Situated, epistemologically "HIP," pronunciation teaching!

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Hat tip to fellow Haptician, Angelina VanDyke of Simon Fraser University, for this great quote from Brown, Collins and Duguid (1998): 

"A theory of situated cognition suggests that activity and perception are important and epistemologically prior at a non-conceptual level - to conceptualization, and that it is on them that more attention needs to be focused. An epistemology that begins with activity and perception, which are first and foremost embedded in the world, may simply bypass the classical problem of reference-of mediating conceptual representations." (Brown, Collins and Duguid (1998) Situated Cognitions and the Culture of Learning, pp. 28, 29.)

Is that not us (HIP - Haptic-integrated Pronunciation)? Trying to successfully bypass the amount of "hyper-cognition" and "talk about" that often represents itself as sufficient or legitimate, effective pronunciation instruction can be a challenge. 

It's the old (live) chicken and egg (head) conundrum. By the time you finish your explanation (no matter how elegant, engaging and worthy of noticing it be), it is probably too late. 

Enough said . . . 

"Embodiment and Cognitive Science"

Here is a fascinating, extended review of Gibbs (2006) by philosopher, R. Rupert of Colorado University at Boulder. If you are philosophically and "embodimentally" inclined, you will appreciate it. For those who may not be quite there yet, here is a pull-quote from the conclusion of the piece [italics are mine]:

 "In the end, I think research done under the heading of the embodied approach has much to offer more traditional theorists; it pushes cognitive scientists toward considerations that will enhance the traditional program, encouraging its practitioners to build more realistic models (albeit using the standard tools of representation and computation). Time-scales will be smaller. Representations might be sparser in visual processing but more numerous in our conceptual representations (in order to account for the context-dependence of some behavior). Realizations of cognitive states might appear somewhere other than in the brain, or they might appear in different parts of the brain than some theorists would have expected. The pursuit of such a program might yield a clearer picture of how the physical states realizing mental representations come to have that status."

The same could of course be said for the field of pronunciation teaching today. So . . . take your local cognitive phonologist out to lunch! (Unless, of course, he or she is already "there" . . . )

The "Cognitive Phonological" map and Lessac's pedagogical territory

In the linked article by Fraser is something of the Cognitive Phonologists' manifesto: “Pronunciation is primarily a cognitive phenomenon rather than a physiological problem." The CP's approach to teaching and learning pronunciation is, not surprisingly, highly metacognitive, requiring insight, explanation, conscious frameworks, planning and, of course . . . understanding. The driver of change is seen as basically cognitive, not the felt sense of speaking and pedagogical drill and practice. Simply put: ontologically, once the mind is online, the body must follow.

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From a HICP perspective, that is to fall for the classic, map/territory illusion, in Korzybski's words, "the map is not the territory." Even if the map or characterization or origin of the problem is "primarily cognitive," that does not mean that the approach to the solution or treatment "on the ground," in the classroom must be. On the contrary, in many systems of Western (as opposed to Eastern) human behavior change, the effective therapy or training must be considerably more and more noncognitive today, at least at the outset, in effect side-stepping or creating an offsetting balance with the problematic "phenomenon." (See earlier post on "Changing the channel fallacy.")

Lessac's "territorial" manifesto, Train the body first, is admittedly no less directional in design, but it has one enormous advantage . . . it works.

Metalinguistic feedback and "Tell backs" in correcting pronunciation errors

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This interesting paper by Reed and Michaud that illustrates where the field is headed, especially how cognitive phonologists view the priorities of the process of correcting errors in spontaneous speech. The two key strategies are to (metalinguistic) instruct the learner to do something with the piece of sound to fix it, and then (tell back) have the student report back to the instructor in quasi-technical terms what the problem is and the preferred method for fixing it. And then fix it. (I may be overtruncating the process a bit, of course!) For some learners, I'm sure that works, especially those more advanced in EAP programs, where metalinguistic work (talk about language structure and awareness) is the essence of the pedagogical process.

Now haptic anchoring could, in principle, be applied after the student has talked back to the instructor--and I'm sure that would be the response from Reed and Michaud. There appears, however, to be no evidence at present to verify that method in correcting pronunciation, although there is substantial research supporting such metalinguistic "chat" in the areas of grammar and vocabulary. From a HICP/EHIEP perspective, of course, metacognitve reflection for the most part follows haptic anchoring, not the reverse. I don't  find this "tell back" innovation/development a cause for great optimism at this point, but I'm sure that I can be talked out it . . .