HICPR: kinaesthetic intelligence

Showing posts with label kinaesthetic intelligence. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Move me, I'm in; show me, I learn.

Always nice to stumble onto yet another piece of empirical research that helps explain why something you do in teaching probably works. Having been using gesture more or less systematically in pronunciation teaching for over 40 years, it was obvious that the ability to mimic gesture was closely related to ability to interpret and learn from pedagogical gesture in class.

There were, of course, some learners who seemed naturally to have great "kinaesthetic intelligence"; others clearly didn't. Consequently, so much of our work has been aimed at developing gesture-enhanced or gesture-synchronized techniques that the less "kinaesthetic" could learn quickly and use.

A 2015 study by Wu and Coulsen of UC-San Diego, Iconic Gestures Facilitate Discourse Comprehension in Individuals With Superior Immediate Memory for Body Configurations, provides an interesting clue. As part of their research into the relationship between "kinaesthetic working memory" (KWM) and perception of (iconic) gesture, the instrument they used to determine KWM involved having subjects basically attempt to mimic gestures of a model, independent of verbal language. Those with stronger KWM by that measure were better at interpreting gestures used in somewhat fragmented conversation--which required contribution of the meaning of the gestures for the core sense of the conversation to get across.

The question, of course, is whether or not KWM can be enhanced by training or even engaged more in teaching and learning. Study after study in the areas of athletic training and rehabilitation confirm that it can. KWM is, likewise, the basis of haptic pronunciation teaching. And how is such training accomplished? By highly controlled, systematic repetitive practice of relevant body movements involved, not simply by demonstrating the movements to learners or using them naturally in teaching--which is what most enthusiastic (pronunciation) instructors do anyway.

What that means, especially for language teaching, is that the benefit of simply using gestures in teaching may be minimal at best for any number of reasons. In general, techniques such as stretching rubber bands, tapping on desks or playing choral conductor with intonation appear to be good for presenting concepts but not for actually helping learners practice and improve their pronunciation. (For those with high natural KWM it may, of course, be a different story.)

Systematic work with KWM is, I think, the key to at least efficient learning and teaching of pronunciation. If you are still not moved to act on that concept, check in with your local aerobics or Alexander Technique instructor for a tune up. (Research suggests at least 4 weeks needed to establish new kinaesthetic patterning.) Or join us hapticians. See info in the right column and elsewhere on the blog on how to do that!

Full citation: Wu, Y. and Coulsen, S. (2015) Iconic Gestures Facilitate Discourse Comprehension in Individuals With Superior Immediate Memory for Body Configurations, Psychological Science November 2015 vol. 26 no. 11 1717-1727, doi: 10.1177/0956797615597671

Saturday, September 5, 2015

Gesture-assisted vocabulary instruction for (even) the kinaesthetically-challenged

Clipart:
Clker.com

"Iran" into an interesting study recently by three Iranian reseachers looking into "The Effect of Using Gesture on Resolving Lexical Ambiguity in L2" (Khalili, Rahmany, and Zarei, 2014 - Full citation below.) Basically, they found that using (extensive) gesture in teaching homonyms results in better uptake. In addition, it appeared as if the kinaesthetically more enabled subjects were even a bit better at it. Although from the published description of the gestural procedures it is not possible to figure out exactly how much of what was done when--other than the impression that the gesture work was extensive and often impromptu--the conclusion/results are pretty much what we'd expect from decades of related studies.

What was of particular interest, however, was the (relatively week but significant) correlation between score on the post-test and kinaesthetic intelligence. Now there could be any number or reasons for that--including the nature of the gestural instruction itself which may well have favoured the kinaesthetic in the experimental group. (That was post hoc; the groups were not set up based on "intelligence" initially.) As has been addressed here on the blog any number of times, one of the reasons that work with gesture in teaching often does not work at all or is even counterproductive is the often unsystematic to even "spastic" gesticulations of instructors or those required of students.

