8 ways to teach English rhythm to EVERYbody but no BODY!

Here's one for your "kitchen sink" file (a research study that throws almost every imaginable technique at a problem--and succeeds) . . . well, sort of. In Kinoshita (2015) over the course of a four-week course, students were taught using seven different, relatively standard procedures for working on Japanese rhythm with JSL students. If you are new to rhythm work, check it out.

Those included: rhythmic marking (mark rhythm groups with a pencil and then trace them with their fingers), clapping (hands), pattern grouping (identify type of rhythm pattern for know vocabulary), metronome haiku (listening to and reading haiku to a metronome), auditory beat (reading grouped text out loud), acoustic analysis (using Praat), shadowing (attempting to read or speak along with an audio recording or live person). Impressive! They worked with each one for over an hour.

Not surprisingly, their rhythm improved. It is not entirely clear what else may have contributed to that effect, including other instruction and out of class experience, since there was no control group, but the students liked the work and identified their favorite procedure, which apparently aligned with their self-identified cognitive/learning style. Although after having done that many hours of rhythm work it had to be a bit difficult for the learner to  assess which technique they "liked" best, let alone which actually worked best for them individually.

Of particular interest here are the first two techniques, marking rhythm and tracing along with a finger, and clapping hands--both of which are identified as "kinaesthetic" by Kinoshita. (The other techniques are noted as combinations of auditory and visual.) They are, indeed, movement-and touch-based. The first at least involves moving a finger along a line. The second, clapping hands, could, in principle, involve more of the body then just the hands, but it also might not, of course.

Neither technique, at least on the face of it, meets our basic "haptic" threshold--involving more full-body engagement and distinctly anchoring stressed vowels. By that I mean that including touch in the process does not, in principle, help to anchor (better remember) the internal structure of the targeted rhythm groups--in fact it may serve to help cancel out memory for different levels of stress, length and volume of adjacent syllables. (There have been several blogposts dealing with this topic, one recently and the first, back in 2012 that focused on how haptic "events" are encoded or remembered.)

In essence, the haptic "brain" area(s) are not all that good at remembering different levels of pressure applied to the same point on the body. In other words, it is more challenging, for example, to remember which syllable in a clapped or traced rhythm group was prominent. (The number of syllables involved may be another matter.) So, to the extent that rhythm cannot or should not be divorced from word and phrasal stress, Kinoshita's two procedures probably are not contributing much variance to the final "progress" demonstrated.

That is not to say that more holistic,"full body" techniques such as "jazz chants", poetry, songs or dance, such as those promoted by Chan in her paper in the same conference proceedings (Pronunciation Workout), are not useful, fun, engaging, motivating and serve functions other than acquisition of the rhythm of an L2. 

A basic assumption of haptic work is that systematic body engagement, involving the whole person,  especially from the neck down, is essential to efficient instruction and learning. (Train the body first! - Lessac). v4.0 will include extensive use of "pedagogical dance steps" and practicing of most pedagogical movement patterns (gesture plus touch) to rhythmic percussion loops. 

As always, if you are looking for a near perfect "haptic" procedure for teaching English rhythm, where differentiated movement and touch contribute substantially to the process, I'd, of course, recommend begiining with the AHEPS v3.0 Butterfly technique-at least as a replacement for hand clapping. And for most of the other eight as well as matter of fact!


Full citation:
Kinoshita, N.(2015). Learner preference and the learning of Japanese rhythm. In J. Levis, R. Mohammed, M. Qian; Z. Zhou (Eds). Proceedings of the 6th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference (ISSN 2389566), Santa Barbara, CA (pp.49-62). Ames, IA: Iowa State University.

Advice on pronunciation teaching: What do you expect?

Clip art: Clker

Clip art: Clker

According to Warrington of Asia University, asking questions in a class discussion such as '“What do you need to learn in this class?” and “Why do you need to learn that?” offers an avenue for adult learners to express their preferences and desires about the kind of language they want to learn and how it is relevant to their lives."' Ever done that? If you have--and were satisfied that you had accomplished something--you might want to rethink that, according to research by Liu of UCSD and GAL of Northwestern. What they found was ""Stating expectations tended to make consumers focus on themselves and their own needs, and . . . (as a consequence) created a sense of distance between the participant and the organization . . . " Soliciting advice, on the other hand, " . . . tends to have an intimacy effect whereby the individual feels closer to the organization,"

So how do you achieve the right balance between setting up (often unrealistic) learner expectations and doing an effective needs analysis that serves the real needs of both you and your students? In pronunciation work that can be especially problematic because just conceptualizing what the learner's problems are is difficult enough for the instructor, let alone the learners.

