Bill Acton's Embodiment Blog: content-based instruction

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Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Context, AI voice technology, haiku and (pronunciation) teaching

Two studies just published and summarized by ScienceDaily.com together illustrate how critical context is to understanding and (pronunciation) teaching. One is on the impact of voice technology; the other, on AI-assisted or created Haiku.

In the first, How voice technology influences what we reveal about ourselves, by Melzner, Bonezzi, and Meyvis, published originally in the Journal of Marketing Research, it was revealed that customers, not surprisingly, will reveal more about themselves, directly or indirectly when responding by speaking to automated systems, rather than interacting on the keyboard with text messaging. Some of that "revelation" is actually paralinguistic (voice characteristics such as pitch and pacing) and background sounds. In other words . . . context.

In the Haiku study, Basho in the machine: Humans find attributes of beauty and discomfort in algorithmic haiku, by Ueda at Kyoto University Institute for the Future of Human and Society, discovered, basically, that subjects rated haiku created by humans collaborating with AI higher, in general, than Haiku created just by AI or humans, but, if they suspected the engagement of AI in the process, the ratings went down. (Exactly how subjects were prompted to check for that is not indicated, but just the very suggestion of possible AI "meddling" had to have a pervasive effect, undermining the validity of the study, potentially skewing the perceptions and expectations of the subjects . . . )

(Full disclosure, having lived in Japan for a decade, I came away with a great appreciation for haiku, such that it gradually became both my preferred genre for reading pleasure and poetic expression.)

How does this all tie together with pronunciation teaching? In both studies, context is critical. In fact, haiku only works when the context is either provided in advance and often explained in great detail OR where the subjects have grown up in . . . well . . .Japan, where the form is encountered from infancy. Great haiku as an art form, itself, generally recreates context (or possible contexts) in the mind of the devotee/reader. In both cases, comprehension is grounded in context, not in the form, itself.

So it is with pronunciation teaching as well. It is possible to work with pronunciation out of explicit context and the sounds or patterns be later available in spontaneous language use, but the treatment has to have almost "haiku-like" in salience for the learner. On the other hand, the immediate context of let's say attention to a consonant, as in the AI voice study, is encoded along with the targeted sound, e.g., the voice characteristics, including stress and disruptive performance markers of student and model, the room ambience, and the neurology and biomes of learners and instructors all--and all either enabling or disabling recall later.

In other words, unless context, in several senses, is working for you or being proactively generated in pronunciation work, the odds are not with you. For that reason, in part, the KINETIK method approach and others like it are designed to consistently embed pronunciation in regular, good course content or personally memorable, engaging narrative of some kind, where the chances of the focus of the work being remembered should be at least better, or at least with less clutter.

O AI, eh? Aye!
O the story is long but . . .
The tail is longer

Sources:

American Marketing Association. (2022, November 30). How voice technology influences what we reveal about ourselves. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 20, 2022 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/11/221130114606.htm

Kyoto University. (2022, December 2). Basho in the machine: Humans find attributes of beauty and discomfort in algorithmic haiku. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 20, 2022 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/12/221201122920.htm

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Content with your pronunciation teaching? Au contraire!

"con-'tent or 'con-tent?" take your pick there! (The correct answer is the latter; however, if you are not really the former, then maybe the latter is the answer!) Upcoming presentation at the JALT 2022 Conference (online) with Steve Caine. "Content-based pronunciation instruction: embodied oral reading."

Oral reading, in some venues and classrooms, still gets a bad rap. Unreservedly so. It is widely used successfully in language learning and beyond. Especially in Japan. When(Japanese) students, for example, are trained to be super memorizers and practiced oral readers in their educational culture almost from birth, despite some of the obvious, potential drawbacks of the practice, remembering the content of an oral reading for most should be a piece of cake , relatively speaking. I have still been unable to find a good comparative study from that perspective, but, after a decade or so teaching in Japan, the relative advantage is quite striking. (If you know of one, please get in touch so I can touch this up!)

The presentation, on the 13th experientially explores the centerpiece of the KINETIK Method: the embodied oral reading, using gesture and touch to enhance memory for content, expressiveness and clarity (pronunciation). The basic idea: All pronunciation work, although important as a secondary objective, should emerge from course content work where memory encoding and access, and expressiveness are the priority.

