Killing pronuciation 8: Unproductive goals and their "goalees!"

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The goal (of this) post is to at least partially relieve you of the burden of meeting many of your pronunciation teaching goals--and suggest a better way to reach them! Or at least "Clear-ify" them!

How would you describe your students' personal goals in terms of their English pronunciation, or their L2 learning in general? What would they tell you? Where did they come from? Do they work? Do they make sense? How do you work with them? Are they clear? Are you clear? Good questions. More research needed . . .

 One of the apparent "problems" with pronunciation teaching we are told is unrealistic or "utopian" goals (Derwing, 2010). There is certainly some of that, to be sure.

The actual problem, however, based on a new piece by James Clear, Forget About Setting Goals. Focus on This Instead: Continuous Improvement, may be the practice of (unproductive) goal setting in the first place. (If you, personally, have defective goals, that is a great piece for sorting things out. Clear is good, very good.) Clear's basic point: progress is generally best achieved by following a method, not by simply "keeping your eye on the prize", not by ad libbing your way along with exercises and practice decisions. Good advice, but how do we do that? What's the method?

I am always interested in what pronunciation teaching books recommend to students and instructors regarding goals. Here is a typical example from Learning  English VOA News that really doesn't say much but is actually about half right (The sentence in italics!):

"Start by setting a reasonable goal. Choose one or two sounds that are difficult for you to pronounce. Then, work to improve those sounds. When you have improved, study other sounds. Progress might be slow for you, but don't give up!" There is no clue there or on the website as to HOW you work or practice, but the idea that you commit to an ongoing process of improvement is what Clear is referring to. 

That VOA prescription is still at least as helpful as the typical, high-level, intelligibility-centered goal approach:

• "Aim for intelligibility, not accuracy"
• "Model yourself on an articulate educated L2 speaker of English from your L1"

 Or the more entertaining accent reduction approach:

• "Strive for perfect pronunciation" 
• "Lose your accent"

What Clear is talking about, based on research in physical training, motivation and discipline development, is that what works is commitment to a method, in effect letting the method take over and (get ready!) . . . following it consistently. Hence, the conundrum in contemporary teaching, in general.

On the one hand we want students to take responsibility and control over their learning; on the other, we want them to do what we know is best for them. Short of handing it off to the computer, which is on the horizon to be sure, what do you do? The answer is "clear", a method. Here is a little check list, based on Clear's general framework, of what that method should probably include. You don't need all the pieces but probably most of them, depending on your available "tool kit!"

• Clear sense of what needs to be done.
• Clear, relatively complete procedures for working on the problem sound/sound process, including recommended time-on-task instructions.
• Clear feedback from something/body periodically
• Clear guidelines for out-of class or independent practice and exploration
• Clear reporting or journaling on work/progress.
• Clear signs of progress becoming evident.  
• Clear criteria as to when the goal is achieved.
• Clear understanding and trust between the learner and the instructor.
• And, of course, clear commitment to ongoing progress as "the goal", not just some unattainable model. 

Are we clear on that? If not, ask your local haptician (instructor trained in haptic pronunciation teaching) or personal trainer at the gym about her method.

Derwing, T. M. (2010). Utopian goals for pronunciation teaching. In J. Levis & K. LeVelle (Eds.), Proceedings of the 1st Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference,

Clear advice: Love your (pronunciation teaching) method!

Have recently "discovered" the popular blog of James Clear who, to quote his self description:  . . . writes about science-based ideas for living a better life and building habits that stick.

Clipart:
Clker.com

I was, of course, immediately hooked when I got to the last word there--and great haptic metaphor! Full disclosure: He is also a weight lifter. Sports and exercise coaches are simply the best when it comes to developing systems that involve movement and discipline--like pronunciation teaching.

He concludes an intriguing post entitled "Forget About Setting Goals. Focus on This Instead" with the striking line: "Fall in love with systems!" (Required reading!)

