In a word: Global intelligibility vs local comprehensibility in pronunciation teaching

This is interesting. In an excerpt from a chapter in a new book, Teaching and Researching English Accents in Native and Non-native Speakers, (Editors, Waniek-Klimczk & Shockey) by Szpra-Kozlowska, "On the Irrelevance of Sounds and Prosody in Foreign-Accented English," the basic claim is that current focus on prosody and segmentals is "misguided," and that the priority, instead, ought to be on "words whose idiosyncratic erroneous renditions" make them more disruptive to communication. In other words, work on words first and then get to prosody and systematic attention to segmentals--later.

Clip art: Clker

Caveat emptor: I've just ordered the book and can't wait to give that chapter and the two studies it describes a careful read. Just the abstract, introduction and snippet from the chapter, however, are intriguing, especially as it relates to haptic-integrated instruction--and particularly, of course, because I like the conclusion and hope that the report holds up under close scrutiny!

Because of the power and effectiveness of haptic anchoring (hands touching on a stressed syllable of a word or phrase), the concept of the exemplar (as characterized by Lavie, here) is key. My working definition for an exemplar in HICP work is "a single word or phrase that once anchored effectively affects change in words of similar forms inductively and allows the brain to figure out the inherent patterns involved with little or no conscious noticing or meta-cognitive, formal pedagogical rules provided by the instructional program."

Bottom line: The implication would be that with haptic anchoring you can perhaps enable the most efficient enhancement of both intelligibility and comprehensibility by "correcting" individual words as they come up in instruction, rather than by doing an inordinate amount of pre-emptive global work on prosody and segmentals in relative isolation.

And what would Dizzy Dean say to that? "It ain't braggin', Szpra-Kozlowska, if you done it'!" Will report back on this one. KIT!

Pronunciation more than communication?

Clip art: Clker

Clip art: Clker

In yet another study for your "Well . . . duh . . . straw man" file, (Summarized by Science Daily) Trofimovich of Concordia University and Isaacs of the University of Bristol report on a study based on what they term 'comprehensibility': "Understanding accents: Effective communication is about more than simply pronunciation." That question has been the subject of research for decades. That it should be "news" in the popular science press still should not be surprising. Comprehensibility is partially defined, at least in the summary, as simply " . . . linked to vocabulary and grammar." But to what extent is pronunciation just "accent", what is potentially problematic for the listener? The socio-political strategy of educating the public to learn to attend less to accent in some contexts is absolutely valid. But equating or trying to parse the two terms in that manner is a mistake, in a couple of senses. First, as any Linguistics 100 student knows, pronunciation is at least a morpho-phonemic (grammar + phonology) problem. A mispronounced segmental can cause a grammatical ending to "disappear." Conversely, a syntactic breakdown may impact very directly the intonation of the constituent structure. In addition, calling attention to grammar may bring with it even more inherent bias. Second, and more importantly for our work, pronunciation is, indeed, more than just interpersonal communication in how it is experienced by the speaker and the effect that just the act of speaking has on the speaker. For example, resonant, rich, (haptic-integrated) strong pronunciation can have a very positive effect in itself, on both the speaker's state of mind and sense of identity, "intra-personal" communication of a sort, the essence of embodiment.--which in term affects one's attitude toward one's accent. A "pronounced" difference, to be sure.