There is a better way, of course, to ensure that gesture-assisted pronunciation and vocabulary is more appropriate for the widest possible range of "intelligences" present in the classroom. A chapter by Amanda Baker, Michael Burri and myself, entitled: Anchoring Academic Vocabulary with a “hard hitting” Haptic Pronunciation Teaching Technique - in a forthcoming book edited by Tamara Jones, Pronunciation in the Classroom: The Overlooked Essential. Tamara Jones (ed). New York: TESOL, attempts to do just that.

The specific haptic pronunciation teaching technique, the Rhythm Fight Club, is designed to be a highly controlled, yet systematic, very powerful anchoring procedure for assisting learners in learning and recalling terms from the Academic Word List. It is, in several ways, a model of how gestural work should be integrated into teaching. All movement of hands and arms is tightly "tracked" for consistency in the visual field in front of the body. The gestural patterns are practiced by learners so that they can readily read the gestural prompts coming from the instructor or other students. And, finally, the patterns, although very energetic are generally within the comfort zone of even the most introverted or kinaesthetically-challanged among us.

Keep in touch--but keep it together . . .

Full citation:
Khalili, Rahmany, and Zarei (2014). The Effect of Using Gesture on Resolving Lexical Ambiguity in L2, Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 5(5)1139-1146.

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Are you an "intelligent" pronunciation teacher?

A Fluid-, Kinaesthetic- and Haptic-intelligent practitioner, that is!

Putting together a light-hearted battery of adapted tests to run on my students this summer, something of a "(haptic) pronunciation teaching aptitude" test. It has four subtests:

1. Fluid intelligence - The geometric task described is always very revealing--and predictive. (from Wartenburger, et al., 2010) - Full citation below. Excerpt from the abstract:
" . . . perform very efficiently in problem solving tasks and analogical reasoning tasks presumably because they are able to select the task-relevant information very quickly and focus on a limited set of task-relevant cognitive operations. Moreover, individuals with high fluid intelligence produce more representational hand and arm gestures when describing a geometric analogy task than individuals with average fluid intelligence."

2. Kinaesthetic intelligence (There are many informal tests that work fine) and this from Turkmen, et al. (2013) - Full citation below. Excerpt from the abstract:
" . . . a significant positive relationship between bodily/kinaesthetic intelligence and internal motivation sub-scales and significant, weak negative relationship between bodily/kinaesthetic intelligence and a motivation."

3. Haptic intelligence (original test, not available) or something like this one.
A few subtests from the test for the adult blind description: (Done blind folded)

assembling puzzle parts such as cubes
analyzing dot patterns
examining and reproducing peg board patterns
identification of the missing part of an object, for example, a comb with a missing tooth
blocks with different sides of varying textures are rearranged to resemble patterns on plates

4. Salad dressing preference test (One of my favourites, invented by a colleague some time ago. Just ask teacher trainees to write down their salad dressing preference and why in exactly 150 words. Generally accomplishes the same thing as 1, 2 and 3 combined!)

If you haven't got time to do the first three, at least try the 4th, yourself. Keep in touch.

Full citations:

Turkmen, B., Bozkus, T., Ocalan, M., Kul, M. (2013) A Case Study on the Relationship Between Sport Motivation Orientations and Bodily/kinaesthetic Intelligence Levels of University Students
World Journal of Sport Sciences 8 (1): 28-32, 2013. DOI: 10.5829/idosi.wjss.2013.8.1.1186

Wartenburger, I., Kuhn, E., Sassenberg, U., Foth, M., Franz, E., van der Meer, E. (2010). On the Relationship between Fluid Intelligence, Gesture Production, and Brain Structure. Intelligence, v38 n1 p193-201 Jan-Feb 2010.

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What is haptic pronunciation teaching?

Basically, it is using gesture, touch and movement to teach pronunciation of English (or any language). What makes this method unique is that it is based on controlled and systematic use of gesture in doing that. (Often the problem with gesture use in language learning is that it can be "crazy" or random or intimidating or inconsistent, or not well-developed and tied to clear outcomes.)

