Putting the festive and 'fʌn' back in (pronunciation) teaching and testing: The Taylor Swift effect!

Clipart: Clker.com

Following an earlier, tongue-in-cheek post on excessive "fear of micro-aggression" in pronunciation teaching, we have an almost equally "deep" (or surreal) potential antidote for the most obvious kind of macro-aggression: testing! Developed by a sociology instructor, Dougherty, at Baylor University (Summarized by ScienceDaily.com) the trick is basically just to bring in "balloons, streamers, treats and music" and call tests "Learning celebrations." There was a little more to it than that, of course--including making items on tests "amusing" . . .  (Of course, just not taking undergraduate sociology too seriously in the first place might be a good place to begin as well.)

But Dougherty does have a point--other than simply bribing students with sugar and creating an atmosphere of "unbearable lightness of being." My son tells a great story of one of his graduate instructors, a phenomenally good lecturer and world famous researcher, who would always serve students homemade cookies before handing out class evaluations and then would play guitar and sing to them while they filled them out--but noting up front that he was in no way attempting to influence their responses . . . 

Making learning fun works, but creating a test that is also a true, formative, fun leaning experience is extraordinary. From the summary, however, it is not at all clear how the sociology test actually contributed to the overall objectives and "delivery" of the course, other than a modest 2 point (out of 100) increase in mean score across semesters. 

I love my work; teaching, for me, is often fun. Making a class "fun and entertaining" is too easy. Making the intrinsic learning experience rewarding and perceived as "fun"--through what is accomplished or learned--is a different matter entirely, although sometimes related. That is especially the case with pronunciation teaching, where the basic tools of explanation and drill and controlled practice are often very difficult to enliven or make at all meaningful. 

In other words, if you can't figure out a way to seriously "embody" fun in the classwork itself, you can at least use Dougherty's approach--which is precisely what so many experienced pronunciation teachers do--especially those trained in earlier affective and holistic methods, such as drama, poetry and music: create a high-energy, fast-moving, entertaining experience to rub off on the grind of mechanical body work required. 

That "rub off" effect is now very well researched in marketing. You may have seen stories in the media where any product in close proximity to a life-size picture of Taylor Swift--regardless of age or whether or not the customer knew who she was--sold better, significantly.  

Your other alternative, of course, is just to "Be Haptic!"

Full citation:

Baylor University. "Tests vs. Fests: Students in 'learning celebrations' rather than exams scored higher and enjoyed themselves." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 25 June 2015. .

Better pronunciation with grit, tenacity and perseverance!

Clip art: Clker

If getting the pronunciation of your L2 does not come easy (or accomplishing anything that requires mobilization of all your "noncognitive" resources--according to a US Department of Education 2013 study)--you have another option: grit, tenacity and perseverance. A while back (1997) I did a paper on a related topic, looking at the optimal classroom environment for pronunciation learning, that began with this great quote from a popular student pronunciation textbook of the time:

"Acquiring good pronunciation is the most difficult part of learning a new language. As you improve your articulation you have to learn to listen and imitate all over again. As with any activity you wish to do well, you have to practice, practice, practice, and then practice some more. Remember that you cannot accomplish good pronunciation overnight; improvement takes time. Some students may find it more difficult than others and will need more time than others to improve." (Orion, 1997, pp. xxiii-iv).

My point at the time was to "suggest," ways of using techniques derived from hypnosis (e.g., Suggestopedia) and related disciplines that appear to require less GTP on the part of the learner, allowing the learning to go on either subconsciously or at least with less overt "practice, practice, practice . . . " The quote from Orion (1997) was supposed to represent the wrong way to set up the class or students for what was ahead for them. According to the study, which identifies GTP as "critical factors for succes in the 21st century," I may have been wrong . . . or at least not doing justice to a key dimension of the process.

The more I work at developing a good system for promoting, monitoring and compelling essential pronunciation homework in AH-EPS, the more "Orion-esque" I have become. If learners do not have intrinsic GTP, the system has to provide it for them. The research on exercise persistence is full of guidelines on how to do that. It is not easy to figure out, but with a just a little GTP . . .