Moving learners to be more positive and work together in (pronunciation) teaching: person or process?

One typical reason often given for not teaching pronunciation has to be something like: I don't feel comfortable having to be so outgoing and interpersonally "invasive" in messing with students' speech. Granted, many (if not near all) of the strongest proponents of pronunciation teaching, mea culpa, tend to be pretty far down the "extrovert" rabbit hole. In more traditional approaches to teaching you almost had to be to drive drill and other mindless practices with enthusiasm, motivation students to stay with it.  Being around someone who is excessively positive and extroverted can also get real annoying, eh!

Turns out, according to a non-significant study by Qui and Ho of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, that all that extroverted talk and language may not really be contributing much to the process--a proposition that I, being an extrovert, endorse whole heartedly, enthusiastically! (but see below.) Based on a meta-analysis of about three dozen studies of extrovert behavior, they almost discovered that extroverts tend to use more "positive emotion words" and "social process words" than the rest of you. Taken from the Neuroscience News summary: 

"Positive emotion words are defined by psychologists – using text analysis tools – as words that describe a pleasant emotional state, such as ‘love’, ‘happy’, or ‘blessed’, or that indicate positivity or optimism, such as ‘beautiful’ or ‘nice’. Social process words include words containing personal pronouns except ‘I’, and words showing social intentions, such as ‘meet’, ‘share’ and ‘talk’."

Then, their conclusion: "Our results suggest that positive emotion words and social process words are linguistic correlates of extroversion, but they are small in magnitude." 

Really? By "small in magnitude" they mean their findings did not reach an r of 0.05 (0.069 and 0.077.) Normally, I don't report "near misses" like that, but since I like the conclusion, let us run with it a bit. What it "tells" me, is that what many see as the secret to setting up the most effective learning "atmosphere" in class, the use of "pedagogically correct" language that is generally positive, "grouply" discourse, does not depend on being personally . . . extroverted. So what does motivate (move) your students? You, your pedagogy or both? And how does that interaction really function in class? 

We discovered early on that uncontrolled enthusiasm, as great as it is for getting everybody on board, is near toxic in working with gesture, easily letting things get out "hand" or of control or focus--and very likely pronunciation, in general. In part, the reason for that being that the learner's attention can go almost anywhere in the visual field around them, affecting what is remembered from the session, compromising attention to sound, for example. Research (and common sense) has long established that both positive excitement and negative stress can wear you out equally, take you off your game. 

It's certainly about moving . . . moving learners to learn efficiently, metaphorically and physically. Try this: Evaluate your next three or four in-class or on Zoom lessons just in terms of relative quantity and quality of body movement, by both you and the class--a fundamental principle of haptic pronunciation teaching. 

One great way to do that is to record the session and then review it with the sound off. (If you are interested, let me know in the comments section and I'll share with you a rubric for that that we have developed for teacher training.) That will seriously impact/enhance your awareness and work on screen. Guaranteed. 

Achieving intentional, appropriate kinaesthetic engagement is critical in teaching with systematic gesture, as in HaPT. And it can't help but make you and students look and sound better as well! 

------

Bottom line: Being an extrovert should NOT be especially advantageous in pronunciation teaching, properly understood . . . like in the new (EXCITING!) iteration of haptic pronunciation teaching (HaPT.) I'm sure you saw that coming! Acton Haptic Pronunciation: Content Complement System (AHP:CCS) official roll out date is now 2/15/21. Check out previous blogpost for more info on that. ,

Original source:
“A meta-analysis of linguistic markers of extraversion: Positive emotion and social process words” by Jiayu Chen Lin Qiu, Moon-Ho Ringo Ho. Journal of Research in Personality

Motivation to do Pronunciation work: Smell-binding study!

Rats! Well . . . actually . . . mice who are motivated to (voluntarily) exercise more are genetically set up or developed to have better, more discriminating vomeronasal glandular structure. Is that big, or what? Check out the Neuroscience News summary of this unpublished study by Haga-Yamanaka, Garland and colleagues at UC-Riverside, forthcoming in PLOS ONE, Exercise Motivation Could Be Linked to Certain Smells.   I LOVE the researchers' potential application of the research: 

“It’s not inconceivable that someday we might be able to isolate the chemicals and use them like air fresheners in gyms to make people even more motivated to exercise,” Garland said. “In other words: spray, sniff, and squat.”

Being a runner, myself,  I especially like the study since it uses mice who are what they term "high runners!" Admittedly it is a bit of a stretch to jump to the gym and then to the ELT/pronunciation classroom from the study, but the reality of how smell affects performance is well established in several disciplines--and probably in your classroom as well! 

Decades ago, a colleague who specialized in olfactory therapies and was a consultant in the corporate world on creating good-smelling work spaces, etc., sold me on the idea of using a scent generator in my pronunciation teaching. Required a mixing of two or three oils to get students in the mood to do whatever I wanted them to  better. Back then it seemed to be effective but there was little research to back it up and it was before we have been forced to work in "scent-free" and other things-free spaces.

What is interesting about the study to our work is the connection between persistence in physical exercise and heightened general sensory awareness, and the way smell in this case is enhanced. My guess is that touch, foundational in haptic pronunciation teaching is keyed in similar ways. Gradually as students practice consistently with the gestural gross and fine motor gestural patterns, what we call pedagogical movement patterns, their differential use of touch increases. (An earlier post identifies over two dozen "-emic" types of touch in the system.) In other words, touch becomes more and more powerful/effective in anchoring sound change and memory for it. 

