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!

Shhh! Overcoming pronunciation (and haptic) anxiety--one word or phrase at a time.

In a recent workshop, we had an especially anxious (and nearly belligerent) participant. In talking with him it became evident that the haptic-integrated pronunciation work was really not the problem, although something was certainly triggering his strong reaction to the process. Recently, with the aid of fMRI technology, the underlying basis of such responses was for the first time mapped in the brain by Shervin at the University of Michigan. Freud would have been very pleased, indeed, to get empirical validation that subliminal, unconscious messages can, indeed, set off reactions to present events--based on either past experiences or continuing, underlying psychological conflicts. It is not uncommon for learners or instructors to experience anxiety when first asked to consciously move their bodies in public. (In general, the latter are far more restive and problematic than the former!) Embodiment theories provide a number of perspectives on how and why that may happen as well. Such reactions can usually be diffused in a number of ways, from a brief explanation to carefully staged introduction of pedagogical gesture, but occasionally they cannot. When that happens the learner should be allowed to remain in a disengaged, observer role. (See earlier posts on effective modelling in that context as well.) Although we cannot possibly anticipate every action or random expression which might set off such aversion to EHIEP protocols, we must work to create experiences that capture learners and their attention--for about 3 seconds at a time--so as to at least moderate counterproductive reaction. The disaffected instructor in the workshop suggested an alternative which I intend to explore further. (Just need to find a "new" class to try this out on! Any volunteers?) At least temporarily, we'll set aside all the "pointless and confusing" warm ups and introduction to the various (8) sub-systems of English pronunciation that form the basis of the overall, haptic-video-based EHIEP approach, and, with only the briefest of visual (spoken or written) rationale, "simply" use the pedagogical movement patterns to correct mispronunciations or introduce new sound processes, as necessary during normal speaking or conversation instruction. There is some anecdotal evidence that that works. The question is in what contexts and how efficiently, of course--and whether it can be done without at least a quick, simultaneous, accompanying, subliminal, heartfelt haptic "hug." (Shhh!) 

Vowel reduction and word stress: one word at a time

Clipart: Clker

Especially in pre-academic ESL/EFL instruction, the common strategy is to devote considerable instructional time to rules and patterns of word stress assignment, and attention to principles of vowel reduction. As noted in earlier posts, some of that emphasis is due to the fact that many acquire pronunciation through reading--not speaking and listening-- and need good strategies for figuring out word stress and vowel reduction, especially with technical terms. With the advent of good audio sources for pronunciation, at least some of the need for essentially "phonic" decoding has been lessened. Flege and Bohn's 1989 research inked above came to the striking conclusion that " . . .  L2 learners acquire [word] stress placement and vowel reduction in English on a word-by-word basis." In that study, the vowel quality of the vowels in the words that were being learned appeared to be impervious to alteration or enhancement once the word had been assigned meaning and use conditions. If that is indeed the case in general--and that has certainly been my experience in working with stress and vowel reduction in conversational language, especially with intermediate-level and above, then the key to developing accurate pronunciation at least at the segment-level seems to be experiencing and anchoring the felt sense of a word as a whole, not as simply a token of a pattern or process. Now the pattern of the stress assignment or vowel reduction involved may generate to other new words in some manner, but basically, those aspects of the word that are learned as part of the initial, overall configuration, which includes any number of factors in addition to those that are sound-related, are highly resistant to change later. In other words, the brain of the learner apparently grasps whatever pronunciation of the new word is immediately available or possible-- and then doesn't look back much or continue trying to approximate the L2 target much further, if at all. In a word, we do appear to learn the pronunciation of the language . . .  one word at a time.