuroscienceNews.com. 

Subjects did better and felt better if they sat upright and relaxed, as opposed to looking down at the study materials, a posture which according the authors . .  "is a defensive posture that can trigger old negative associations."

So, add up the effect of those two studies and what do you get? Lousy posture AND digital, draining distraction. Not only do my students use smartphones WITH HEAD BOWED up until the moment class starts, but I even have them do more of it in class! 

Sit up and take note, eh!

Citations:
American Psychological Association. (2018, August 10). Dealing with digital distraction: Being ever-connected comes at a cost, studies find. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 12, 2018 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180810161553.htm

San Francisco State University (2018, August 4). Math + Good Posture = Better Scores. NeuroscienceNews. Retrieved August 4, 2018 from http://neurosciencenews.com/math-score-posture-9656/

Why feedback on pronunciation (often) fails--and how to make it work better.

Clker.com

We are getting a much better idea from research as to what kind of feedback from teachers seems to produce best results in a range of contexts (various mixes of explanation, modeling and guided practice). Notice that I said SEEMS to produce best results. New research by Winstone and colleagues at the University of Surrey and Aston University (summarized by Science Daily) suggests there may be something else going on here that significantly contributes to the puzzle: what learners DO with the feedback, not the feedback, itself.

In a meta-analysis of a large number of studies in education, they found that the actual form of feedback was not contributing as much variance to results as was how students followed up on that feedback, either on their own, or preferably in some kind of ongoing dialogue with their instructor. Their primary recommendation is that we "talk" with learners more, seeing feedback more as a process rather than an event. If you do process writing, you certainly know what they are getting at.

A good example of "one way" feedback in pronunciation work is a nice study by Darcy and Ewert (2013) where explicit feedback and improvement on suprasegmentals (rhythm, stress and intonation) was associated with the kind of feedback provided. From the absract:

An analysis of classroom treatment recordings demonstrates that explicit phonetic instruction that makes learners notice L2 features (i.e., explicit presentation of contents, guided analysis and
practice, and corrective feedback.

What that research report did not look at systematically is how those four classroom activities actually happened. You could imagine a wide range of "interactivity" between instructors and students going on during any of those. In other words, something worked . . . but why exactly. According to Winstone et al., just listing those classroom pedagogical practices, especially the last does not tell really tell us much--or help us predict how well the same study would go with a different instructor who might be more or less "dialogic" in her teaching style.

In a 2016 study which complements that research, Feedback on second language pronunciation: A case study of EAP teachers beliefs and practices, Baker and Burri examine what EAP teachers believe about feedback and providing it. From the extensive literature review and the data analysis one question or theme in effect, did not even come up: What do students actually DO with the feedback you (or teachers, in general) provide--and how important is that?

That the researchers did not probe that line of inquiry, itself, reflects the near complete absence of research on what students consistently do either in class or out of class with pronunciation feedback, i.e., correction of various kinds. Teachers in the study did see the value of individualized feedback, which, if done face to face, would almost certainly involve monitoring of student response to feedback and a more dialogic approach to exploitation of feedback.

Granted, studying dialogic classroom engagement between instructors and learners to find out what is really going on is both time consuming and expensive, but you almost have to go there to figure out some of this. You can at least do that in your own classroom. 

Baker and Burri conclude by recommending use of oral journaling, for example, where students can be directed in any number of ways to actively work with teacher-provided feedback. That practice is, in fact, quite popular with language instructors in general, but I have been unable to find published research examining, in depth, what learners actually do with feedback in journaling or elsewhere that may significantly impact effectiveness of learning and uptake of targeted forms.

Welcome your contribution of other research sources and  feedback on this! 


Citations:

Baker, A. and Burri, M. (2016) Feedback on second language pronunciation: A case study of EAP teachers beliefs and practices, Australian Journal of Education 41(6). 
Gordon, J., Darcy, I., and Ewert, D. (2013) Pronunciation teaching and learning: Effects of explicit phonetic instruction in the L2 classroom. In J. Levis & K. LeVelle (Eds.). Proceedings of the 4th
Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference. Aug. 2012. (pp. 194-206). Ames, IA: Iowa State University.University of Surrey. (2016, September 21). Research shows that how students engage with feedback is as important as its content. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 2, 2016 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160921084806.htm

Prompt (haptic) pronunciation prompting: Why does that work?

This post is an edited repost of a piece I posted on a list-serve recently, "The dark side of real-time, spontaneous pronunciation correction & feedback." Haptic anchoring of pronunciation change, where we have learners move and speak along with us, would probably be technically termed a type of "prompting" (Lyster and Saito, 2010). The question posed in the post is: How can you know when or why feedback works, based on research studies where what students knew or had been taught before the feedback event is not adequately specified? (In AH-EPS haptic pronunciation work, which emphasizes in-class spontaneous feedback, that connection is fundamental.) 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Have been working through the various studies and meta-analyses of corrective feedback in pronunciation teaching, (e.g., Lyster and Saito, 2010) looking for one feature: What did the students know about the feature in focus before the intervention and when did they learn about it? In other words, if learners have been introduced to the vowels system in some way, we probably will assume that in class correction or feedback on a specific vowel (or even out of class self correction) has a better chance of working. 

