Stop practicing pronunciation! (If your students can explore it!)

This is a follow up on, "Stop correcting pronunciation! (If your students can afford it!)," based on a post by Tabaczynski. Question: Does (more) practice make perfect, or at least make one better than the competition? A couple recent summaries of meta-analyses by Science Digest add support to Tabaczynksi's argument, suggesting . . . well . . . maybe not so much.

Macnamara, Hambrick and Oswald (2014) note that: 

"Practice accounted for about 26% of individual differences in performance for games, about 21% of individual differences in music, and about 18% of individual differences in sports. But it only accounted for about 4% of individual differences in education and less than 1% of individual differences in performance in professions."

Stafford and Dewar (2013) add that: 

"Game play data revealed that those players who seemed to learn more quickly had either spaced out their practice or had more variable early performance -- suggesting they were exploring how the game works -- before going on to perform better."

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Haptic pronunciation teaching methodology certainly aims to be more embodied, incorporating frameworks and techniques from gaming, music and sports. It is also pretty consistent with Tabaczynski's "(schematic) buckets and spaced (practice and scaffolded) retrieval" proposal.

Think I'll stop right there . . .

Pronunciation teaching as visual and performing "art"

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Happy with your pronunciation work? There may be a reason, according to a report in ScienceShot entitled, "Starving but happy!", summarizing research done in Germany by Steiner and Schneider (which has no abstract on the publisher's website and which you can't access without buying the article), entitled: "The happy artist: an empirical application of the work-preference model." (Quoting ScienceShot) "On a scale of 1 to 10, artists—those whose principal occupation involves performance or visual art—ranked their job satisfaction at 7.32 to 7.67 on average, while nonartists averaged 7.06." I can't find a comparable study on pronunciation instructors in general, but no doubt the result would be similar. The 1892 book, The art of teaching and studying foreign languages, by Francois Gouin, made the case for teaching language as art, long before we discovered that we could deconstruct it all down into manageable--and meaningless pieces. The parallel between visual and performing arts and embodied pronunciation teaching is striking, especially as it relates to exploitation of the visual field and pedagogical movement patterns. And that pronunciation instructors who actually do spend most of their time "in the clinic," that is actively engaged with integrated speaking work, seem to be a pretty upbeat bunch and generally pretty "happy-tic" about it as well--makes perfect, too!

Cognitive pronunciation work and mastication-induced arousal

Photo credit: UPI Photo/Ezio Petersen

Ah . . . at last we may have discovered a way to make excessive conscious, cognitive and metacognitive talk about pronunciation in the classroom less distracting and pointless: chew gum. In a much-hyped summary in the media, it is reported that St. Lawrence University researcher, Onyper, had discovered that such masticatory action before a test (chewing gum), " . . . gave the subjects multiple advantages, but only when chewed for five minutes before testing, not for the duration of the test. Benefits persisted for the first 15 to 20 minutes of testing only." Mastication-induced arousal was "credited" with the boost. The summary goes on to note that, "Many studies have shown that any type of physical activity can produce a performance boost . . . "

So there you have it, friends--although 15 or 20 minutes of talk ABOUT pronunciation still sounds deadly to me--getting students' cognitive and masticatory processes up and running in that manner before class may not "gum up the works" at all--on the contrary. (One of the HICP consonant protocols does, after all, involve some biting of the sides of the tongue with back mandibulars!) Just a little something there for you to chew on . . .

(Haptic) instruction in "super-sized" speaking/pronunciation classes

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The EHIEP system is designed for use in classes of all sizes, but especially for large classes taught by relatively inexperienced instructors. It involves extensive oral performance/engagement. Spend some time reviewing the literature on how to teach in such contexts and what you find is (as in the English Club) a good description of the problems, practice strategies and activities. What is not there is guidance on how to initially present sounds and sound processes and how to provide feedback/correction.

This is analogous to what we see in pronunciation teaching research: (apparently) any method (assuming methods are allowed) in a storm (and big classes can be that!) is generally ok. In terms of oral production-focus (vs comprehension-based) techniques, the typical set of procedures suggested are (A) demonstration, (B) explanation  and (C) choral repetition. That's it, if that. (If you want to contribute some further recommendations, feel fee to add comments.)  Beginning with A, B and C is a start, to be sure, But if things are not going well by C, what's next? More of all three, especially C?

With HICP as a basis you can (literally) see what and  how every student in a class of 100 (or more) is doing. The principle is this: With good initial haptic-anchoring training (easily done in large groups), if a learner moves correctly, more appropriate pronunciation will almost inevitably follow. Likewise, corrections focus primarily on the pedagogical movement pattern, not how the sound "sounds." Teaching with (big) class?  To quote Lessac yet again . . . Train the body first!

Haptic anchoring with eye tracking: for right handers only?

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Early in the development of HICP, I explored using eye tracking to enhance anchoring, a technique used in many disciplines and therapies. (See earlier posts.) What I discovered quickly was that that technique seemed to work well for some but, for others, it could be disconcerting or even disorienting to the point of feelings of vertigo and nausea! This 2008 research summarized by Munger of Cognitive Daily by Logan and Roediger, helps to explain why.

For the strongly right hand dominant, those procedures, in some contexts (such as recalling lists), can be highly effective. For others, the eye saccade exercise seems to downgrade performance. When working with individuals I still may use significant eye tracking of hand movement, but not if they are ambidextrous (as I am) or occasionally left handed, depending on their real eye dominance. In class work, likewise, we have learned that even excessive repetitions of basic haptic anchoring, which do not require explicit eye engagement (which should NEVER be necessary if done correctly anyway) should be avoided.

What is interesting is that a similar "follow the windshield wiper" technique is used to desensitize emotionally traumatized (left or right handed) patients in psychotherapy. You might try that version on "haptically or methodologically challenged" colleagues or students, in fact. It works "both ways," so to speak . . .

To resonate or not to resonate . . .

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All  effective voice training systems are based on the concept of using body resonance for anchoring, that is the "feeling" of sounds, not simply what come back through the ears from what we speak (which is of relatively little use for the most part.) Here is the engaging website of "The Voice Guy." It does an especially good job of explaining body resonance and how to develop it in three areas: (a) general  resonance in the head and throat, (b)  chest-focus resonance and, (c) the highly concentrated "Y-buzz" (see earlier posts on Lessac's model.)

The richer and more sensual the learner's experience of the sounds being learner or "adjusted," the better. And when that felt sense is linked with haptic anchoring, as in HICP/EHIEP work, it is almost too much like fun . . .