Clear is not referring to "Aims and aspirations" that provide motivation and passion, as described by Wells (2003) :

"What are the student’s personal aims and aspirations in language learning? . . . Some just want enough English to communicate at a basic level, or indeed just enough to pass some examination. Others aim to achieve the best they possibly can. We must cater for both types and for those who fall somewhere between. Speaking personally, I must say that my own aspiration in learning languages is NS-like proficiency. I acknowledge that I may be unlikely to attain it. But that doesn’t stop me aiming for it. I try to inspire my students with the same high ideal. If it were suggested that I should not even aim so high, I should feel short-changed. "

Many describe today's language teaching as "post method," meaning that there are no longer any generally applicable systems that work in a broad range of contexts. Very true. That does not mean, however,  that a "local" method is not necessary. On the contrary . . .

Balancing "high ideals" and feasible process is the trick. For example, the "wrong" kind of goals for learners working on pronunciation are often simply unrealistic, given the time, talent and resources available. Nothing wrong with aiming at NS-like level, unless you are an intermediate-level student with only three months to get there, etc. Even a goal such as "fixing" use of "th" or a particular vowel in a week or two by the same intermediate student can be at best counter-productive. That is especially true without a very rigorous practice regimen handy to direct energy and effort.

Do your students "fall in love" with your system or one that they have adapted from yours? Do you provide them with a "clear" framework detailing their part in the process, understanding of what is behind it and how it facilitates progress? Do you follow up with them consistently on how they are doing and how they working in it?

Clear's point is that making change "stick," which demands discipline and limiting attention and focus, also requires commitment to a set of principles and consistent scheduling--along with having confidence and trust in both the system and the provider of it. Once a learner's general, realistic goal has been articulated and locked in, attention (and passion) must shift to the systematic "heavy lifting" of the day-to-day training process and stay there. Trust, love (and obey) the method, the system! (See his framework for getting started in that direction.) What an absolutely radical, "retro" notion today!

Do you have a "clear" one-page description of your system that students can easily understand, follow--and love? A quick review of published pronunciation textbooks didn't turn up anything close to that. I am working on one now (for haptic pronunciation teaching) that will serve as a model for my graduate students in applied phonology this semester to follow as they develop their own.

I'll share that shortly here, too,  a "loveable" system of sorts. If you have a good one now, please pass it on. I'll create a "Love-my-methods" page off the blog to display them.

Love to see yours . . .

Good to great pronunciation: the "happiness" model

One of the most challenging aspects of pronunciation work is the "meta-communicative" function of appropriately identifying change and then predicting what is next. I was struck by the analogy between that process and aspects of this 2012 study by Sheldon of University of Missouri-Columbia (Summarized by Science Daily) that suggests that sustaining happiness involves two main factors: " . . .   the need to keep having new and positive life-changing experiences and the need to keep appreciating what you already have and not want more too soon." (The validity of the study may, of course, be compromised by the fact that it involved 481 subjects living in the Riverside, California area . . . )

The criteria underlying that definition of "happiness" are wonderfully revealing, culturally "Californian" and near debilitating. Evolving pronunciation may not be correlated with many positive "life-changing" experiences, but the question of instructor and learner awareness of what the process is and how it is going is often crucial, especially at points such as the move from "good to great." (Collins' 2005 book, Good to Great, a business classic, describes that general threshold well.) In other words, it is often not the target that is the problem, but the surreal expectations involved. Western teaching methodology in general too easily relies on motivation to finish the job--or take responsibility for failure.  

There was a time, of course, when the bar of native speaker-like pronunciation was set impossibly high--for any number of reasons-- but at least it did give one a scale to work with.  But now that at least some (informed theorists and teachers) have accepted the target of "intelligible" speech, it has become easier to "appreciate what you have and not want more . . . " 

Clip art: Clker

Until there is considerably more change in societal attitudes and human nature, however, problematic pronunciation may still interfere with the need for positive, life-changing experiences, like going from a good job to a great one--or from English class to any job. You and your students happy with that? If not, what do you expect? More importantly, what do you expect them to expect? 