That insight is central to the new haptic pronunciation teaching system, Acton Haptic Pronunciation Complement--Rhythm First, which will be rolled out early in 2021. (For preliminary details on that, check out the refurbished Acton Haptic website! )

The "Marshmallow effect" in (haptic pronunciation) teaching

Following up on the previous blogpost on "distracting from distractions," here is a "delicious" study by Heyman, of University of California San Diego, and colleagues, summarized by Science Daily that attempts to refine the classic "Marshmallow effect," studies where children are bribed with marshmallows to see how long they will wait to eat them. Basically, they are told if they can just hold off a bit, they'll get more marshmallows. Those that do turn out to be more successful later in life, maybe more disciplined, etc. 

In this study the added variable was that the 3 and 4 year olds in different groups were told (a) their teacher would find out how much time they waited, (b) their friends would find out, or (c) in the control group, no such instruction were provided. As you can guess, the first two groups waited longer; the first, more than twice as long as the second. (The researchers' conclusions as to what is actually motivating the kids--they say " . . .  findings suggest that the desire to impress others is strong and can motivate human behavior starting at a very young age." Well maybe, in the case of (b), but in (a), given that the research was done in China . . . could there be other cultural factors involved, such as fear of teacher reaction or discipline? Maybe . . . 

In haptic pronunciation teaching, but in many different teaching contexts, instructors pay very close attention to time on task work by students both in and out of class. A basic HaPT protocol is that students have to report weekly in some detail on their out of class practice, including how much time on assigned task and various levels of evaluation of how "it" went. Here, too, however, there is the same "Marshmallow" question . . . Those that do consistently report seem to do much better; those that don't, don't. But there is no obvious way to assign simple cause and effect there. Maybe it is just that the disciplined do better, including at providing good reports on time allocation, etc. 

I have been unable to find a decent piece of research that parallels what we do in the "ActonHaptic" version of HaPT with time management and reporting. (If you know of one, please pass that on!) But, the general effect always seems to be more focused, less distracted work/study. I do something similar in my some of my grad courses, in fact, where at least the monitoring effect, that they have to report to me regularly always seems to "work." I do have data from final course evaluations that confirms that consistently. 

So . . . try applying that idea to your course. As you do, take careful notes on how much time you spend on what, and when, and how it seemed to work. Then report back to me . . . or else!

Source: 

Association for Psychological Science. (2020, September 10). Children will wait to impress others -- another twist on the classic marshmallow test. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 26, 2020 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200910110826.htm

Resistance to effective (pronunciation) teaching

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And another reason why good drill "works!"

If there is a bottom line to (at least haptic pronunciation) teaching, it is this: students (and to some extent, teachers) must practice regularly.  Countless studies,  in a wide range of disciplines, at least in north American culture, come to the same conclusion:  we must establish intrinsic motivation.  Eventually, somehow students have to come to the point where they really want or need to do it!  But how do you get there?

(Caveat trigger emptor warning: This post contains references to bodily functions of “older adults”!)

Whenever I have questions about motivation, I just go to the source: fitness trainers.  If you need to get in great shape, and have the cash, hire one.  You’ll get there much faster, and may wind up with intrinsic motivation to keep going. I say “may” because those trainers also have a vested interest in keeping you coming back for more. So, in general, they may not be too good at letting you go,  but, if you study their method, you can learn a lot. About a year ago I did that in prepping for a 10k.

A new study by Kekäläinen, Kokko, Tammelin, Sipilä and Walker. of University of Jyväskylä adds a neat piece to the puzzle. The title of the ScienceDaily summary summarizes the study well: Resistance training and exercise-motivation go hand-in-hand: Resistance training improves exercise motivation and contributes to making exercise planning among older adults. 

If you don’t lift weights, start tomorrow.

In essence, resistance training (weightlifting) as opposed to aerobic training (e.g., walking or dancing) added significantly more to motivation and meta-cognition (planning and persistence). And why should that be? I have a theory . . . . Once you get into weightlifting, it’s all about following the formula. Requires little or no motivation to at least figure out what to do, to quote Nike: (you) just do it! Before long, you can feel and see the difference. Relatively quick positive feedback and reinforcement gets you hooked in roughly 30 days or so. What the research shows, in effect, is that discipline and persistence in one area feeds over into another — but, in this case, only in one direction: matter over mind!

I’m not saying that about 60 years of weightlifting has made me a more disciplined person, but it should have! What that does explain is my fascination with the work of Lessac, and his dictum of “train the body first" and how that has guided my thinking in terms of pronunciation teaching. Gesture-based haptic pronunciation teaching is very much a form of resistance training (as is just good old-fashioned pronunciation drilling when done well!) in that it focuses on directing sound production from the body out, as it were. Some of it, in fact, is also quite physically demanding when conducted properly! And most importantly, it is relatively easy to get students to do homework regularly and (for them) to use the gestural patterns spontaneously in class for correction and modeling.  (See more on that process in upcoming blogpost.)

In other words, some selective "mindlessness" centered on physical training, not all that different from aspects of "mindFULness" today, can play an important role in developing disciplined persistence and better time management or priorities. 

If you have been "resisting" learning about haptic pronunciation teaching, now is the time to join us in the webinars next weekend. For reservations and more information: info@actonhaptic.com

Source:
University of Jyväskylä. (2018, August 16). Resistance training and exercise-motivation go hand-in-hand: Resistance training improves exercise motivation and contributes to making exercise planning among older adults. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 11, 2019 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180816101937.htm

Anxious about your (pronunciation) teaching? You’d better act fast!

Probably the most consistent finding in research on pronunciation teaching from instructors and student alike is that it can be . . . stressful and anxiety producing. And compounding that is often the additional pressure of providing feedback or correction. A common response, of course, is just to not bother with pronunciation at all. One coping strategy often recommended is to provide "post hoc" feedback, that is after the leaner or activity is finished, where you refer back to errors, in as low key and supportive a manner as possible. (As explored in previous posts, you might also toss in some deep nasal breathing, mindfulness or holding of hot tea/coffee cups at the same time, of course.) Check that . . .

