Darwin award nominees for English pronunciation teaching

Clipart: Clker

You have probably seen a note someplace on the recent research "finding" that men tend to do the idiotic much more frequently than women. That was based, in part, on an analysis of annual "Darwin Award" winners over the years. For those not familiar with those "awards," they are (tongue in cheek) given to someone who " . . . supposedly contributed to human evolution by self-selecting themselves out of the gene pool via death or sterilization by their own actions."

Anyone  devoted to the procedures noted below probably does us all a favour by quickly going out of business as a pronunciation teacher. Here are a few samples, my favourites, of what we might term the "near idiotic" in pronunciation teaching. (Most are from websites or pronunciation textbooks--or workshops I've attended over the years!)  If you have any other examples, please post them below!

• "Move your tongue slightly up and back,  and curl up the edges to make a groove . . . "
• "Now check your partner's pronunciation as she reads that passage."
• "As long as you are intelligible, you'll get (or keep) the job."
• "Work together with your spouse or significant other on your pronunciation."
• "Think, Men, think!" (The Harold Hill method from the "Music Man")
• "Go out and talk with native speakers and practice your 'r's and 'l's!"
• "Listen carefully to yourself while you are speaking!"
• "Stick your tongue out and whip it back in, scraping the scum off it to do a "th" sound!"
• "Fill your mouth with marbles or hard candy and read this."
• "Write that down." (with no instructions as to how or how to follow up or practice)
• "Look it up in the dictionary" (with no instructions as to how or how to follow up or practice)
• "If you just have good conversation in English often enough your pronunciation will improve enough on its own."
• "Convince those around you to accept your accent."
• "Once you are a teenager, it is almost too late to improve your pronunciation much."
• "Native speaker-like accent in 4 weeks!"
• "Just watch my lips."

Full citation:
BMJ-British Medical Journal. (2014, December 11). Study supports the theory that men are idiots. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 16, 2014 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141211210038.htm

The right way to teach the "wrong" pronunciation!

 Credit: Clker/
Library of Congress

One of the delights of having been in the field for a few decades is seeing "new" research seemingly confirm old, out-of-fashion practices. Here's a good example, a 2014 study, summarized by Science Daily, by Herzfeld, Vaswani, Marko, and Shadmehr of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The study focuses on how memory for errors facilitates effective sensory-motor learning.

In essence, they found that the brain seems to have two parallel learning management systems in sensory-motor learning. One is the Experiencer, learning the new skill; the other, something like "the Coach," that uses previous motor patterns in adjusting and perfecting the target skill. And the "surprising" finding: the two systems appear to be much more independent than previously thought, and furthermore, "the memories of errors foster faster learning!"

Wow. Does that mean that drawing attention to a learner's L1-influenced errors in pronunciation may, in fact, be a good thing? Apparently. Exactly how and when that is done is the question, of course. Most experienced speech professionals, especially speech pathologists, are very comfortable with occasional focus on the "error" as a point of departure, but until very recently, use of L1 pronunciation in L2 pronunciation instruction in this field has been, at least, not discussed formally in the literature.

I recently posted a question on a discussion board of pronunciation researchers and methodologists related to L1 use in pronunciation instruction--and got no response, other than some off-list comments to the effect that it is generally not done--probably a holdover from earlier Behaviourist notions of avoiding errors at all costs.

As noted in several earlier posts, in haptic pronunciation work, especially with vowels and intonation, anchoring of L1 structures and pronunciation is often key to quick, effective change. The Herzfield et al. study may help to explain why: haptic work is probably more strongly positioned or experienced on  the sensory-motor side or track of the brain, allowing the L1 to be "used" somewhat more in isolation, causing less potential "interference" there than typical auditory/visual processing and practice.

Now that may be wrong, but (hopefully) helpful, nonetheless!

Citation: Johns Hopkins Medicine. "Memories of errors foster faster learning." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 14 August 2014. .

I love it (and me) when I say it that way: Affirming pronunciation errors

The role and impact of mispronunciation are multi-faceted, from how society perceives the lack of fit to the L1, to the learner's attitude toward such forms and how it affects everything from identity to ability to recognize the problem and attempts to improve. The stance of most contemporary theorists is to attempt to downplay the need for high levels of accuracy and help the learner feel more comfortable with errors and general risk-taking, especially if they are clearly developmental in nature, reassuring all concerned that either things will get better soon with some attention to pronunciation-- or society will  eventually "mature" and be more accepting.  

