Operant conditioning rides again in language teaching!

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 "The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience." B.F Skinner

Quick quiz: What is "operant conditioning" and of what value is it to you in understanding language learning and teaching? If you can't answer either part of that question, unfortunately, you're not alone. Your formal training may well have lacked any thoughtful consideration of the concept of "operant conditioning". Following Chomsky's devastating attack on it and behaviorism and the ascendancy of cognitive/constructivist theory, it has in most learning frameworks appeared to have been at least dismissed, at best. Not really, according to an excellent new piece by Sturdy and Nicoladis, "How Much of Language Acquisition Does Operant Conditioning Explain?" -- it has just gone underground.

Their basic argument: "Researchers have ended up inventing learning mechanisms that, in actual practice, not only resemble but also in fact are examples of operant conditioning (OC) by any other name they select."

According to the meta-analysis, the most persuasive cases or contexts discussed are (a) socialization, (b) ritualization and (c) early child language learning. At least for one whose "basic training" in psychology as an undergraduate happened in 1962, it is a breath of fresh (familiar) air, not exactly vindication, but pretty close. It applies especially to the more embodied dimensions of pronunciation instruction, such as physical work on articulation and the felt sense of sound production in the vocal mechanism--and, of course, haptic engagement.

But it also is fundamental to understanding and using context-based feedback that is critical to socialization or social constructivism, including the role of ritual, pragmatics and long-term reinforcement mechanisms.

If you don't get a full-body, warm fuzzy from this piece, read it again holding a cup of hot tea or coffee. 

Required reading.


Citation:
Sturdy CB and Nicoladis E (2017) How Much of Language Acquisition Does Operant Conditioning Explain?. Front. Psychol. 8:1918. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01918

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.

The Music of Pronunciation (and language) Teaching

Like many pronunciation and "speaking" specialists, I have long believed that in some way systematic use of music should be "in play" at all times in class. I suspect most in the field feel the same. Up until recently there has not appeared to be much of an academically credible way to justify that or investigate the potential connection to language teaching more empirically.

A recent 2015 study, Music Congruity Effects on Product Memory, Perception, and Choice, by North, Sheridan and Areni, published in the Journal of Retailing (DOI, below), suggests some interesting possibilities. Quoting the ScienceDirect.com summary, the study basically demonstrated that:

• Ethnic music (e.g., Chinese, Indian) increased the recall of menu items from the same country.
• Ethnic music increased the likelihood of choosing menu items from the same country.
• Classical music increased willingness to pay for products related to social identity.
• Country music increased willingness to pay for utilitarian products.

  

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So, what may that mean for our work, or explain what we have seen in our classrooms?

• (Recall) For example, we might predict that using English music of some kind with prominent vowels, consonants, intonation and rhythm patterns would enhance memory for them.
• (Perception) Having listened to "English" music should enable being able to better perceive or recognize appropriate pronunciation models or patterns of English. I suspect that most language teachers believe that intuitively, have seen the indirect effects in how students' engagement with the music of the culture "works". 
• (Milieu) I, like many, have used classical music for "selling" and relaxing and creating ambiance for decades. There is research from several fields supporting that. Only recently have I been attempting to tie it into specific phonological structures or sounds, especially the expressive, emotional and relational side of work in intonation. 
• (Function) I frequently use country-like music or rap for working on functional areas, warm ups, rhythm patterns, and specific vowel contrasts.

I am currently experimenting more with different rhythmic, stylistic and genre-based varieties of music. (Specifically, the new, v4.0 version of the haptic pronunciation teaching system, EHIEP - Essential Haptic-integrated English Pronunciation.) Over the years I have used music, from general background or mood setting to highly rhythmic tunes tied directly to the patterns being practiced. I just knew it worked . . .

The "Music congruity" study begins to show in yet another way just how music affects both associative memory and perception, conveying in very real terms broad connections to culture and context. More importantly, however, it gives us more justification for creating a much richer and more "memorable" classroom experience.

If you use music, use more. If not, why not? 

In press (2015) doi:10.1016/j.jretai.2015.06.001

Alexander Guiora - Requiescat in pace

Last month the field of language teaching and language sciences lost a great friend, colleague, researcher and theorist, Alexander Guiora, retired Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan. To those of us in English language teaching, his early work into the concepts of empathy, "language ego" and second language identity, the famous "alcohol" study and others, were foundational in keeping mind and the psychological self foregrounded in the field. As Executive Editor of the journal, Language Learning, he was instrumental in elevating it to the place it holds today, the standard for research publication by which all others are to be measured.