A new study by Zhan Slow Is Also Fast: Feedback Delay Affects Anxiety and Outcome Evaluation, published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, adds an interesting perspective to the problem. What they found, in essence, was that: 

Learners who tended toward high anxiety responded better to immediate positive feedback than such feedback postposed, or provided later. The same type of learners also perceived overall outcomes of the training as lower, were the feedback to be provided later.
Learners who tended toward low anxiety responded equally well to immediate or delayed feedback and judged the training as effective in either condition. There was also a trend toward making better use of feedback as well.
Just why that might be the case is not explored in depth but it obviously has something to do with being able to hold the experience in long term memory more effectively, or with less clutter or emotional interference.






I'm good!

So, if that is more generally the case, it presents us with a real a conundrum on how to consistently provide feedback in pronunciation teaching, or any teaching for that matter. Few would say that generating anxiousness, other than in the short term as in getting "up" for tests or so-called healthy motivation in competition, is good for learning. If pronunciation work itself makes everybody more anxious, then it would seem that we should at least focus more on more immediate feedback and correction or positive reinforcement. Waiting longer apparently just further handicaps those more prone to anxiety. How about doing nothing?


This certainly makes sense of the seemingly contradictory results of research in pronunciation teaching showing instructors biased toward less feedback and correction but students consistently wanting more

How do you provide relatively anxiety-free, immediate feedback in your class, especially if your preference is for delayed feedback? Do you? In haptic work, the regular warm up preceding pronunciation work is seen as critical to that process. (but we use a great deal of immediate, ongoing feedback.) Other instructors manage to set up a more general nonthreatening, supportive, open and accommodating classroom milieu and "safe spaces". Others seem to effectively use the anonymity of whole class responses and predictable drill-like activities, especially in oral output practice.


Anxiety management or avoidance. Would, of course, appreciate your thoughts and best practice 0n this . . as soon as possible!


Citation: Zhang X, Lei Y, Yin H, Li P and Li H (2018) Slow Is Also Fast: Feedback Delay Affects Anxiety and Outcome Evaluation. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 12:20. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2018.00020

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.

Killing pronunciation 7: Talking learners (and instructors) out of pronunciation change

Credit: Anna Shaw

How do you persuade students to work on their pronunciation--or sell them on it, especially pronunciation-related homework?  If you are using more "distal senses" such as sight and/or sound, according to a new study by Elder, Schlosser, Poor, Xu of Brigham Young University, summarized by Science Daily, you may not have the right approach. If, on the other "hand", your method evokes a more "proximal" sense experience (such as movement, touch and/or taste), you are probably on the right track. (I'm sure you can see where this is headed!)

The BYU study dealt with the impact of advertising on what type of pitch and/sensory imagery seems to get you to make a commitment to buy sooner, rather than later. The actual journal title, So Close I Can Almost Sense It: The Interplay between Sensory Imagery and Psychological Distance, describes the research well. What they found, not surprisingly, is that imagery connecting to or evoking a "felt" somatic response from the body, in effect, draws you in faster, and more effectively.

That does not mean that you DO something physical, only that the imagery on a screen in this case, may get the customer or learner's brain to respond AS IF actual touch or taste was involved, generating a very real feeling or taste-related memory. That mirroring effect, in part entertained by "mirror neurons" in the brain, is well established in brain research. To the brain under most circumstances the distinction between how we feel when we observe and do can be minimal. Turns out our metaphors are more than metaphors, in other words.

Some of the variability here may have to do with our personal instructional style in bringing learners' attention to, in this case, what they need to do outside of class. How do you do that? A list somewhere in the syllabus? An oral announcement? Something written on the board? A brief oral run through of what is to be done? A brief rehearsal w/students of what is to be done? What is very important here is not the actual classroom activity but the imagery that it evokes. And the key to that is what prior schema the classroom event is linking back to--and how, in the moment, it is delivered and experienced.

Pronunciation instruction done right is both an exceedingly physical and meta-cognitive process. What haptic work attempts to do is achieve that balance consistently. There are other ways to do that, of course, but most student textbooks, for example, either don't or can't, in part because the activities are presented and taught in a purely linear fashion. Haptic is ALWAYS simultaneous--sound, movement, and cognition (haptic) engagement, in effect, communicating more intentionally with learners in pronunciation change in and with somatic (body-based) imagery.

Still not sold? Try rereading the blog in the hot tub or on an exercise ball . . .

Full citation from ScienceDaily.com:
Brigham Young University. (2017, June 28). Now or later: How taste and sound affect when you buy: The way ads play on our senses influences the timing of our purchases. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 23, 2017 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170628095858.htm

Killing pronunciation 5: Deliberate (boring) practice and the Passion-Practice paradox

Pronunciation enthusiasts can be some of the most energetic, entertaining and gesticular among us . . . unfortunately. (Mea culpa!)

Require your students to do boring and repetitive pronunciation in class or homework much? (Do you hold them accountable for quality practice outside of class?) If you have been following the blog for a while, you know that I am a big fan of James Clear. If you need to change something--most anything--and you probably still don't need a coach or therapist to help get you there, his website is worth a visit. His latest post, "The Behavior-change paradox", combined with Eduardo Briceno's TED talk on "How to get better at things you care about" forms a nice program for change of sorts--even pronunciation change!

"Deliberate practice" is back in vogue. One of the great "myths" of our time is that most anything can be learned at near light speed, relatively speaking. The typical pitch from quick-change methodologists (and con artists) such as "change your accent FAST!" reflects that legacy of both behaviorism and technology, especially the latter--and marketing, of course.

