The "myth-ing" link in (pronunciation) teaching: Haptic cognition

Nice piece from The Guardian Teacher Network, Four neuro-myths still prevalent in schools, debunked, by Bradley Bush (@Inner_Drive). Now granted, The Guardian is not your average  refereed, first-line journal, but the sources and research cited in the readable piece are credible. Just in case you need a little more information to help your colleague finally abandon any of them, check it out. The four myths are:

Haptic Wolverine, 2016

• Learning styles are important in teaching and instruction
• We use just 10% of our brains.
• Right vs left brain is a relevant distinction in understanding learning and designing instruction
• Playing "brain" games makes you smarter and should have a more prominent place in instruction

So, if those popular "teacher cognitions" are lacking in empirical support, especially the first and third, how should that affect design of instruction? (The fact that the second and fourth just seem so "right" at times when in the classroom, notwithstanding!)

One helpful framework, cited by Bush (and this blog earlier) is Goswami (2008), which argues that learners learn best, in general, when taught using a  multi-sensory, multiple-modality approach. From that perspective, for example, when teaching a sound or process or vocabulary word, as many senses as possible must be brought to the party, either simultaneously or in close proximity:

• Auditory (sound)
• Visual (imagery)
• Kinesthetic (muscle movement and memory)
• Tactile/cutaneous (surface skin touch)
• General (somatic) sensation of vocal resonance throughout the head and upper body. 
• In addition, the potential impact of that is conditioned by the degree of meta-cognitive engagement (conscious awareness on the part of the learner of all that sensory input, plus existing schemas, such as rules, experience and connections to related sounds and language bits and processes). 

How to best do that consistently is the question. The concept of "haptic cognition" (Gentaz and Rossetti, in press) suggests why haptic awareness can function to bring together all those modalities in learning. From the conclusion:

"Taken together, this suggests that the links between perception and cognition may depend on the perceptual modality: visual perception is discontinuous with cognition whereas haptic perception is continuous with cognition." (Emphasis, mine.)

In other words, visual schema, such as charts, colors and even text itself, may actually work against integration of sound, resonance, movement and meaning in pronunciation teaching. Research from a number of fields has established the potentially problematic nature of visual modality overriding auditory, in effect disconnecting sound from meaning. On the contrary, the haptic modality generally serves to unite sensory input, connecting more readily with cognition based in sound, resonance and meaning. 

Another myth then, that of visual explanatory schemas (images and text) being a good approach in pronunciation teaching in textbooks and media--as opposed to active experience of sound, movement and awareness of resonance, plus some visual support, needs serious reexamination. What Gentaz and Rossetti are asserting (or confirming) is that visual imagery may not always effectively contribute to conscious, critical, cognitive integration and awareness in learning--the ultimate goal of all media advertising!

In other words, pronunciation instruction should be centered more on comprehensive haptic cognition. If you are not sure just how that happens . . . ask your local haptician!

(Coincidentally, the name of our company is: Acton Multiple-Modality Pronunciation Instruction Systems, AMPISys, inc.!)

8 ways to teach English rhythm to EVERYbody but no BODY!

Here's one for your "kitchen sink" file (a research study that throws almost every imaginable technique at a problem--and succeeds) . . . well, sort of. In Kinoshita (2015) over the course of a four-week course, students were taught using seven different, relatively standard procedures for working on Japanese rhythm with JSL students. If you are new to rhythm work, check it out.

Those included: rhythmic marking (mark rhythm groups with a pencil and then trace them with their fingers), clapping (hands), pattern grouping (identify type of rhythm pattern for know vocabulary), metronome haiku (listening to and reading haiku to a metronome), auditory beat (reading grouped text out loud), acoustic analysis (using Praat), shadowing (attempting to read or speak along with an audio recording or live person). Impressive! They worked with each one for over an hour.

Not surprisingly, their rhythm improved. It is not entirely clear what else may have contributed to that effect, including other instruction and out of class experience, since there was no control group, but the students liked the work and identified their favorite procedure, which apparently aligned with their self-identified cognitive/learning style. Although after having done that many hours of rhythm work it had to be a bit difficult for the learner to  assess which technique they "liked" best, let alone which actually worked best for them individually.

Of particular interest here are the first two techniques, marking rhythm and tracing along with a finger, and clapping hands--both of which are identified as "kinaesthetic" by Kinoshita. (The other techniques are noted as combinations of auditory and visual.) They are, indeed, movement-and touch-based. The first at least involves moving a finger along a line. The second, clapping hands, could, in principle, involve more of the body then just the hands, but it also might not, of course.