Clip art: Clker

Now assuming that assuming a more "healthy" attitude toward your errors is beneficial . . .  (Who could argue with that or define adequately what that might mean?) . . . how would you, as instructor, best facilitate that? Recent research by Legault and  Inzlicht of the University of Toronto, and Al-Khindi of Johns Hopkins University, reported in Science Daily, looking at the impact of self-affirmation on response to, and productive engagement with, mistakes, suggests some classroom strategies that may be helpful. In the study, subjects that did a paper and pencil exercise where they listed and briefly justified what they identified were their most important values were subsequently able to perform better on a task that required responding quickly to errors and making appropriate adjustments. (Another treatment group did a similar values-based task but focused, instead, on why the values at the lower end of the ranking were not that significant for them. )

Here is where the Cognitive Phonologists and many contemporary embodiment theorists have it absolutely correct. There are any number of good techniques for setting up that "affirmative" frame of mind or attitude, not just toward errors, but general L2 identity. In AH-EPS, the precision upper body movements and vocal resonance should serve something of the same function. (Our students consistently report tangible changes in self-confidence and "body image.") You're going to love it when you do it this way--make no mistake about it!

Disgusting mispronunciation

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If there is one unassailable tenet of contemporary language and pronunciation teaching, it is that risk taking and the inevitable miscues and errors which occur are very good things. Furthermore, only mistakes interfering with "intelligibility" should be attended to, the others left relatively untouched. What "minor" differences between the L1 and L2 remain are at least not the responsibility of instruction and to many theorists are near "illegal" to either point to or even react to. In other words, pronunciation errors are for the most part a strong positive, and learners and society at large should not see or experience them as negative--unless you are still for some reason interested in actually changing or correcting them, one of the implications of research by Sherman and colleagues of the Kennedy School of Government, summarized by Science Daily.

Clip art: Clker

In that study, it was found that subjects who were higher in the personality trait of sensitivity to "disgust" were by nature better able to perceive degrees of difference in objects positioned in the light~dark spectrum. (Light~dark being associated in most cultures with pure and impure.) The effect was not apparent with other personality traits such as sensitivity to fear, etc. In other words, to detect an error or difference requires an appropriate degree of affective or emotional indexing. I think it is safe to at least speculate that the opposite effect "works" as well: encourage love of errors (or suppress negative reaction to them) and learners ability to attend to them or monitor them erodes correspondingly.

Not to sound like a "purist" here, but could it be that some of the current, renewed interest in pronunciation teaching, especially segmental (vowel and consonant) change, is but an unintended consequence of the profession's often uncritical attitude toward "error-ing"?  Disgusting . . . 

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 . . . 

Forget, trying to learn new pronunciation

Clip art: Clker

Now here is a potentially useful idea. Before working on correcting a mispronunciation, have students "forget" the current version first. In the linked summary by Science Digest of a study by Strom of the University of Illinois at Chicago, subjects were instructed to, in effect, forget a set of words to make "room" in short term memory space for new ones. It appears to have been quite effective, demonstrating empirically the importance of some degree of forgetting to remembering, so to speak.

I'll have to work on this, but might not the concept of haptic de-anchoring of problematic sounds be worth some serious thought and experimentation? Ah . . . forget it!

What we (apparently) cannot learn from singing instructors

I've long been intrigued by two perhaps related "symptoms": (a) pronunciation instructors who seem to have a very high tolerance for their students' pronunciation problems (i.e., do not seem to be much affected by them or even perceive them) and (b) instructors who have great difficulty recognizing and dealing with their own "vocal health" issues (e.g, vocal stress, misuse or improper breathing).

Clip art: Clker

In this article summarized by Science Daily (with no authors noted!) investigating ability of singers to self-assess voice production problems, amateurs (not surprisingly), those over age 50-- and (surprisingly) singing instructors--were shown to be significantly less perceptive in that regard than professional singers. Why that might be the case is not explained, but (from a HICP perspective) it must have something to do with not being able to access the felt sense of the voice, either due to lack of training, age or being in a role where such (at least temporary) self awareness could be counterproductive.

I'm sure you can imagine instructional contexts where differing levels of such voice awareness could, in fact, be productive or beneficial as well. In both cases, either lack of awareness of self or other problematic voice/pronunciation, body-based vocal training such as the Lessac Method (which involves a great deal of  haptic integration) has been shown to be highly effective in establishing and managing voice awareness. If you are a singing (pronunciation) instructor, like I am, there may be much more your can learn from your body about your voice . . . and that of others.

Could Krashen's "Monitor Model" have been 25% correct?

Clip art: Clker

Here is an article that begins with a quote from Krashen (1982) that states his initial articulation of the "Monitor Model," arguing, among other things, that attention to form or correction in L2 acquisition is not effective or productive, at best. Following on from recent posts, you can see how he had captured a critical dimension of the process but was tossing out even the possibility of any directed, modality-mediated monitoring of spontaneous speaking (that is, modulating attention appropriately to learner cognitive style profile among the four senses or modalities), as we have been exploring for some time now. I'm sure I am not the first to suggest that "Krashen's Error" was that he was  just slightly "out of touch" . . .