The two pieces of the Clear-Briceno model are (simply) consistent, incremental change and focused passion. You need both. Clear's analysis of why we often fail to make change in our habits is simple, but striking, and captures the passion-practice paradox: the more we try to change in the short term or the harder we go at it, the more resistance we encounter. Effective change over time is generally based on disciplined alteration of key practices at the day or even hour-by-hour level.

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In other words, in pronunciation teaching, motivating learners, impacting their "cognition", assisting them in planning or thinking about their personal goals and objectives can be pretty much pointless, or worse, unless they know how to practice effectively on a near daily basis. Furthermore, that work is for the most part not sexy or exciting, but often boring--and most importantly--progress at that level is generally not perceptible, although over time it will be.

Do you do that? How is your "passion-practice" balance, especially in assigning homework or getting learners charged up, self-directed and autonomous? If you function in a language lab or do a lot of pronunciation on the web, you may be off the hook somewhat, of course. Now we know why the lab and technology are making a serious comeback in the field--and may eventually replace us all!

In the meantime, if you are having issues with your diet, exercise, budgeting or metaphysical discipline, check out the Clear post (and maybe even download is longer, more detailed instructions on how to get your act together.) Then have a focused, professional talk with your students on incremental, manageable practicing of their pronunciation and their L2 in general . . . regularly.

Before you do, you might also want to check with your local personal fitness training coach or "haptician" on some effective ways to do that!

Killing pronunciation 3: Grit

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To the "gritty" student, there can be nothing more frustrating than pointless, unproductive pronunciation homework--or even worse, none at all.

If you are a follower of this blog, you know I am a big fan of James Clear. If you need to change something--most anything--and you still don't need a coach or therapist to help get you there, his website is worth a visit. His latest post on "building mental toughness" linked to an earlier piece: Grit: a complete guide on being mentally tough. (Embedded in that post is a TED talk by Duckworth, on "grit" which you should also watch if you haven't already.)

Grit is defined in a number of ways but, basically, it means having the strength of character to persevere to ones goals. 

Grit is a key variable in success in pronunciation, I'm sure, although I have been unable to find a good study to verify that. My own experience with accent reduction clients is that to fix their accent  they need just two thing: grit and money (and time, of course.)

Where that especially comes into play is in homework--my current area of research in preparation for a panel at the 2017 TESOL Convention later this month. If you have a student who has real grit, in terms of pronunciation homework, can you provide him or her with sufficient direction as to what to work on and practice outside of class? I have been asking that question repeatedly of late and the overwhelming response from instructors is . . . No!

In fact some instructors have replied that monitored and required practice outside of class, such as drill and repetition and oral reading is probably not worth the effort. And even if it is, "how am I to know whether it was done well or productively?"

There you have it. One of Clear's key principles, based on current research, is that in developing grit the learner must NOT rely on motivation but on habit, on discipline. But for a student to do that, there must be clear guidance and assignments.

How do your homework assignments and guidance to your students on how to improve their pronunciation stack up with that criteria? Probably not all that well, right? This is big, actually. We are just coming out of a period where focus on motivation and meta-cognition (thought and planning about pronunciation change) have been enormously influential.

One of Clear's other principles in developing it is to: Build grit with small physical wins. There are any number of ways to do that, of course, but it takes a consistent, coherent method at least. In pronunciation work, that is or should be a "gimme!"

EHIEP is based on the idea that embodied (gesture-based) homework/practice is key. The success of the system relies on establishing cognitive schema (haptic cognition) such that subsequent in class or incidental learning or correction of pronunciation will happen efficiently, as the learn relates back to the model or rule learned earlier. (That is one of the most important findings in research on incidental correction in class of pronunciation.) In general, homework is carefully prescribed to help create such schema and students need to "homework" at least 3 times a week for 30 minutes to facilitate that, preferably every day.

It takes "true grit" to do that -- and manage it. If that is not part of your current method and "growth mindset" (Dweck, 2016), "Clear" up your current pedagogical habits and grit back to us!

Pronunciation "workabouts": brain train or drain?

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There are decades of research on the potential effects of exercise of various kinds on the brain, from cognitive training (such as Luminosity) to physical training such as jogging or working out in the gym.  Interesting recent study (Summarized by ScienceDaily.com) by Chapman, Aslan, Spence, Keebler, DeFina, Didehbani, Perez, Lu, and D'Esposito of the University of Texas explores the relationship between exercise (mental and physical), decision making and memory, "Distinct Brain and Behavioral Benefits from Cognitive vs. Physical Training: A Randomized Trial in Aging Adults."

 A key finding was how the two complement each other: "Aerobic activity and reasoning training are both valuable tools that give your brain a boost in different ways." In essence what they found, not surprisingly, was that mental training/exercise, like Luminosity, improves executive functions (planning and decision making); whereas physical exercise enhances memory.

So, how might enhancing general cognitive and physical conditioning improve learning pronunciation? As opposed to other dimensions of language learning, pronunciation involves a unique degree of physical engagement. In adults, that must generally be balanced with effective conscious, cognitive involvement (explanation, insight, discovery, planning, communicative practice, etc.) What the research suggests is that although cognitive training and engagement should be good for the brain (and pronunciation), without sufficient, "body engagement and training" learners, especially adults, may not be able to remember well what they have been taught.

My guess is that before long we will be doing much more specifically non-language related cognitive and (and even aerobic) physical training in preparing students and maintaining optimal brain conditioning for learning. Many programs and methods do that now randomly or intuitively, but the research points toward much more systematic and targeted training approaches.

