Affluent pronunciation: not so fast!

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Will improving your accent or pronunciation enhance your chances of making more money later? That is a study that has not been done to my knowledge. but just ask anybody other than a prominent pronunciation researcher or methodologist (or one of their students) and the answer is a resounding: Well, of course! I did just that, in fact, an informal poll around the building last week: Yes (22) No (0).

The distinction between "accent" and "pronunciation" instruction is important in the field today. It is essentially this: The goal of pronunciation instruction should be intelligible speech; the speaker is understandable without unduly taxing the ear of the listener. Accent reduction, on the other hand, appears to go beyond this "intelligibility threshold" aiming at more and more native-like pronunciation. There may be any number of reasons to "go near there," of course, including working at an international call center, managerial or executive positions where public speaking persona may still require a certain degree of conformity, such as consular representatives--or, of course, secret agent types!

So, how fast can a learner's accent or pronunciation change and get to a goal or model?

Purely anecdotal evidence from about 40 years of working with accent, suggests that for most students it is a relatively long and incremental process--if attempted at all. There are those of amazing natural ability who almost chameleon-like appear to absorb the second language in all its multifaceted dimensions, accent being just part of the picture, of course. In truth, however, most of those who approach a native-like accent work at it, often for years--or longer. If it is worth doing, for only some, mind you, how do you get there?

One way, of course, could be to go to SpeakMoreClearly and help them become more affluent in getting you there quickly. Or . . . you might, however, want to consider this new research by Hampton, Asadi and Olson at Temple University, Good Things for Those Who Wait: Predictive Modeling Highlights Importance of Delay Discounting for Income Attainment." (Summarized by ScienceDaily.com.)

What their research demonstrated was some validation of the old saw, Good things come to those that wait! In essence, children who were trained to postpone the natural drive for more instant gratification (had more self control), later in life made significantly more money. From the ScienceDaily summary:

"Unsurprisingly, the models indicated that occupation and education were the best predictors of high income, followed by location (as determined by zip code) and gender -- with males earning more than females. Delay discounting was the next most-important factor, being more predictive than age, race, ethnicity or height."

So how does that work for predicting success at obtaining great pronunciation or accent?

(occupation and education) -- (zip code and gender) -- delay discounting. i.e., self control/delayed gratification -- (age, race, ethnicity or height)

That actually might work, as long as you flip the gender (from male in the affluence study to female!) and begin the study at age 12 or so. That would be particularly the case if you factor in DD.  

When it comes to training the body in the gym, the DD principle is a given. Self control and persistence is the only way to get to excellence--and stay there. And what that entails is adopting a commitment to the process, over time, not some abstract goal in the future. In most respects, quick fixes are only temporary, at best. For a great perspective on that, check with my favorite source on such topics, James Clear, here or here!

So, what is your best plan to achieve "a fluent" accent or pronunciation?

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DD-based practice over time (done as embodied and
haptically as possible, of course!) . . . and you can take that to the bank!

To thrive (but not arrive) in a second language: socio-cultural capital

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Yesterday morning I met an immigrant Chinese cashier at a Korean supermarket who had been here for a couple of years.  In her early 30's, she seemed quite positive, fashionably sport-dressed and looked very fit--she had just signed up for Orangetheory, in fact. As we talked she struck me as somebody who at least at first glance is thriving in her new culture. She seemed an almost perfect fit to the first half of the profile just produced in a meta-analysis of what it means to "thrive" by Brown of the University of Portsmouth,, reported by Sciencedaily. Brown defines "thriving" as

" . . . an individual experiencing a sense of development, of getting better at something, and succeeding at mastering something"

The list of qualities of a "thriver" are: 

• optimistic,
• spiritual or religious,
• motivated,
• proactive,
• someone who enjoys learning,
• flexible,
• adaptable,
• socially competent,
• believes in self/has self-esteem.

That's her; fits her to a tee, but her English, both her general competence and pronunciation had stalled about a year in. She was engaging, had a wide range of conversational strategies to draw on, but she was at times very difficult to understand, especially when she became animated, which was often. She was very conscious of that and had a reason: her dead-end job. She suddenly shifted into her cashier persona, running through some of the very limited repertoire of phrases she uses every day at work. Her pronunciation and grammar became nearly impeccable!