 

In all of the studies I have reviewed so far that investigate the range of feedback mechanisms, both in lab settings and in classrooms, I can find almost nothing that adequately characterizes the assumed cognitive schemata or understanding of the learners relative to that phonological feature prior to receiving some kind of feedback. It is occasionally referenced in passing, for example, that students, “had been introduced to X earlier, etc.,” but never in any systematic analysis.  The irony of contemporary theory giving such credence, prima facie, to “behaviours” without reference to what learners may be bringing to the party, must be enough to make the ghosts of Skinner, Lado and friends smile.

Haptic pronunciation work is based on prior, systematic introduction of specific features of the sound system before classroom intervention.  (Some of that is very much “Gilbertesque” in nature.) 

Do you know of an accessible study of classroom correction/feedback where the description of the formal pedagogical approach in place prior to the classroom “event” (or just what students are assumed to have known about the target) is sufficiently detailed and explicit so that the connection between formal (or even informal) presentation/knowledge – intervention--and effect or change is at least traceable? 

-------------------------------------------------------------

I didn't think so . . .  

Pronunciation & body & media fit

Clip art: Clker

If you have been reading the blog occasionally, you are aware of the basis of the EHIEP model: (a) initial pronunciation teaching and (b) practice outsourced to video with subsequent (c) integrated use in the classroom, (d) strong haptic engagement (movement and touch) and (e) somatic or body awareness and training. For the latter piece, body monitoring, maybe what we need is something like the "BodyMedia FIT" system. I love the company's come on line: "Your body talks. We listen." Wish I had the spare change to buy one of those arm bands, just for fun. The research on effectiveness of the technology, using web-based systems,  is interesting. "Body training," in general, is biofeedback of one kind or another. This type of technology could easily be adapted to provide constant feedback on the quality of movement, relaxation, energy expenditure and body resonance. For much less money and hassle--with a modicum of self-discipline and persistence, learners can experience the same kind of integrated experience of speaking and pronunciation change with us. The future, however, is with technology such as this linked to CAPT (see previous post.) and haptic cinema. But if you have difficulty consistently managing your "current classroom body image" and its caloric correlates, consider "arming yourself" with such a band. 

Learning pronunciation by mirroring instructor modeling

The value of mirroring nonverbal behavior is well established in several fields, including counseling psychology and  pronunciation instruction. In EHIEP instruction, students are introduced to 8 sets of pedagogical movement patterns across the visual field that are later used in classroom instruction. Although it is important that their initial experience with the gestural patterns accompanied by articulation of sounds or sound patterns is focused and multiple-modality engaged, it is not critical that they are able to do any of the patterns on their own, without direction of either a video or their instructor. In fact, given what we now know about the potency and behavior of mirror neurons (reported in several earlier posts, such as this one,) it seems less critical that there is some overt response. (There IS some sense to the "comprehensible input hypothesis, after all!)  In fact, an interesting model of that process is the one proposed by NLP practitioners, as in this piece characterizing the five stages of modeling in NLP: "The first phase is identifying an appropriate exemplar as the model of excellence. In phase two the modeller takes an unconscious uptake of patterns demonstrated by the model (this phase ties in with the findings on mirror neurons) avoiding conscious understanding at this stage. Phase three is an evaluative phase based on feedback gained from demonstrating the modelled patterns in the appropriate context." It is often sufficient that students just "get" to phase two, where they have internalized the pattern and can respond to it when later it is employed in instruction for anchoring or recall. At that point the student will only be asked to "move along with" the instructor repeating the sound or word being attended to, but it is probably sufficient just to have attended well enough so that his or her mirror neurons had picked up ("uptaken") and "recorded" or made note of the pedagogical movement pattern earlier. In other words, once well anchored, change just needs consistent practice outside of class and occasional, high value, context-rich, mirrored "re-modeling" in class. Looking good!

Anchoring pronunciation in CALL assessment and classroom

Clip art: Clker

Clip art: Clker

One of the problems with machine-based assessment of pronunciation, particularly of vowel quality and vowel quality setting, is individual variability. Global assessment of pronunciation or intelligibility, such as that employed by the iBT TOEFL, is well established and reliable. In this 2011 doctoral dissertation "An anchoring technique was developed to account for speaker intrinsic pronunciation differences and to allow for meaningful comparisons of vowel pronunciation." That procedure basically solves the problem by creating an efficient model of the individual's vowel system that serves as a point of reference for assessment. The parallel in the (haptic-integrated) classroom is the pedagogical movement pattern, accompanied by articulation of a sound and the felt sense of body resonance. What is important to recognize is that although initially the learner may not have the articulation within acceptable range, the PMP and resonance, along with repeated practice and grounded listening (doing the PMP as you "replay" an example that you have heard, with our without repeating it orally)--and feedback in the classroom by instructor and peers--should do the job. And in the classroom, often just seeing the manner in which the PMP is done by a learner reveals the "problem" with the accuracy of the vowel, for instance. Correctly aligning the PMP (a very indirect and nonthreatening action in the classroom) often almost immediately produces a more approximate vowel articulation. So, "Anchor(ing)s a-weigh, eh!"