For example, Marsha Chan's entertaining "Pronunciation workout" videos attempt to use high energy, highly kinaesthetic exercises to get the body and motivation activated in learning sounds and selected prosodics (e.g., rhythm and stress). What the cognitive/physical training study suggests is that "fun" may motivate and present aspects of pronunciation well, but the critical connection to that sound pattern may be weak, at best, in part because kinesthetic/body experience is remembered more as a whole--not just isolated pieces of the "moving" event. As Willingham (2005) puts it: "What is critical is that the child is taught in the content's modality." (not simply in her preferred or isolated modality such audio or visual or kinesthetic.)
 

What cognitive science has taught us is that children do differ in their abilities with different modalities, but teaching the child in his best modality doesn't affect his educational achievement. What does matter is whether the child is taught in the content's best modality. - See more at: http://www.aft.org/ae/summer2005/willingham#sthash.CvS6lakm.dpuf

What cognitive science has taught us is that children do differ in their abilities with different modalities, but teaching the child in his best modality doesn't affect his educational achievement. What does matter is whether the child is taught in the content's best modality. - See more at: http://www.aft.org/ae/summer2005/willingham#sthash.CvS6lakm.dpuf

And what is the "content modality" of pronunciation in teaching? A delicate balance of cognitive and kinesthetic engagement. In practical terms, one implication of the research is that we too often, to paraphrase Damasio (2005), commit "Decartes' error" of separating mind from the body ("I think, therefore, I am learning pronunciation!") For most learners, understanding and insight (at least in pronunciation teaching) must be well-integrated with physical, experiential learning and practice if new sound is to be efficiently remembered and available later in spontaneous speaking and listening.

A complementary approach balanced with Nike's nonsequitur--"Just do it!, is essential. If you are not sure about how to make that happen in your classroom, one way is to "Just ask (your neighborhood haptician)!" 

Citation:
Center for BrainHealth. "Mental, physical exercises produce distinct brain benefits." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 18 July 2016.

4 rituals for improving how students feel about their pronunciation

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It is getting to the point now that whenever you need advice on all things related to feeling or doing better, your default is your local "neuroscientist".  A favorite venue of mine for such pop and entertaining council--other than Amy Farrah  Fowler on Big Bang Theory-- is Businessinsider.com. In what is better read as simply "tongue-in-cheek", Eric Barker has a fun piece entitled, "4 rituals that will make you a happier person."

I recommend you read it, if only to get a good picture of where we are headed and how neuroscience is being hijacked by pop psychology, or vice versa . . . 

Those "rituals" are:

• Ask why you feel down. (Once you identify the cause, your brain will automatically make you feel better.)
• Label negative feelings.(That will relocate them in a part of the brain that generally doesn't mess with feelings.)
• Make that decision. (As long as your brain is being managed by the executive center, you are in command and feeling powerful.)
• Touch people. I have always been a fan of oxytocin. Touch, all kinds, including hugging generates it.  

Notice that the first three are not all that far off from the magician's (or psychologist's) basic technique of distracting the audience away from the trick--looking someplace else or looking at the problem through a lens or two to knock off or defuse the negative feelings. 

So, how might this work for changing pronunciation or at least taking on more positive attitudes toward it? For example (avoiding micro-aggressions to the extent possible):

Question: Why do you feel down?  
Answer: Your pronunciation is bad; not inferior, just bad.

Question: Why the negative feelings?
Answer: I have unrealistic expectations or you are a bad teacher.

Question: What decision should you make? 
Answer: Get in touch with my local "haptician" (who teaches pronunciation haptically) or consult my local neuroscientist so I can at least feel better about my pronunciation . . .

Question: How can I get in(to) touch?
Answer: Start here, of course!

Putting the festive and 'fʌn' back in (pronunciation) teaching and testing: The Taylor Swift effect!

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Following an earlier, tongue-in-cheek post on excessive "fear of micro-aggression" in pronunciation teaching, we have an almost equally "deep" (or surreal) potential antidote for the most obvious kind of macro-aggression: testing! Developed by a sociology instructor, Dougherty, at Baylor University (Summarized by ScienceDaily.com) the trick is basically just to bring in "balloons, streamers, treats and music" and call tests "Learning celebrations." There was a little more to it than that, of course--including making items on tests "amusing" . . .  (Of course, just not taking undergraduate sociology too seriously in the first place might be a good place to begin as well.)

But Dougherty does have a point--other than simply bribing students with sugar and creating an atmosphere of "unbearable lightness of being." My son tells a great story of one of his graduate instructors, a phenomenally good lecturer and world famous researcher, who would always serve students homemade cookies before handing out class evaluations and then would play guitar and sing to them while they filled them out--but noting up front that he was in no way attempting to influence their responses . . . 

Making learning fun works, but creating a test that is also a true, formative, fun leaning experience is extraordinary. From the summary, however, it is not at all clear how the sociology test actually contributed to the overall objectives and "delivery" of the course, other than a modest 2 point (out of 100) increase in mean score across semesters. 

I love my work; teaching, for me, is often fun. Making a class "fun and entertaining" is too easy. Making the intrinsic learning experience rewarding and perceived as "fun"--through what is accomplished or learned--is a different matter entirely, although sometimes related. That is especially the case with pronunciation teaching, where the basic tools of explanation and drill and controlled practice are often very difficult to enliven or make at all meaningful. 

In other words, if you can't figure out a way to seriously "embody" fun in the classwork itself, you can at least use Dougherty's approach--which is precisely what so many experienced pronunciation teachers do--especially those trained in earlier affective and holistic methods, such as drama, poetry and music: create a high-energy, fast-moving, entertaining experience to rub off on the grind of mechanical body work required. 