If you must carry on that kind of dialogue involving pronunciation--and I generally do not recommend it--one of the better ways is to manage it in the appropriate channel: personal, pronunciation journals, not general class discussions. On the other hand, asking students for their ongoing input on how things are going and advice on how you could improve use of class time in a confidential format, based on clearly stated goals and objectives for the course,  can be enormously helpful, if done right, where expectations for that kind of openness and candor are invited and well established. So what do you expect? 

Some assembly and multiple intelligences required . . .

Clip art: Clker

The season brings its challenges . . . like interpreting made-in-China instructions for assembling grand children's toys for Santa. I was struck by the parallel with HICP work, especially from one perspective: I was required to use multiple "intelligences" which are generally outside or on the edge of my preferred set. A good exercise is to rank Gardner's 7 (or 8) intelligences as they apply to you, personally. It becomes immediately clear just how fluid and context-dependent our cognitive preferences are.

What I find most striking is that the highly kinaesthetic-spatial-intrapersonal character of key HICP procedures and techniques appears to contrast markedly with what I generally identify as my own preferences, namely linguistic-interpersonal-musical. How could that be the case? Although there are, of course, clear footprints of my "intelligences"--such as they are--throughout the system, the central concepts, namely, haptic learning and anchoring, are key. It is merely a question of how I like to learn versus what is the most efficient way to get others to.

Teaching outside or at least on the "fringe" of your preferred intelligence/comfort zone is unimaginably liberating--and essential. May your time outside of your "instructional zone" over the holidays be blessed, liberating--and, of course, moving! Be back next year! Bill

"Funderstanding" how the brain works (and how to change pronunciation)

Rat brain Clip art: Clker 

Are you left or right-brained? (If you don't know,  here is a website that even has a free test to help you figure out which.) If you answered "left" or "right"--and are serious about pronunciation work--you may be working against yourself and your students, best case.  (If you missed the August 21st post on the "Myth of learning styles," you might want to go back and review that one at this point. as well)

Neuroscience has, in general, progressed far past the idea that the left/right brain distinction has any important neurological relevance. Pedagogically, it may be a convenient shorthand for various purposes, but the implication that one's learning style preference characterized from that perspective is relatively permanent and unchangeable finds little if any empirical support today. As discussed in several earlier posts, the continuing discoveries of brain plasticity, multi-site functionality and interconnectedness-- and adaptability have demonstrated that learning style preference is very amenable to retraining and change.

The HICP model of brain function as it relates to pronunciation change is three-dimensional, attempting to reflect more accurately "where" in the brain things "happen" and identifying key functions needed for effective management of the process: (a) left-right dimension is "analytic-holistic," reflecting the input/output processing tendencies of the two hemispheres (parts vs "wholes"),  (b) front-back is "cognitive/visual idetic," representing the pre-frontal cognitive and back visual processing centers which tend to anchor experience more either through "reasoning" or accepting visual images less critically, i.e., seeing is believing, and (c) body/mind or lower/higher, suggesting more body- or emotion-based felt sense, "up" to more "mind-based," less emotionally anchored experiencing.

From that perspective, any pedagogical procedure can be placed within that 3D field, situated using various intensity scales, and used to design and conduct classroom instruction. Ironically, I could not (understandably!) create an adequate 2D graphic here to represent that framework, but you get the picture.

The Myth of Learning Styles

Here is a "must-read" on the concept of "learning styles" from Change Magazine, 2010. It begins with an interesting claim: "There is no credible evidence that learning styles exist." 

Although Riener and Willingham focus on the validity of the idea at college-level, their basic claim, that ability, student background and content (including the media in which the instruction is packaged) are far more relevant to instruction than is the potential impact of individual learning style (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc.), is simply dead on. (This is one of those pieces of research that you discover--with which you almost agree with too much--that forces you to smile for the rest of the day!) Enjoy!