Perfect pronunciation?

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There are any number of ways to do that, of course. ("Per'fect" it, that is!) One place I would generally not begin with beginners or upper beginners, however, would be at the Merriam Websters Learner Dictionary and its "Perfect Pronunciation Exercises."  As noted in earlier posts, one place I might start however, one of my favorites, one very compatible with AH-EPS, is at English Accent Coach. The "difference" between the two sites is instructive. One begins with listening to words in sentence context; the other, begins with the sounds themselves, leads learners through a series of exercises (and games) and then extends to the sounds in words, etc. The EAC model is a good one, whether you use that specific site or do the same within your listening/pronunciation syllabus/curriculum. Most of the traditional pronunciation packages did something similar but did not have the technology available to make it fast and efficient, as does EAC.

Now EAC will probably not entirely agree with me that embodying them first gives learners a much better "touch" for the vowels of English, before they play the game there, but give Professor Thomson a break . . . he's listening.

So, once you finish Module 3 in AH-EPS, send your students over to EAC for some very fine, fine tuning. 

Touching tactile tactics for tapping new pronunciation?

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Clip art: Clker

Previous posts have alluded to the fact that students working with haptic-integrated pronunciation change often report beginning to "listen" with their bodies, as if they have recorded a word or phrase by "moving" with it or mirroring what was said. (Recent research on mirror neurons of course strongly supports that observation.) Two fascinating studies summarized by Science Daily address the underlying mechanisms which may be involved. One was conducted by researchers at Yale in which subjects were trained using a robotic device attached to their jaws to pronounce new sounds. As they did, they became substantially better at hearing them as well, noting that " . . . Learning to talk also changes the way speech sounds are heard. . . " Wow. The other, by a team at the University of British Columbia, basically "confused" subjects into thinking what they heard were aspirated consonants (when they actually heard voiced, unaspirated consonants)--by gently hitting them in the back of the neck with a small burst of air on targeted sounds. (That's right. Got to try that sometime!) The first was a bit more kinaesthetic than tactile; the second, decidedly more tactile. In both cases, the haptic or tactile "anchoring" dramatically affected perception of sounds. That is also the intent of the haptic-integrated protocols of the EHIEP system. The idea is to train learners to anchor haptically new sounds or patterns, what we call "MAMs" (more appropriate models--using movement and touch along with articulating the sound) at places in the visual field that are as "proprioceptively," visually and perceptually as distinct as possible from the learner's "inaccurate" or less appropriate current version of the sound. The summary of the latter study begins with this great line, "Humans use their whole bodies, not just their ears, to understand speech . . . " Really.

Effortless pronunciation learning: a la The Matrix!

(Credit: Nicolle Rager Fuller, NSF)

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According to this ScienceDaily summary: " . . . it may be possible to use brain technology to learn to play a piano, reduce mental stress or hit a curve ball with little or no conscious effort. It's the kind of thing seen in Hollywood's "Matrix" franchise." That may be a bit over the top, but note this: "The most surprising thing in this study is that mere inductions of neural activation patterns corresponding to a specific visual feature led to visual performance improvement on the visual feature, without presenting the feature or subjects' awareness of what was to be learned." The "skills" being enhanced in this research by basically implanting neural routines in the brain were essentially visual, such as ability to discriminate fine detail, but it looks impressive: "The result, say researchers, is a novel learning approach sufficient to cause long-lasting improvement in tasks that require visual performance." The extension to aural and tactile mapping is only a matter of time. In fact it is easy to see it working with the EHIEP vowel matrix.

GIving students a hand to get the point?

That's right! Embodied AND disembodied. Here is the evidence!

Bilingual teenage brain stems listening comprehension!

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Clip art: Clker

Here is a Science Digest summary of a fascinating study on the advantages of being bilingual just published. (This is one of those pieces that I could go off a dozen directions on and really have fun with--but I'll try to "stick to the facts," regardless!)  In essence, it was discovered that the brain stems of bilingual subjects were significantly better at sound/pitch discrimination than monolinguals in one context: when the sound was strongly masked with static or white noise. The researcher notes some pretty amazing implications of that: "The bilingual's enhanced experience with sound results in an auditory system that is highly efficient, flexible and focused in its automatic sound processing, especially in challenging or novel listening conditions," and " .  . . evidence for system-wide neural plasticity in auditory experts that facilitates a tight coupling of sensory and cognitive functions." [italics, mine] Wow. The study does not explicitly establish that "tight coupling," although in terms of general understanding of the function of the "reptilian" brain stem (in addition to managing emotional response), that case can be made rather easily. But teenagers "paying attention?" Really? This may suggest one way around some of the  "critical period" problem in pronunciation or accent development: enhanced (full mind-body) attention training. Now let me think . . . how could that be done? Keep in touch.