Keeping pace with PACE (with HICP)

Wow! How about a program that claimed to be able to enhance your child's (Excepted from the PACE website):

• Auditory Processing: to process sounds. Helps one hear the difference, order, and number of sounds in words faster; basic skill needed to learn to read and spell; helps with speech defects.
• Auditory Discrimination: to hear differences in sounds such as loudness, pitch, duration, and phoneme.
• Auditory Segmenting: to break apart words into separate sounds.
• Auditory Blending: to blend individual sounds to form words.
• Auditory Analysis: to determine the number, sequence, and which sounds are within a word.
• Auditory-Visual Association: to be able to link a sound with an image.
• Comprehension: to understand words and concepts.
• Divided Attention: to attend to and handle two or more tasks at one time such as taking notes while listening and carrying totals while adding the next column. Required for handling tasks quickly or tasks with complexity.
• Logic and Reasoning: to reason, plan, and think.
• Long-Term Memory: to retrieve past information.
• Math Computations: to do math calculations such as adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.
• Processing Speed: the speed at which the brain processes information. Makes reading faster and less tiring; makes one more aware of his or her surrounding environment; helps with sports such as basketball, football, and soccer and with activities such as driving.
• Saccadic Fixation: to move the eyes accurately and quickly from one point to another.
• Selective Attention: to stay on task even when distraction is present.
• Sensory-Motor Integration: to have the sensory skills work well with the motor skills — such as with eye-hand coordination.
• Sequential Processing: to process chunks of information that are received one after another.
• Simultaneous Processing: to process chunks of information that are received all at once.
• Sustained Attention: to be able to stay on task.
• Visual Processing: to process and make use of visual images. Helps one create mental pictures faster and more vividly; helps one understand and “see” word math problems and read maps; improves reading comprehension skills.
• Visual Discrimination: to see differences in size, colour, shape, distance, and orientation of objects.
• Visual Manipulation: to flip, rotate, move, change colour, etc. of objects and images in one’s mind.
• Visualization: to create mental images or pictures.
• Visual Span: helps one see more and wider in a single look. Improves side vision. Enables faster reading and better, faster decisions in sports.
• Working Memory: to retain information while processing or using it.

This is a long-established local private school. My guess is that they can probably do most of that, too! What is fascinating is that HICP/EHIEP work should explicitly attend to many of those (italicized) as well. Good multiple modality teaching and learning is like that . . . like this!

Getting your colleagues or students "in touch"

Following up on the last post, which focused on getting students to buy in to haptic work, this piece from Lee and Sternthal at Northwestern University makes a similar point but from a different perspective. One conclusion of that research is that the key is matching goals to level of abstraction. For example, to persuade a colleague to try EHIEP, you'd make points like these:

• It covers all the basic English sounds and processes.
• It is appropriate for all learners, even in classes of mixed ability.
• It focuses on intelligibility, not absolute accuracy.
• EHIEP focuses primarily on spoken, conversational pronunciation and style. 
• The EHIEP system, after about two months, sets up learners with a set of strategies for learning the L2, especially getting new vocabulary and working with it to anchor it firmly, and more accurate immediate recall of what was just heard in conversation.
• The EHIEP system is best taught by both instructor and class following along with the videos for the first 8 sessions, about 2 months. After that instructor and learners use the techniques in all classes where oral production is involved.
• And, should all else fail: It is based on Acton (1984) and about 30 years of his research and practice in kinaesthetic learning of L2 pronunciation. 

The application of "haptic" to the system does several things:

• It captures the complete attention of the learner, relying on whole body and whole brain procedures well established in several fields.
• Haptic techniques have been shown in many fields to enhance both encoding new skills and later recall of what was learned.
• Haptic techniques make kinaesthetic learning much more systematic and effective, by ensuring that the movements are performed in the appropriate place and manner consistently. 
• Haptic self monitoring allows learner to attend to their speech without too much distraction or concern about errors and pre-planning in real communication. 
• Haptic-based correction of mistakes is both effective and affectively "comfortable."
• Haptic anchoring (touching hands on stressed syllables) has been shown to be highly efficient in both initial learning of sounds and correction of fossilized errors. 