Neither technique, at least on the face of it, meets our basic "haptic" threshold--involving more full-body engagement and distinctly anchoring stressed vowels. By that I mean that including touch in the process does not, in principle, help to anchor (better remember) the internal structure of the targeted rhythm groups--in fact it may serve to help cancel out memory for different levels of stress, length and volume of adjacent syllables. (There have been several blogposts dealing with this topic, one recently and the first, back in 2012 that focused on how haptic "events" are encoded or remembered.)

In essence, the haptic "brain" area(s) are not all that good at remembering different levels of pressure applied to the same point on the body. In other words, it is more challenging, for example, to remember which syllable in a clapped or traced rhythm group was prominent. (The number of syllables involved may be another matter.) So, to the extent that rhythm cannot or should not be divorced from word and phrasal stress, Kinoshita's two procedures probably are not contributing much variance to the final "progress" demonstrated.

That is not to say that more holistic,"full body" techniques such as "jazz chants", poetry, songs or dance, such as those promoted by Chan in her paper in the same conference proceedings (Pronunciation Workout), are not useful, fun, engaging, motivating and serve functions other than acquisition of the rhythm of an L2. 

A basic assumption of haptic work is that systematic body engagement, involving the whole person,  especially from the neck down, is essential to efficient instruction and learning. (Train the body first! - Lessac). v4.0 will include extensive use of "pedagogical dance steps" and practicing of most pedagogical movement patterns (gesture plus touch) to rhythmic percussion loops. 

As always, if you are looking for a near perfect "haptic" procedure for teaching English rhythm, where differentiated movement and touch contribute substantially to the process, I'd, of course, recommend begiining with the AHEPS v3.0 Butterfly technique-at least as a replacement for hand clapping. And for most of the other eight as well as matter of fact!


Full citation:
Kinoshita, N.(2015). Learner preference and the learning of Japanese rhythm. In J. Levis, R. Mohammed, M. Qian; Z. Zhou (Eds). Proceedings of the 6th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference (ISSN 2389566), Santa Barbara, CA (pp.49-62). Ames, IA: Iowa State University.

Lying with verbal working memory: the truth about foreign language pronunciation training

ClipArt:
Clker.com

“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar!” (according to  Abraham Lincoln), but according to a recent study by Alloway, et al of University of North Florida, summarized by Sciencedaily.com, 7 year old kids with better verbal working memory (as opposed to stronger visuo-spatial working memory) CAN be--and not only that, but they will probably be better at multitasking and social media and networking and more intelligent as adults!

Wow! Got all that? Sorry. I can't afford the 4-Starbucks-vente-carmel-frappacinno-equivalent to pay for the original article at the expensive Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, title, also courtesy of our friends at ScienceDaily.com (full citation below): Liar, liar, working memory on fire: Investigating the role of working memory in childhood verbal deception. 

Do high VWMs have an unfair advantage in other things, such as learning language and pronunciation as well? Any number of studies certainly suggests that. But can anything be done to level the playing field? Maybe . . .

Reminds me of a note on a back page of an accent reduction website some time ago that said, in effect that if you were happened to be a highly visual learner, as opposed to auditory, it might take you a little longer to fix your accent and cost you a little more money . . . In practice, the company would often turn down extremely "visual" students, based on their simple, online cognitive style questionnaire alone. Actually, my earlier experience in pronunciation and accent work might tend to confirm that, at least in the case of some of the most fossilized among my former students, except for recent fascinating developments in our understanding of both brain plasticity and the "myth" of cognitive or learning style preferences.

Bottom line: learners and their brains can be trained, with less pain than you might imagine, to develop more productive, integrated use of  their "less-preferred" ways or styles of learning. If you doubt that, go to Luminosity.com. Of course the irony here is that just studying language in school, with a few exceptions (cf. the Pimsleur method), requires a relatively higher level of visuo-spatial operating (and seat work) to survive, along with strong verbal (more auditory) working memory. And we wonder why girls are better language learners than boys?

