Better looking pronunciation of L2 English vowels

Clip art: Clker

Clip art: Clker

 Have done many blogposts that review research related to the nature of the visual field. Most accord with Casasanto of the University of Pennsylvania's comment that "Up equals good, happy, optimistic; down the opposite. Right is honest and trustworthy. Left, not so much. That's what language and culture tell us." Other research uses the parallel terms: bright~dark~hot~cool or external~internal~change~stability.

In EHIEP the standard vowel chart used in pronunciation teaching (based on the IPA system) is flipped around so that the front vowels are in the right visual field and the back vowels are in the left visual field. That was done, in part, based on marketing research that demonstrated that the phonaesthetic character of vowels fits much better with the right to left presentation, that is the "hot" vowels are the front vowels (and consequently should be in the right visual field, etc.)

Casasanto's research seems to shed new "light" on why we represent the visual field with such spatial metaphors. According to Casasanto,  given two identical objects or people, standing side by side, right handers tend to judge the one to the right more positively--and left handers tend to favor the one on the left. And furthermore, using techniques that change the felt sense of fluency in the "other" hand, a subject's response can be altered to become more positive (or negative). In other words, to some degree, the "body" dictates our immediate evaluation of both phenomena in the visual field and in our value system itself. And furthermore, ". . . those linguistic tropes? They probably enshrine the preferences of the right-handed majority." Interesting.

Perhaps we could set about retraining the roughly 10~15% of our students to feel more like right handers. Or we could do the same for the 85-90% of the right handers to get the "right" felt sense from the standard left to right IPA vowel chart. Have new sympathy, by the way, for left handers who have difficulty with the system--and for right handers who find learning (left to right) phonetics such an ordeal.

The two fluency-based pedagogical movement patterns of EHIEP (one resembling TaiChi; the other, boxing) probably work to create some balance between left and right. But, clearly it is time to figure out how to "give the other 15% more of a hand" as well! 

Attention! Malleable L2 pronunciation? Just keep at it!

Clip art: Clker

Clip art: Clker

Malleable pronunciation. I like that term, especially in relation to error correction and so-called fossilized language. (Have another blogpost about ready on that topic, too.) How's this for an intriguing conclusion to a 2012 study by McClelland and colleagues at Oregon State University, reported by Science Dailey: " . . . the study gives compelling evidence that social and behavioral skills, such as paying attention, following directions and completing a task may be even more crucial than academic abilities . . . " Attention and persistence. Two of my favorite topics here on the blog. Now, of course, the research was looking at the correlation between subjects who could pay attention as preschoolers and their later success in graduating from college, but there is a relevant implication here. They then add: " . . . the good news for parents and educators, the researchers said, is that attention and persistence skills are malleable and can be taught." And how do you do that in your work? For adults, of course, it is not only that it should be part of instruction--and many students DO indeed need to learn how to be better at both--but it must be a constant feature, moment by moment, in the classroom. Multiple modality instruction and clear targeting and anchoring do much to achieve the former; systematic instruction and carefully planned homework and practice outside of class help achieve the latter. You paying attention?