See you online or in Fukuoka on the 13th!

Bill

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What is haptic pronunciation teaching?

Basically, it is using gesture, touch and movement to teach pronunciation of English (or any language). What makes this method unique is that it is based on controlled and systematic use of gesture in doing that. (Often the problem with gesture use in language learning is that it can be "crazy" or random or intimidating or inconsistent, or not well-developed and tied to clear outcomes.)

The earlier "Essential Haptic-integrated English Pronunciation (EHIEP) approach," now KINETIK, does a better job of enhancing presentation, modelling, feedback and correction. The method is simple and easy to follow. Once a 30-minute module is finished, teacher and students have a set of techniques to use in class anytime a pronunciation problem or opportunity comes up!

Haptic Preliminaries

I often begin workshops or papers with the comment that in about 40 years in the field I have had just one idea: that the systematic use of body movement is essential to effective and efficient pronunciation instruction. That has never been more relevant than today, with the general deemphasis on pronunciation and introduction of technology into the field. From both perspectives, the "haptic" perspective approach developed here offers great promise. I can at least promise you a "moving" experience!

What is the KINETIK Method?

KINETIK is the name of the new v6.0 haptic pronunciation teaching system. About six years earlier we were using the acronym, "Haptic Integrated Pronunciation for Other/Extended Circle English Speakers" (HIPOECES)--still there in the url of this blog!

Haptic-integrated clinical pronunciation is:

A different way to learn pronunciation, based in part on Arthur Lessac’s notion of “Training the body first.” It is also based on research in the use of movement and touch in learning and training. It:

Looks somewhat like a combination of aerobics, sign language and Taichi

Provides a basic foundation for continued, self-directed pronunciation learning and classroom instruction

Designed for use by relatively untrained teachers but appropriate for all teachers (and learners) of all levels

Focuses on pronunciation used in conversation (not all words in English)

Is a highly “brain-and-body-friendly” system that promotes efficient learning of integrated tasks in general

Designed to promote integrated classroom pronunciation instruction and enable integration of conscious pronunciation work into spontaneous speaking.

Introduction

This blog was formerly named: HIPoeces (pronounced 'hI-pƏ-cIs), basically an approach to teaching English pronunciation to speakers of "outer and expanding" circle Englishes (including that population commonly termed: non-native speakers) but also compatible with the use of local models other than simply Standard" American" or RP. Using Kachru's "Inner, expanding and outer circles" model to characterize the breadth of Englishes and speakers of those, HIPoeces (now HICP) systems focus on developing haptically-centered pedagogical models and methods which can be adapted for teaching the pronunciation of various Englishes as they are spoken and taught by "owners" of those varieties.

In theory, the underlying principles can be applied to teaching the sound system of any language. Most language instructors intuitively use a great deal of movement and tactile anchoring in the classroom. The essential question is how to use that resource systematically, especially so that those learners who are less "haptic" in nature are also "moved" by the method.

Simply put, the HICP model/method is based on the idea of speaking along with arm and hand movement, not all that different from that used in sign languages. Most movement patterns are taken from either typical classroom pronunciation instruction practice or from related fields, such as psychotherapy or sports.

Most blog posts link to research that relates to the general HICP model, that is studies dealing with the role of gesture, touch, movement, learning modalities, learning in output, use of the visual field in learning, and experiential learning.

DEFINITIONS:

"Haptic" techniques- procedures that involve both movement and touch (Obvious examples include clapping hands, tapping feet, or holding an object and shaking it to the rhythm of a poem.)

"HICP techniques" - procedures that are haptic and also explicitly coordinated with phonological structures and/or discourse prosody (For example, clapping hands on primary stressed syllables in multi-syllable words, or doing a dance step on key words in conversational turns.)

"Haptic integration"- The haptic dimension probably functions as much to anchor visual and auditory material as it does to assist the learner in getting the "felt sense" of the sound or sound process. Lack of integration into spontaneous speech being such a serious potential shortcoming of instruction, haptic engagement seems a promising bridge to more accurate fluency.

"Visual field" - in HICP extensive use is made of the visual field in front of the learner. (For example, a modified version of the IPA vowel chart is anchored haptically in the imagination of the learner, directly in front of the upper body, and used for several purposes throughout the program.)