So what does the study suggest for language and pronunciation learning in general? Basically, two things: First, use of visuo-spatial techniques, such as video and graphics--and even simple written text, without rich, integrated verbal practice is potentially more counterproductive than often thought. (No lie!) In other words, just reading explanations and a bit of "disembodied" practice "silently" done half-heartedly may be more than just a waste of time. It can, by taking an easier, more dis-integrated path, even further disconnect the two modalities, (verbal-auditory) sound from (verbal-visual) meaning.

Second, as noted above, because it is now very much possible to train learners to be more effective in modalities other than their favourite(s)--and counter to a number of other recent studies on the problems with multi-tasking--enhanced meta-cognitive, multi-tasking in verbal working memory is still critical to most forms of language learning, but especially pronunciation. How to integrate those key modalities efficiently or at least better has always been the important question.

I realize that is a lot to think about, but, to tell the truth . . . there is, as always here, at least a haptic answer to that question! Haptic pronunciation work, although definitely more visuo-spatial in practice also adds potent tactile anchoring to the mix, which serves to integrate the other two more effectively. One way, but not the only way, of course.

Keep in touch!

Citation:

ScienceDaily.com page: University of North Florida. "Good working memory can make you a better liar." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 20 June 2015. .

What students want: Real-time, on-the-spot, impromptu correction of pronunciation!

Credit: © Terence Mendoza
 / Fotolia

We just finished putting together a proposal to do a conference workshop:

Conducting On-the-spot Corrections of Rhythm, Stress and Intonation: Haptic Baton! 

"This workshop focuses on a haptic (movement + touch) technique for correcting and modelling pronunciation during any classroom activity—using a pencil, much like an orchestra conductor. The key is to include a set of “haptic anchors,” where the baton touches the other hand on stressed syllables of problematic words."

The point of the workshop is to develop a (haptic) technique that " . . . can be done in a relatively unobtrusive manner, a brief pause that provides clarity but will not seriously disrupt the flow or coherence of the classroom activity or lesson." Just ask your students if they'd like more impromptu correction of pronunciation . . . 

 

Now who knows if it will be accepted. (Haptic pronunciation proposals have about a 50/50 chance of being accepted. We still need to get the word out!) But a new study by Smith, Boomer, Zakrzewski, Roeder, Church, and Ashby of University of California, Santa Barbara.. "Deferred Feedback Sharply Dissociates Implicit and Explicit Category Learning," just summarized by Science Daily seems to add support to the use of "real-time" interventions--if done right, of course! 

In essence, what the research suggests is that deferred feedback does not connect well with implicit learning. (Well, actually, there is a great deal more to it than that! The research is actually looking at the nature of the two cognitive systems that we use to learn with, one explicit; the other, implicit.) When ongoing feedback on performance of a sorting task was suppressed or absent, implicit learning was dramatically impeded.

Your in-class, pronunciation teaching feedback protocols in need of a little correction? 

Keep in touch!

Navigating, resetting and remapping pronunciation change

Clip art: Clker

Clip art: Clker

When is a pronunciation "error" or mis-speak so serious that it interferes the developing L2 interlanguage model in the learner's  brain? Some early Behaviorists' models would have (and may still) predict(ed) that avoiding errors of almost any kind is critical. Contemporary theorists and methodologists see that differently, for a number of reasons. When it comes to spatial navigation "errors," (at least in rat brains) research by Valerio and Taube of Dartmouth College summarized by Science Daily suggests that there is a discernable threshold in that regard:

"When the animal makes a small error and misses the target by a little, the cells will reset to their original setting, fixing on landmarks it can identify in its landscape. "We concluded that this was an active behavioural correction process, an adjustment in performance," Taube says. "However, if the animal becomes disoriented and makes a large error in its quest for home, it will construct an entirely new cognitive map with a permanent shift in the directional firing pattern of the head direction cells." This is the "remapping.'"

In haptic-integrated work, coordination of sounds and pedagogical movement patterns is central to the methodology. Numerous blogposts have made that connection, especially as it contributes to how well learners of different cognitive preferences (e.g., visual, auditory, kinaesthetic or tactile) relate to the EHIEP system. We have repeatedly seen an effect analogous to what is described by Valerio and Taube: For some, if the visual model on the screen which learners are moving along with deviates "substantially" from their perspective from the anticipated, regular point in the visual field, they quickly become very frustrated and report that they seem to lose that "node" at least temporarily. Minor deviations, like allophonic variations are ok. 

In this case, to paraphrase Bateson, a difference that (does) make a difference--does make a difference. Rats . . . 