For students, many of whom may have only limited comprehension skills, the approach would be more like this:

• EHIEP will help you learn and remember vocabulary and pronunciation better.
• All you have to do is follow the instructions.
• It is a good way for the instructor to correct your errors. 
• It is fun, relaxing and easy to do.
• After each class video lesson, you must practice three times a week, in the morning for about 30 minutes before  you come to school. (It is better to practice every other day, not every day.)
• It is based in part on research on touch and movement in computer games and robotics--very much like Wii and iPhone!

And if those points don't work, the default position: Let your body decide. Experience it for a few lessons and then make up your mind. Almost never fails . . . 

A place for EHIEP in Pronunciation Utopia!

Photo credit: Japan Sumo
Association

For an excellent glimpse of the future of (at least Canadian) pronunciation teaching, by one of its leading theorists, see this paper, Utopian Goals for Pronunciation Teaching, from the 2009 Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference at Iowa State University, by Derwing. I'd agree with most all of the projections and recommendations, but would note one obvious omission (big as Asanowaka, pictured at the left, from our perspective.)

Recall the earlier post which quoted another important 2005 paper by Derwing and Munro, " . . . we would ask whether the aspects of a learner’s speech that cause problems for intelligibility are the focus of instruction, regardless of the teaching methods employed." "Utopia," is also "method-neutral."

EHIEP (Essential, haptic-integrated English pronunciation), by contrast, is an ordered, HICP method that is applicable to a wide range of learner populations--that, in essence, begins where Derwing leaves off--in the classroom. It comes with a basic curriculum and requires little formal training for the instructor, although the basic pedagogical movement patterns and anchoring protocols can be easily adapted for use with learners of any proficiency in any skill area syllabus or classroom. It focuses on teaching and anchoring productive use of what has been identified as essential, first for all learners (basic prominence, vowels, stress, conversational rhythm and intonation) and then goes on to attend to selected learner-specific consonants and other processes, as necessary. (See earlier posts on specifics.) When you are ready to "do" pronunciation, this side of Utopia, get in touch!

12-step learner pronunciation goals, process objectives, benchmarks and haptic anchors

Clip art: Clker

Let's say a learner has a GOAL of being able to produce an acceptable "th" sound. A HICP-based model that would give the learner a relatively clear "line of march" might look something the following. (Note: I have linked above one of the most well-known "12 step" processes. I was tempted to unpack the rich analogy, theology and all, between that and this process, but I'll leave it for another post!) Here is the HICP 12 step learning model for fixing such a segmental problem, based, in part, on the types of staged treatment plans used by speech pathologists. (HICP seeks to bring to pronunciation teaching several of the key techniques from that discipline--adapted to the classroom, rather than the individual client.) It helps to focus the learner on what needs to be done and frames the tasks so that progress can be identified. Also, of course, feedback and "homework" can be reasonably concrete. For an upper beginner, this might be a two or three-week project. (PO~= process objective; BMK = benchmark)

1. PO~ Recognize current version and target sound (aural discrimination).
2. PO~ Achieve new articulation (target sound), in this case both voiced and voiceless.
3. PO~ Practice haptic-anchored new articulation.
4. PO~ Achieve appropriate version of target sound in main word-contexts (initial, medial, final.)
5. PO~ Practice haptic-anchored sound in contexts.
6. PO~ Create target word list.
7. PO~ Practice haptic-anchored word list as necessary.
8. PO~ Create target phrase list.
9. PO~ Practice haptic-anchored target phrase list as necessary.
10. BMK I - Recognize instances (the felt sense) of "current" versions (mispronunciations) in spontaneous speech after the fact.
11. BMK II - Recognize instances of target version usage in spontaneous speech after the fact.
12. Goal achieved: Integration of target sound successfully in most contexts.

That protocol is generally appropriate for changing pronunciation at beginning and intermediate levels. Heavily fossilized pronunciation, however, often requires something closer to the "other" 12 step approach!