What (a window into the brain of) the mouse can teach us about learning pronunciation

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Trigger warning: If you are especially attached to your mouse, you may want to skip over the third, italicized paragraph below . . . 

Fascinating research by Funamizu, Kuhn and Doya of Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, "Neural substrate of dynamic Bayesian inference in the cerebral cortex", originally published in Nature Neuroscience, summarized by Science Daily as, "Finding your way around in an uncertain world". (Full citation below.)

Basically, the study looked at how the (mouse's) brain uses movement of the mouse's body in creating meaning and thought. Reading the research methodology is not for the faint of heart. Here is a piece of the Science Daily summary describing it:

The team performed surgeries in which a small hole was made in the skulls of mice and a glass cover slip was implanted onto each of their brains over the parietal cortex. Additionally, a small metal headplate was attached in order to keep the head still under a microscope. The cover slip acted as a window through which researchers could record the activities of hundreds of neurons using a calcium-sensitive fluorescent protein that was specifically expressed in neurons in the cerebral cortex . . . The research team built a virtual reality system in which a mouse can be made to believe it was walking around freely, but in reality, it was fixed under a microscope. This system included an air-floated Styrofoam ball on which the mouse can walk and a sound system that can emit sounds to simulate movement towards or past a sound source.(ScienceDaily, September 16, 2016).

Got that? They then observed how the mice "navigate" the virtual space under different conditions, including almost complete reliance on body movement, rather than with access to any visual or auditory stimulus. The surprising finding (at least to me) was the extent to which kinesthetic memory or engagement took over, directing the mice to the "reward." There is much more to the work, of course, but this "window" into the functioning of the cerebral cortex is really consistent with a wide range of studies that point to "body-based" meaning creation and control.

So, what is the possible relevance of that to pronunciation teaching? (I never thought you'd ask!) Our work in haptic pronunciation teaching, for example, is based on the assumption, in effect, that "gesture comes first" (before sound and visual phonemes/graphemes) in instruction. (Based on Lessac's principle of "Train the body first" in voice and stage movement work.) For the most part today, pronunciation methodologists and theorists still see the role of gesture in teaching as being secondary, at best, an optional "reinforcer" of word-sound associations or a vehicle for "loosening up" learners and their bodies and emotional states-- or even just having fun!

What the "mice" study suggests is that sound, movement and vision are more integrated and interdependent in the brain than we generally acknowledge--or at least that movement is more central to meaning creation and retrieval. There are a number of body and movement-based theories that support that observation. In other words, the use of gesture in instruction deserves much more attention than it is currently getting. Much more than just a gesture . . .

Citation:
Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University - OIST. "Finding your way around in an uncertain world." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 19 September 2016. 

Getting (pronunciation) out of dictionaries and into the body!

Clip art: Clker

Have just heard that our proposal (Mike Burri, Alaina Brodie, Michelle Goertzen, Olga Ulyasheva and myself) for a 45 minute demonstration at TESOL in Philadelphia, "Getting Optimal Pronunciation from English Learner Dictionaries and beyond," has been accepted and will be on the program on the 31st of March, 2012. We are doing a similar presentation at the Tri-TESOL conference in Washington on the 22nd of October, next month, "Moving Pronunciation, Meaning and Usage from the Dictionary!" with Brian Teaman. (See earlier post on dictionary pronunciation for "dummies!")

In terms of demonstrating the applicability and effectiveness of haptic-integrated pronunciation work, this workshop format is promising. In about an hour or so, instructors get a good sense of the "felt sense" of the system. An earlier version at an ESL volunteer conference recently was (not surprisingly) "pronounced" a resounding success!

Getting pronunciation out of the dictionary in 9 steps . . . for dummies!

With the development of electronic dictionaries, you'd wonder if "dead tree-tionaries" are on the verge of extinction. Not so, not quite yet. The felt sense of a good, print learner dictionary with audio file attached --and there are several on the market now-- is still preferable for most students at earlier stages of pronunciation learning, and for many long beyond that. The combination of the more accessible full visual field of the dictionary entry and the (generally) good color/font layout add considerably to the material available for good encoding and recall. Plus, the "feel" of the physical book and ability to place it in an optimal position in the visual field is hard to match at the moment electronically. (Although probably not for long!)

We have developed a haptic-based protocol for teaching students how to go to the dictionary and have a much better chance of coming away with the pronunciation, grammatical category, meaning and usage. The key, of course, is continuous haptic anchoring and sequencing--not just saying the word or words to yourself or out loud. In the "Public speaking for dummies, 2nd edition"are, in fact, all the basic elements of the protocol (interpreted with a little imagination and translation, of course!), just not quite in this order:

Clip art: Clker

(a) Identify the stressed syllable.
(b) Identify and anchor the vowel quality in the stressed syllable.
(c) Say the word out loud, anchoring the stressed vowel with emphatic (rise-fall) intonation.
(d) Anchor the grammatical category, doing the emphatic (rise-fall) statement, "It's a X!" twice.
(e) Repeat "c"
(f) Read aloud twice the meaning, using a flat, "robot-like" but good-humored, intonation contour.
(g) Repeat "c"
(h) Anchor the usage example twice with "declarative" or "rising/question" intonation, whichever is appropriate
(i) Repeat "c"one final time.

We'll be doing this next month at the Tri-TESOL conference in Washington, "Haptic Dictionary Pronunciation," and at the TESOL convention in Philadelphia next March (2012). Even if you can't join us to experience it first hand, try that 9-step haptic dance with your students. They'll get a lot out of it.

Meaning through doing

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In this fascinating paper by Kilbourn and Isaksson (2007) the case is made for the place of some types or phases of noncognitive learning through haptic exploration. As we consider the wide range of phenomena related to learning of the sound system of a language, it becomes very evident that some aspects are "more" modality specific than others. For example, learning the orthography is obviously a more visual task--although it assumes some degree of felt sense of the vowels and consonants. But for the "rest" of the language, in Kilbourn and Isaksson's framework, even for the preponderance of early vocabulary learning, the experiential, haptic anchors are not just ancillary or "add ons" to the process but are fundamental to acquiring meaning.

Virtually all of pronunciation is closely tied to kinaesthetic and tactile sensory networks. It should come as no surprise then that it can also be learned efficiently,  haptically. This framework suggests that at least for some set of learners a primarily haptic and less cognitive/visual presentation approach will be best. Based on our experience, that seems to apply to most learners, particulary in terms of learning basic vowels, stress, rhythm and intonation. Success may just depend upon how long one stays in touch . . .