Putting a little more muscle in your (pronunciation) teaching

Clip art: Clker

Clip art: Clker

Every body builder knows that increasing muscle mass requires moving more iron or the equivalent. Turns out, the same principle applies in the brain when learning--in this case, language. In a study by Mårtensson and colleagues at Lund University (summarized by Science Daily) it was shown that in learning a language something analogous happens: certain areas increase more in size, depending on how efficiently the learner acquired the language:

"Students with greater growth (increase in mass) in the hippocampus and areas of the cerebral cortex related to language learning (superior temporal gyrus) had better language skills than the other students. In students who had to put more effort into their learning, greater growth was seen in an area of the motor region of the cerebral cortex (middle frontal gyrus)." (Bold face, mine.) 

In other words, some subjects, probably your average learners, relied upon more motor or tactile/kinaesthetic engagement in the process, whereas the "gifted" appeared able to learn in a more visual/auditory mode, where experiential, oral practice may not have been as critical to success. We all know someone like that, who seems to be able to either read or listen to new language material and almost as if by magic is able to use it immediately in speaking, understanding or writing. They simply have "superior temporal gyrus(es)!" Unfortunate "motor-mortals" like myself  depend more on our "middle frontal gyrus(es)". So much for the myth that learning a language better just requires more hard work. More haptic-integration for the rest of us may help, however . . .

"Funderstanding" how the brain works (and how to change pronunciation)

Rat brain Clip art: Clker 

Are you left or right-brained? (If you don't know,  here is a website that even has a free test to help you figure out which.) If you answered "left" or "right"--and are serious about pronunciation work--you may be working against yourself and your students, best case.  (If you missed the August 21st post on the "Myth of learning styles," you might want to go back and review that one at this point. as well)

Neuroscience has, in general, progressed far past the idea that the left/right brain distinction has any important neurological relevance. Pedagogically, it may be a convenient shorthand for various purposes, but the implication that one's learning style preference characterized from that perspective is relatively permanent and unchangeable finds little if any empirical support today. As discussed in several earlier posts, the continuing discoveries of brain plasticity, multi-site functionality and interconnectedness-- and adaptability have demonstrated that learning style preference is very amenable to retraining and change.

The HICP model of brain function as it relates to pronunciation change is three-dimensional, attempting to reflect more accurately "where" in the brain things "happen" and identifying key functions needed for effective management of the process: (a) left-right dimension is "analytic-holistic," reflecting the input/output processing tendencies of the two hemispheres (parts vs "wholes"),  (b) front-back is "cognitive/visual idetic," representing the pre-frontal cognitive and back visual processing centers which tend to anchor experience more either through "reasoning" or accepting visual images less critically, i.e., seeing is believing, and (c) body/mind or lower/higher, suggesting more body- or emotion-based felt sense, "up" to more "mind-based," less emotionally anchored experiencing.

From that perspective, any pedagogical procedure can be placed within that 3D field, situated using various intensity scales, and used to design and conduct classroom instruction. Ironically, I could not (understandably!) create an adequate 2D graphic here to represent that framework, but you get the picture.

Plastic Brain . . . Pronunciation Change

Clip art: Clker

One of the most striking findings of recent research, such as this 2002 one by on neuroplasticity in motor learning by Ungerleider, Doyon and Karni is not just how the brain works but its inherent plasticity in many respects, its ability to reorganize and relearn or learn in other ways if necessary. One obvious implication of that is that just because students have individual preferences for particular learning styles does not mean they can not, in many cases rather easily, switch to other styles or develop better use of secondary preferences. The danger of cognitive style or learning style categories is . .. that they are categorical. Once we "know" what we are, that's it. (In fact, research suggests that once you know your style, especially based on some simpleminded 5-minute questionnaire,  you become even moreso--one of the basic assumptions of hypnotherapy, of course.)

Bottom line here: even the "adult brain" (and this is especially good news for learners of my generation and beyond) is capable of enormous flexibility and re-generation. So forget all that nonsense that you have heard about having to alter your teaching style to fit those of your students: retrain them instead! Well, actually, you should be constantly training everybody, yourself included, in multiple modality learning. Get HIP(oeces), eh!