That "rub off" effect is now very well researched in marketing. You may have seen stories in the media where any product in close proximity to a life-size picture of Taylor Swift--regardless of age or whether or not the customer knew who she was--sold better, significantly.  

Your other alternative, of course, is just to "Be Haptic!"

Full citation:

Baylor University. "Tests vs. Fests: Students in 'learning celebrations' rather than exams scored higher and enjoyed themselves." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 25 June 2015. .

Are you an "intelligent" pronunciation teacher?

A Fluid-, Kinaesthetic- and Haptic-intelligent practitioner, that is!

Putting together a light-hearted battery of adapted tests to run on my students this summer, something of a "(haptic) pronunciation teaching aptitude" test. It has four subtests:

1. Fluid intelligence - The geometric task described is always very revealing--and predictive. (from Wartenburger, et al., 2010) - Full citation below. Excerpt from the abstract:
" . . . perform very efficiently in problem solving tasks and analogical reasoning tasks presumably because they are able to select the task-relevant information very quickly and focus on a limited set of task-relevant cognitive operations. Moreover, individuals with high fluid intelligence produce more representational hand and arm gestures when describing a geometric analogy task than individuals with average fluid intelligence."

2. Kinaesthetic intelligence (There are many informal tests that work fine) and this from Turkmen, et al. (2013) - Full citation below. Excerpt from the abstract:
" . . . a significant positive relationship between bodily/kinaesthetic intelligence and internal motivation sub-scales and significant, weak negative relationship between bodily/kinaesthetic intelligence and a motivation."

  3. Haptic intelligence (original test, not available) or something like this one.
A few subtests from the test for the adult blind description: (Done blind folded)

• assembling puzzle parts such as cubes
• analyzing dot patterns
• examining and reproducing peg board patterns
• identification of the missing part of an object, for example, a comb with a missing tooth
• blocks with different sides of varying textures are rearranged to resemble patterns on plates

4. Salad dressing preference test (One of my favourites, invented by a colleague some time ago. Just ask teacher trainees to write down their salad dressing preference and why in exactly 150 words. Generally accomplishes the same thing as 1, 2 and 3 combined!)

If you haven't got time to do the first three, at least try the 4th, yourself. Keep in touch.

Full citations: 

Turkmen, B., Bozkus, T., Ocalan, M., Kul, M. (2013) A Case Study on the Relationship Between Sport Motivation Orientations and Bodily/kinaesthetic Intelligence Levels of University Students
World Journal of Sport Sciences 8 (1): 28-32, 2013. DOI: 10.5829/idosi.wjss.2013.8.1.1186

Wartenburger, I.,  Kuhn, E.,  Sassenberg, U., Foth, M., Franz, E., van der Meer, E. (2010). On the Relationship between Fluid Intelligence, Gesture Production, and Brain Structure.  Intelligence, v38 n1 p193-201 Jan-Feb 2010.

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

clip art:
Clker.com

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

The sweet spot: Motivation and self-discipline in (pronunciation) teaching

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Clker.com

The term, self-disciplined or its distant cousin "will power," does not seem to show up much in research on second language pronunciation teaching today (cf. Bunrueng, 2014) --or most anywhere for that matter. Ever since elementary school where I was continually bribed with sugar to calm down and pay attention or be rewarded for demonstrating a little of that,  I've been sold on how important it is . . . (self discipline, that is!)

Helping students become more independent, autonomous and better managers of their learning and study is ostensibly a goal of most contemporary, post-modern-method, "pedagogically hip" programs. But how do you do that, especially if they (naturally) lack motivation and self-discipline, and blatant bribery of at least adults with sweets is pretty much out of fashion?

Ah . . . not so fast there . . .

In a fascinating piece by Herbert at PsychologicalSciences.org, entitled, "Where does self-discipline come from?" (Full citation below), reporting on research by Molden at Northwestern university, we find that even just quickly rinsing out your mouth with sugar water occasionally may serve to seriously restart your motivation to get something done. (But you knew that already!)

They are not sure exactly why that works but, apparently, just the hint to the brain of some later "reward" works nearly as well as the real thing. So it is not the blood sugar that immediately gets you going when you wolf down that bear claw and latte, it is the THOUGHT of what it is going to do for you that gets your juices flowing, so to speak!

So what is the obvious takeaway here? (Should you live close to a Tim Hortons or KrispyKreme shop, you are way ahead of me!) If self-discipline is a plus in your work (or your life)--and it certainly is in getting students to take responsibility for their own learning, in doing the heavy lifting of homework and practice in haptic teaching pronunciation, then my occasional, strategic use of chocolate and "Timbits" is fully justified!

Just think about it . . . 

Sweet!

Full citation
Herbert, W. (2015), retrieved from http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/full-frontal-psychology/where-does-self-discipline-come-from.html (February 23, 2015)

Clear advice: Love your (pronunciation teaching) method!

Have recently "discovered" the popular blog of James Clear who, to quote his self description:  . . . writes about science-based ideas for living a better life and building habits that stick.

Clipart:
Clker.com

I was, of course, immediately hooked when I got to the last word there--and great haptic metaphor! Full disclosure: He is also a weight lifter. Sports and exercise coaches are simply the best when it comes to developing systems that involve movement and discipline--like pronunciation teaching.

He concludes an intriguing post entitled "Forget About Setting Goals. Focus on This Instead" with the striking line: "Fall in love with systems!" (Required reading!)