The earlier "Essential Haptic-integrated English Pronunciation (EHIEP) approach," now KINETIK, does a better job of enhancing presentation, modelling, feedback and correction. The method is simple and easy to follow. Once a 30-minute module is finished, teacher and students have a set of techniques to use in class anytime a pronunciation problem or opportunity comes up!

Haptic Preliminaries

I often begin workshops or papers with the comment that in about 40 years in the field I have had just one idea: that the systematic use of body movement is essential to effective and efficient pronunciation instruction. That has never been more relevant than today, with the general deemphasis on pronunciation and introduction of technology into the field. From both perspectives, the "haptic" perspective approach developed here offers great promise. I can at least promise you a "moving" experience!

What is the KINETIK Method?

KINETIK is the name of the new v6.0 haptic pronunciation teaching system. About six years earlier we were using the acronym, "Haptic Integrated Pronunciation for Other/Extended Circle English Speakers" (HIPOECES)--still there in the url of this blog!

Haptic-integrated clinical pronunciation is:

A different way to learn pronunciation, based in part on Arthur Lessac’s notion of “Training the body first.” It is also based on research in the use of movement and touch in learning and training. It:

Looks somewhat like a combination of aerobics, sign language and Taichi

Provides a basic foundation for continued, self-directed pronunciation learning and classroom instruction

Designed for use by relatively untrained teachers but appropriate for all teachers (and learners) of all levels

Focuses on pronunciation used in conversation (not all words in English)

Is a highly “brain-and-body-friendly” system that promotes efficient learning of integrated tasks in general

Designed to promote integrated classroom pronunciation instruction and enable integration of conscious pronunciation work into spontaneous speaking.

Introduction

This blog was formerly named: HIPoeces (pronounced 'hI-pƏ-cIs), basically an approach to teaching English pronunciation to speakers of "outer and expanding" circle Englishes (including that population commonly termed: non-native speakers) but also compatible with the use of local models other than simply Standard" American" or RP. Using Kachru's "Inner, expanding and outer circles" model to characterize the breadth of Englishes and speakers of those, HIPoeces (now HICP) systems focus on developing haptically-centered pedagogical models and methods which can be adapted for teaching the pronunciation of various Englishes as they are spoken and taught by "owners" of those varieties.

In theory, the underlying principles can be applied to teaching the sound system of any language. Most language instructors intuitively use a great deal of movement and tactile anchoring in the classroom. The essential question is how to use that resource systematically, especially so that those learners who are less "haptic" in nature are also "moved" by the method.

Simply put, the HICP model/method is based on the idea of speaking along with arm and hand movement, not all that different from that used in sign languages. Most movement patterns are taken from either typical classroom pronunciation instruction practice or from related fields, such as psychotherapy or sports.

Most blog posts link to research that relates to the general HICP model, that is studies dealing with the role of gesture, touch, movement, learning modalities, learning in output, use of the visual field in learning, and experiential learning.

DEFINITIONS:

"Haptic" techniques- procedures that involve both movement and touch (Obvious examples include clapping hands, tapping feet, or holding an object and shaking it to the rhythm of a poem.)

"HICP techniques" - procedures that are haptic and also explicitly coordinated with phonological structures and/or discourse prosody (For example, clapping hands on primary stressed syllables in multi-syllable words, or doing a dance step on key words in conversational turns.)

"Haptic integration"- The haptic dimension probably functions as much to anchor visual and auditory material as it does to assist the learner in getting the "felt sense" of the sound or sound process. Lack of integration into spontaneous speech being such a serious potential shortcoming of instruction, haptic engagement seems a promising bridge to more accurate fluency.

"Visual field" - in HICP extensive use is made of the visual field in front of the learner. (For example, a modified version of the IPA vowel chart is anchored haptically in the imagination of the learner, directly in front of the upper body, and used for several purposes throughout the program.)