Haptic preferences of 5-12th graders (and adult learning style plasticity in pronunciation teaching)

Clip art: Clker

This summary study found that "average" 5-12th graders in the US, Hong Kong and Japan had a relatively balanced learning style profile, with a slight preference for haptic (37%), with auditory at 34% and visual at only 27%. Those results appear to contrast substantially with the "typical" adult learner who tends to be biased in favor of visual with auditory second and haptic a distant third. From that perspective, our goal should be to assist adult learners in developing a more balanced, multiple-modality-based learning style profile more like they had in school. Not sure about the applicability of the research but I certainly like the results. On the face of it, however, that looks like an almost ideal mindset for pronunciation change, a good target for our research and instruction.

The Myth of Learning Styles

Here is a "must-read" on the concept of "learning styles" from Change Magazine, 2010. It begins with an interesting claim: "There is no credible evidence that learning styles exist." 

Although Riener and Willingham focus on the validity of the idea at college-level, their basic claim, that ability, student background and content (including the media in which the instruction is packaged) are far more relevant to instruction than is the potential impact of individual learning style (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc.), is simply dead on. (This is one of those pieces of research that you discover--with which you almost agree with too much--that forces you to smile for the rest of the day!) Enjoy!

Eye dominance and HICP: the "shotgun" approach

For a small percentage of learners and instructors, eye dominance can be problematic. If one is strongly left-eye dominant, some of the  EHIEP protocols and activities can be either ineffective or slightly dis-orienting. EHIEP is based on the concept that discourse prominence, that is phrasal and sentence stress (but not word stress) must be anchored in the right visual field. The reason for that is that, for the right eye dominant, the right visual field and hand are more sensitive and responsive. For an instructor, facing a class, that means that some pedagogical movement patterns have to be done mirror image to what the students will be either doing or observing. Some report they cannot do that effectively.

Up to this point, we have been insisting that the poor, struggling left-eye dominant conform to the majority--most actions terminating in the right visual field. We are now beginning to explore the possibility, perhaps a bit inspired by the Shotgunworld blog, of having the strongly left-eye dominant learner who struggles with the system, instead work to the left, much as does the EHIEP instructor. The advice to the novice "shotgunner" is often to just switch to shooting left-handed. It is not as if  we have been "holding a gun to the head" of some learners . ..  but there are some interesting parallels. It is probably time that we bit the bullet and gave it a shot.

Field independence in haptic pronunciation instruction

As reported in this article by Hecht and Reiner, field dependence/independence cognitive style may have an impact on how readily one is able to "get" the felt sense of a haptically anchored object in virtual reality or through haptic video as well. In HICP terms, that would suggest that the field independent learner should be better able to focus on and recall targeted objects (sounds, words or processes)--without getting too engaged or distracted by any one modality involved or feature of the visual field--bringing as much information and cognitive integration to the event as possible.

Clip art:
Clker

There is a fascinating interplay involved here. The "danger" of haptic-based or other "physical" techniques is that the learner may be so engaged with the somatic experience that the learning objective or structure in focus is lost or at least not well connected. Field independence suggests the possibility of better cognitive/noncognitive balance in the experience. On the face of it, that does seem to explain why some learners (although not many) find haptic work less effective or efficient. For example, they may be able to remember the pedagogical movement pattern (PMP) associated with a vowel but not the pronunciation. Likewise, a learner's over-enthusiastic, dramatic or emotional response in anchoring a targeted expression, not uncommon in field-dependent individuals, may actually be counter-productive, resulting in relatively poor, limited access and recall later.

Effective multiple modality learning requires that information from all senses being brought to the problem "at hand" are represented appropriately and optimally. EHIEP protocols work only to the extent that instructors and students maintain control and maximal attention in the process. Working with body movement there is always the possibility of things getting a bit "out of hand," but that should be avoided to the extent possible--especially for the more field dependent and hyperactive among us.

How to engage the haptic-o-phobes and the kinesthetically challenged

From this 2011 research by Yang (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Ringberg (Copenhagen Business School), Mao (University of Central Florida), and Peracchio (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), it appears that the secret is to check first as to whether the learner is creative enough to love haptic in the first place. If not, forget it. If so, however, it appears that the sufficiently creative are much more open to working in their non-dominant cognitive styles or modalities. HICP that training in non-dominant modalities is critical for the learner, in many cases explicitly avoiding the learner's primary "cluttered" channel(s) or cognitive style.

Clip art: Clker

So perhaps, we need to do some more creativity training earlier on to engage the dull, unimaginative stragglers, before we ask them to hyper-gesticulate in public . . . or possibly forward them on to a program that better fits their personalities? That should not be too difficult, eh.