What a demonstration!

What she seems to lack for her English to improve substantially is socio-cultural capital, the opportunity and network of resources to grow and practice more advanced and sophisticated in her L2. 

Again, according to Brown, (quoting the Sciencedaily report) the thriver has:

• opportunity
• employer/family/other support
• challenges and difficulties are at manageable level,
• environment is calm
• is given a high degree of autonomy
• is trusted as competent.

Being here alone, as a single woman in this cultural context she has virtually none of those. She did comment half in jest that joining the Orangetheory community and all the beautiful, cut gym rats might be the answer. She may be right. Being a fan of TheoryOrange, myself, I encouraged her. She promised to get back in touch with me after a few months. And I'll report back to you, too.

You CAN teach old dogs new pronunciation!!!

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Can't resist this one . . . New study by Wallis, Virányi, Müller, Serisier, Huber, and Range, University of Vienna, on how age effects learning in (pet) dogs, border collies, to be precise. What they found, according to the ScienceDaily summary,  was that with older dogs:

• they learn more slowly and exhibit lower cognitive flexibility
• their logical reasoning improves with age
• their long-term memory for touchscreen stimuli (emphasis, mine) is not affected by age

Now the research was looking at memory and using touch screen technology as the media. Turns out, in part what they may have actually "discovered" is the effect of touch on old dog memory. The report of the study does not mention that possible "confounding" variable or other studies using different media. Really . . .

For the last 40 years of so one of my main interests has been the fossilized pronunciation of "old dogs", always trying to figure out how to undo seemingly intractable errors in pronunciation. That led me to gesture and then a decade ago to touch and embodiment theory. One of the most consistent "findings" of my (haptic-integrated) clinical work has been that for the fossilized, at least, gesture + touch is a remarkably effective antidote. In other words, "more mature" learners can change and remember new pronunciation (in English, for the most part) if you anchor it with . .. (ready?) TOUCH! Like the touch screen in the "old dogs" research.

That model has been extended to all learners with v1.0, v2.0, v3.0 and (soon) v4.0 of the EHIEP approach (Essential Haptic-integrated English Pronunciation). For puppies and younger dogs there are, of course, all kinds of possibly effective ways to change pronunciation. But, at least if you are working with "older dogs" the haptic approach is . . . well . . . logical!

We don't use a touch screen yet, but we could, of course. We, instead, use hands touching each other or other strategic body locations, e.g., shoulders, bachio radiali, on stressed syllables. This new research gives hope to the fossilized and those still seriously out of touch . . .

Wallis, L., Virányi, Z., Müller, C., Serisier, S., Huber, L., and F. Range. Aging effects on discrimination learning, logical reasoning and memory in pet dogs. AGE, 2016; 38 (1).

Context rehabilitation in (or as a substitute for) pronunciation and accent work

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Part of the system I wrote about in 1984 (Acton 1984) included the almost tongue-in-cheek notion of "context rehabilitation." (See recent, relatively accurate, 2014, outline of that article by Polinedrio and Colon). The idea was to very proactively train students in how to influence the attitudes of their supervisors and co-workers as regards their  improving comprehensibility--while at the same time making substantive, noticeable changes in intelligibility as soon as possible in the program, of course! Some of that came from the early work of Rubin (1975) and others, and work on attending skills, e.g.,  Acton and Cope (1999).  

A recent, very informative review of research on the effectiveness in pronunciation instruction by Thomson and Derwing (2014) concludes with this interesting and revealing comment:  

"In immigrant situations, native speakers of the L2 can be helped to become better listeners as well (Derwing et al. 2002; Kang and Rubin 2012) . . .  Communication is a two-way street, thus L2 speakers’ interlocutors sometimes need support in building confidence that they have the skills to interact with L2 accented individuals." 