Clear is not referring to "Aims and aspirations" that provide motivation and passion, as described by Wells (2003) :

"What are the student’s personal aims and aspirations in language learning? . . . Some just want enough English to communicate at a basic level, or indeed just enough to pass some examination. Others aim to achieve the best they possibly can. We must cater for both types and for those who fall somewhere between. Speaking personally, I must say that my own aspiration in learning languages is NS-like proficiency. I acknowledge that I may be unlikely to attain it. But that doesn’t stop me aiming for it. I try to inspire my students with the same high ideal. If it were suggested that I should not even aim so high, I should feel short-changed. "

Many describe today's language teaching as "post method," meaning that there are no longer any generally applicable systems that work in a broad range of contexts. Very true. That does not mean, however,  that a "local" method is not necessary. On the contrary . . .

Balancing "high ideals" and feasible process is the trick. For example, the "wrong" kind of goals for learners working on pronunciation are often simply unrealistic, given the time, talent and resources available. Nothing wrong with aiming at NS-like level, unless you are an intermediate-level student with only three months to get there, etc. Even a goal such as "fixing" use of "th" or a particular vowel in a week or two by the same intermediate student can be at best counter-productive. That is especially true without a very rigorous practice regimen handy to direct energy and effort.

Do your students "fall in love" with your system or one that they have adapted from yours? Do you provide them with a "clear" framework detailing their part in the process, understanding of what is behind it and how it facilitates progress? Do you follow up with them consistently on how they are doing and how they working in it?

Clear's point is that making change "stick," which demands discipline and limiting attention and focus, also requires commitment to a set of principles and consistent scheduling--along with having confidence and trust in both the system and the provider of it. Once a learner's general, realistic goal has been articulated and locked in, attention (and passion) must shift to the systematic "heavy lifting" of the day-to-day training process and stay there. Trust, love (and obey) the method, the system! (See his framework for getting started in that direction.) What an absolutely radical, "retro" notion today!

Do you have a "clear" one-page description of your system that students can easily understand, follow--and love? A quick review of published pronunciation textbooks didn't turn up anything close to that. I am working on one now (for haptic pronunciation teaching) that will serve as a model for my graduate students in applied phonology this semester to follow as they develop their own.

I'll share that shortly here, too,  a "loveable" system of sorts. If you have a good one now, please pass it on. I'll create a "Love-my-methods" page off the blog to display them.

Love to see yours . . .

Hot Haptic pronunciation teaching topics for upcoming conference proposals!

Here in Vancouver we are getting ready to collaborate as usual in writing haptic proposals for a couple of upcoming conferences. Here is our current list, most of which are new or emerging topics for us:

• Introducing AH-EPS v3.0 Bees and Butterflies (Serious fun!) 
• A haptic approach to teaching West Coast, BC pronunciation to others! 
• Workshop in basics of haptic pronunciation teaching
• Teaching conversational discourse orientation (the skills involved in matching the prosodics of your speech to that of the person you are talking with) 
• Embodied Confident speaking practice (The Fight club) for nonnative non-male professionals of Asian ethnicity only
• 10 warm ups for pronunciation and speaking instruction
• Stressing unstressed vowels
• Going from L1 to L2 pronunciation: Using the L1 vowel system as a point of departure
• Giving voice to voiced medial and final consonants 
• Moving conversations: the haptic talk-about walkabout (peripatetic attending skills)

There was an earlier post (March, 2014) this spring as we were cranking up for TESOL international proposals that had a few others:

• Reports from the classroom: Haptic pronunciation teaching (academic sessions)
• Research project on haptic-assisted fluency (paper)
• Haptic-assisted Rhythm instruction (Butterfly and Fight club) workshop
• Haptic phonetics (anchoring L1s in addition of L2s) demonstration
• Haptic techniques for consonant repair (workshop)
• (Haptic-enhanced) Embodied confidence (Research paper)
• Haptically anchoring word stress rules and word stress (workshop)
• Linking linking with fluency: haptic circles (mini-workshop)
• Basics of haptic-integrated pronunciation teaching 
• From intonation to expressiveness: dramatic, haptic bridges for Non-native speakers
• Haptic and kinaesthetic listening (Research paper)
• On the spot, impromptu haptic pronunciation modelling, feedback and correction 
• Haptic anchoring of Academic Word List vocabulary (demonstration or workshop)
• Sentence diagramming with movement and touch 
• Songs that touch on pronunciation: haptic anchoring of rhyme and reason (workshop)
• Teaching pronunciation to young children (workshop)
• Embodied conversational discourse markers (demonstration)
• Phonics "a la haptique!" (demonstration or workshop)
• Haptic Handwriting for L2 English learners (demonstration)
• Embodied conversational listening: haptic anchoring of attending skills
• Haptic or kinaesthetic self-monitoring

Several of those or adaptations of them were submitted to three upcoming conferences. See any you like? If a proposal was done, I can probably get that to you. If not, how about you join one of us in submitting one for a conference you are planning to attend? 

Keep in touch!

Why use of gesture often does not work in pronunciation teaching--and when it does!

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One of the strengths of haptic pronunciation instruction is that the use of touch on stressed syllables, accompanying gesture, makes kinaesthetic learning more systematic and effective. For a number of reasons, simply kinaesthetic or gesture-based techniques that do not attend to touch may or may not work in any classroom.

Clker

A. Part of the problem is the natural selection involved in those who love teaching pronunciation; part of the problem, what we use gesture for or what it is synchronized with. Many "natural" pronunciation teachers are what I'd call "hyper-gesticulators," highly expressive themselves and, in part because of their ability to connect verbally and nonverbally with students, they are able to get students to do some pretty strange out-of-the-box stuff. They can be very successful in their classroom, themselves, but their method often may not transfer all that well to "newbees" and the less "gesticulate." (I am presently putting together a book proposal that will examine in depth strongly paralinguistic and gesture-based methods of several like-minded, clinical practitioners.)