Working with him, doing research as a doctoral student was a unique experience. His research group, composed of faculty and graduate students from several disciplines over the years, met every Friday morning. There was always a project underway or on the drawing boards. Several important, seminal publications resulted. Shonny was an extraordinary man. I recently shared the following with his family:

I think the great lesson we learned from him early on was how to be brutally honest--and yet still love and respect our colleagues unconditionally. All of us, recalling when were newbie grad students, "cherish" memories of being jumped all over for making a really stupid mistake-- which we would surely never commit again! And then, minutes later, he could just as well say something genuinely complimentary about an idea or phrasing in a piece that we were responsible for. Talk about cultivating and enhancing "language researcher ego"! He taught us to think and argue persuasively from valid research, how to not take criticism of our work, personally. Few of us did not develop with him a lasting passion for collaborative research.

The posture of (haptic pronunciation) teaching and learning

Especially if you are new to language learning--or a robot, here is fascinating study by Morse, Benitez, Belpaeme, Cangelosi, and Smith of Indiana university, "Posture Affects How Robots and Infants Map Words to Objects," summarized by ScienceDaily (See full citation below).

Basically what the research demonstrates is the role of body attitude (or orientation) in space in name and concept learning. From the summary:

"Using both robots and infants, researchers examined the role bodily position played in the brain's ability to "map" names to objects. They found that consistency of the body's posture and spatial relationship to an object as an object's name was shown and spoken aloud were critical to successfully connecting the name to the object."

And a quote from the lead author as to the implications of this line of research: 

"These experiments may provide a new way to investigate the way cognition is connected to the body, as well as new evidence that mental entities, such as thoughts, words and representations of objects, which seem to have no spatial or bodily components, first take shape through spatial relationship of the body within the surrounding world," . . .

In haptic pronunciation teaching (Essential Haptic-integrated English Pronunciation, EHIEP) we basically associate the sounds, words and patterns of language (English in this case) with specially designed gestures across the visual field, what we call 'pedagogical movement patterns' (PMPs).  We realized almost a decade ago that, at least for some learners (those that are more visually eidetic), the precision with which those models are presented and practiced initially is critical.

Studies in any number of "physical" disciplines, such as athletic training, rehabilitation psychotherapy have long established that principle, that where the new learning occurs in the visual field--and in the body--is integral to efficiency and effectiveness of learning. 

Of course the relevance of those studies goes far beyond learning pronunciation. Depending on your agenda and method, the "context of learning" extends out from the body to the concepts to the words, to the social milieu--even to the room. 

Sit up and take notice! (And join us at the TESOL Convention in Toronto this week on the 28th!)

Full citation:
Indiana University. "Robot model for infant learning shows bodily posture may affect memory and learning." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 18 March 2015. .

Why cognitively lazy women (and their smart phones) may make better language learners!

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Women are (in my experience, intuitively speaking) generally:

• Better language learners, (e.g., Oxford, et al, 1993) especially in the use of learning  strategies
• More intuitive, as opposed to analytic thinkers. (e.g., Salahshour, Sharifi, and Salahshour, 2013)
•  Use smart phones for more of the right reasons (e.g., Zeedo.com/blog) especially from a language learning perspective, e.g., relationship building, social media 

Most now realize that the attitude in education of "It is not so important what facts students have in their heads, but rather if they can find the right answer on the web!" does, indeed, have it's downside--particularly when there is an urgent need to impress somebody at a party--without Siri being part of the conversation.

We also know at least intuitively (rather than analytically, based on hard research) that successful language learners tend to be better at "looking up" words (either from other people or "books" of some kind, online or dead-tree) and are better at remembering them--which probably doesn't mean just memorization.

New study by Barr, Pennycook, Stolz, and Fugelsang of University of Waterloo, summarized by ScienceDaily, found that intuitive, as opposed to analytical thinkers, tend to use their smart phone web browsers more to arrive at answers, as opposed to "thinking" it out themselves. (Full citation below--To paraphrase Will Rogers, I only know what I read on ScienceDaily.com.)

Here's the bad news: According to the researchers, reliance on the smart phone may well make the more intuitive user "lazy" cognitively: "They may look up information that they actually know or could easily learn, but are unwilling to make the effort to actually think about it".

They did not find any correlation between use of smart phones for entertainment or social media and intelligence or cognitive "decline," however. (Clearly, a "no-brainer" . . . )

Here's the good news:. As we use more and more hand-held technology in language teaching and learning (especially pronunciation work), it should just get easier and easier--at least for some of us! And simply from an analytical perspective, or is it just intuitive, nothing in "print" says that smarter language learners are necessarily better ones?

The reported correlations between learning language in school and general academic success really don't count here, for a number of reasons, including gender bias. Again, in my experience, the less "intelligent" (boys) have to be even more ambitious and work harder at it. They cannot afford to kick back and take it easier.

Probably should have done more web search to explore this, of course, but being the wannabe analytic that I am, just figured it wasn't all that necessary.


Full citation:
University of Waterloo. (2015, March 5). Reliance on smartphones linked to lazy thinking. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 11, 2015 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150305110546.htm