Other than the near-comma-splice, love that word "support" in that final statement. It may well be that educational campaigns and law suits to change societal attitudes toward accents will, indeed, in the long run be the most cost-efficient and effective approach to improving intercultural communication--and making much pronunciation instruction less (or ir-)relevant . . .

For a much fuller exploration of that and related themes, get a copy of a great-looking new (VERY EXPENSIVE - $176 CAD in hardcover and I can't find it in paperback yet) book, Social dynamics in second language accent (2014), edited by Levis and Moyer! (My library doesn't have it yet but most of the chapters seem to be obvious continuations of each author's best stuff.) 

Keep in touch. 

Teaching and learning stress (and HICP remedies)

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Although I have absolutely no hard evidence to support it, I have suspected for decades (and written about several times) that there is a relationship between fossilized pronunciation and Type A behavior or  personality types. Not that Type A's are more resistent to pronunciation change or are contagious as instructors, but that those who are tend to be Type A types. Just a correlation there--no causal link implied!

What is interesting is that when you look at the research literature and popular pitches from those who sell stress reduction for Type A, you see a clear contrast to the highly verbal, cognitive FRIENDS prescription of the previous post-- the "Your body is your friend!-- slogan aside. Here is a typical commercial website that does have sort of a fun free test to see if you are Type-A enough to need their services! But note the nature of the standard list of technique types: Music, exercise, expressive writing, hobbies (especially HANDy-crafts!), stay connected (Read that one any way you like!), yoga--and buy their tools. You can skip the last one!

It would be easy enough to show how each of those "non-cognitive" approaches is formally mirrored in HICP methodology. Your current pronunciation teaching system . . .what type is it, eh (A)?

Stressful pronunciation teaching ok? You must be dreaming . . .

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I have worked with several "fossilized" individuals over the years who experienced what they referred to as being "traumatized" by what might loosely be called "pronunciation instruction." Perhaps it was a teacher or fellow student or associate who ridiculed the student's accent, or something analogous. I have always been intrigued by the fact that such experiences affect some but not others. Likewise, some students are able to "take away" and integrate material presented under the most stressful of conditions.

2011 research by van der Helm, Yao, Dutt, Rao, Saletin, and Walker of University of California-Berkeley, summarized by Science Daily, which studied the function of dreams in diffusing the emotional loading of traumatic events, suggests something of why that may be the case. One of the findings was that "normal" REM sleep greatly facilitates that integration and diffusion. (In the case of certain PTSD victims, a blood pressure medication actually restored some REM enabling function.) Without it, things go very differently.

Not that learners be placed in dream states to change pronunciation (although I have tried a bit of that), but that integrating pronunciation effectively requires being able to create optimal REM-like, stress-resolving attention. That is the (achievable) dream of HICP work as well. 

Fossilized pronunciation repair--with a touch of haptic "cement"

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There are probably two or three dozen different blogposts here that report research that indirectly supports the claim that haptic anchoring should be effective in working with learning new sounds and changing fossilized pronunciation. (I have been "looking" for studies such as this one for a couple of decades!) This study by Fredembach, Boisferon and Gentaz, summarized by Science Daily, makes the connection more directly.


The research examined the effect of using touch to assist learners in making associations between new symbols and new sounds. While looking at the graphic form of a letter/symbol and saying or hearing the sound, subjects in the experimental group "explored" the form with their hands as well. The haptic effect was clear: " . . . the explication lies in the specific properties of the haptic sense . . . in the hands, which plays a "cementing" role between sight and hearing, favouring the connection between the senses."

What that helps explain is why using haptic anchors in fossilized pronunciation work should, indeed, assist learners in "replacing" sounds embedded in specific words more efficiently. Done haptically, that does not have to be an especially time consuming process. (See earlier posts on how that process is carried out.) For most advanced learners, de-fossilization is, unfortunately, a painstaking, one-word-at-a-time problem: a new sound has to be associated with the graphic representation of every problematic word, not just encouraged to generalize unattended out through the learner's interlanguage.  In other words, just teaching the "fossilized" how to correctly articulate a sound in isolation is nearly pointless--unless every "misuse" is systematically ferreted out (Ready?) . . . manually, of course!