B. And the fact that in English, as in most languages in varying ways, gesture and physical movement can serve as a motivator or "exuberator." In other words, physical action, by itself, helps motivate learners and loosen them up to instruction, etc. (Some instructors tend to lean of cheerleading to a fault in motivating students.) Hence the problem for systematic work w/gesture: what can motivate on the one hand (no pun intended there!) can, on the other hand, seriously undermine focus and attention to specific sound-movement targets in instruction.

C. And more. There is a great deal of research on the neurophysiological basis and clinical application of  "emotional control." See, for example, this summary from the website Psychologyinaction.org.  The bottom line, for our work, is that both lack of emotional and physical engagement--as well as uncontrolled, over-exuberance physically and emotionally--can be about equally counterproductive. Our experience in the classroom in 4 years of field testing certainly confirms that. Often a very outgoing, verbal and physically expressive learner may still have substantial difficulty both in mirroring the pedagogical movement patterns and achieving satisfactory improvement in pronunciation or accent.

D. In addition, one of the reasons for the sometimes inconsistent results in using gesture in teaching in general, especially for the more eidetic-visual learner or instructor (those with near photographic memories), is that if the position of the gesture varies even slightly upon repeated application, it can be very frustrating for them, nearly impossible to interpret to respond to.

The solution, or at least one haptic pronunciation teaching approach (EHIEP/AH-EPS), is to carefully control or manage movement and gesture work so that even the most reticent will join in and the emotionally overreactive will be throttled back, at least temporarily. (See also a new research summary by ScienceDaily of work by McGlone of Liverpool John Moores University in England and colleagues on the connection of "soft touch" to emotion.) How can you do that?

For a (moderately) good time, one that involves extensive use of touch as well as gesture, go to www.actonhaptic.com!

Basics of Haptic Pronunciation Teaching

In addition to the v3.0 Instructors' Guide, here is your recommended reading list!

Acton, W., Baker, A., Burri, M., and Teaman, B. (2013). Preliminaries to haptic-integrated pronunciation instruction. In J. Levis & K. LeVelle (Eds.). Proceedings of the 4th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference, Aug. 2012. (pp. 234-244). Ames, IA: Iowa State University

Teaman, B. and Acton, W. (2013). Haptic (movement and touch for better) pronunciation. In N. Sonda & A. Krause (Eds.), JALT 2012 Conference Proceedings (pp.402-409). Tokyo: JALT. Umeå universitet. (2012, October 26).

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2014/09/more-than-gesture-when-to-use-gesture.html
http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2014/03/anchoring-with-touch-in-haptic.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2014/03/deep-learning-giving-haptic.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2014/02/pre-and-post-haptic-englsh.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2014/01/hapic-teachable-moments-in.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/12/haptic-pronunciation-teaching-as.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/12/haptic-pronunciation-teaching-as_17.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/12/why-out-of-body-haptic-pronunciation.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/11/giving-aural-comprehension-hand-in.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/11/when-is-ah-eps-haptic-pronunciation.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/11/when-is-ehiep-haptic-pronunciation.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/11/pay-attention-to-pronunciation.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/11/pronunciation-anxiety-dont-worry-be.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/11/minding-your-ps-and-qs-pronunciation.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/10/aha-change-uptake-versus-practice-of.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/10/hmm-correcting-english-pronunciation.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/10/guidelines-for-using-haptic-gesture-in.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/10/use-of-haptic-gesture-in-pronunciation.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/10/the-touch-ture-of-haptic-pronunciation_3.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/07/dealing-with-problem-pronunciation.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/05/in-search-of-touch-for-pronunciation.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/05/paying-attention-to-touch-in.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/05/haptic-cinema-and-ehiep-tic.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/05/better-pronunciation-with-grit-tenacity.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/04/more-hard-hitting-evidence-as-to-why.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/04/why-practicing-pronunciation-in-group.html

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice, there is." (Yogi Berra)

Keep in touch!

Pronunciation "Flow-ency!"

Ran across an interesting note on prerequisites for speaking fluently, posted on the website of the "Effortless English Club": "To speak English fluently, of course you must understand instantly and speak without thinking." It then goes on to pitch its program:"After only 5 hours, most of my seminar students show improvement with their English speaking. They speak more quickly and more clearly. How? Mostly by changing their feelings and beliefs– by developing strong confidence in their English speaking ability." After only 5 hours . . . Wow.

Actually, they may be on to something. We could take the idea of "speak[ing] without thinking" in several directions, including the use of mindless drill,  but what is intended (I think) is closer to "flow," as proposed by Csíkszentmihályi, the experience of "completely focused motivation" -- or being in the zone.

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Clker

We have all had the experience of at least temporarily speaking very well about something that we believe in so strongly that the words seem to flow from us almost "without thinking." (One of the parameters of holistic lie detection, on the contrary, is evidence of the interviewee "making things up" on the fly.) In our work, a protocol called the "Rhythm Fight Club"is designed to give the learner a feel for what "being centred, confident and on a roll" is like. (Preliminary findings of a research project on the process are again confirming that effect.)

A couple of nights ago, for the first time, I tried to do a 3-minute talk about haptic research and teaching using RFC "Flow-ency" accompanying or driving everything I said. In part because I had rehearsed the talk a number of times--and it is something that I probably have "completely focused motivation" about, it went very well (at least from my perspective, if not that of the audience!) At least a couple of very partisan observers agreed with that assessment!

I have experimented with the "Flow-ency" technique with learners for a number of years. Will now get it operationalized and more "teachable" as an extension of RFC. If you still haven't signed on as a haptician, try that for a couple minutes sometime with a topic that you are truly passionate about. And keep in touch.