Exciting pronunciation improvement: the "Harvard way," so to speak!

Note: Decide whether to process "exciting" as a gerund or adjective--or both (preferred) before reading this post. 

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After decades of trying to dial down anxiety in pronunciation teaching, having students calm down, relax or get in the zone affectively, leave it to Harvard researchers to "discover" that getting excited is actually a better state of mind to be in when preparing for what would normally be some anxiety-provoking activities or challenges. The results of the experiments, reported by  Brooks of the Harvard School of Business, and reported by Science Daily, demonstrated, "that simple statements about excitement could improve performance during activities that triggered anxiety."

That is big. The basic premise of the studies was the value of having subjects practice saying things out loud like "I'm excited about X," or, alternatively, "I'm calm about X . . . "  Those using the positive approach turned out to be consistently better at performing the task ahead.  Furthermore, Brooks notes that, "  . . . It really does pay to be positive, and people should say they are excited. Even if they don't believe it at first, saying 'I'm excited' out loud increases authentic feelings of excitement." What the "excited talk" subjects experienced was both more excitement up front and lower anxiety during the performance task itself (measured in part by heart rate.)

Such applications of "Positive"psychology" have been around for a long time. The mechanism behind such results is clear: professed motivation, even if somewhat "insincere" and artificial, in some, relatively limited contexts works well. The Harvard studies appear to have focused primarily on public oral performance, such as giving a speech. Speaking. See the connection? The subjects were already speaking more confidently before they had began . . . speaking.

In haptic pronunciation teaching (and probably every good public speaking training system), in part because of the"full body" engagement, we see the same phenomenon: learners do, indeed, get "excited" (or maybe even a bit agitated?) up front, but then demonstrate less anxiety in responding to modelling and during oral practice and error correction. Exciting, eh?

What comes first? Speaking confidently or confident speaking?

I know . . . trick question. A recent Facebook post by the seriously "positive" Tim Murphey got me thinking. He was commenting on a study commented on by Lynn McTaggart at Positive News.org.uk, commenting on a study done by Michigan State University researchers. (One of my alma maters, by the way, so it must be true!) The point of the article was that people speak in public more confidently when they think about others in their group and not just how nervous they are or whatever. Murphey's point is that when we are connected, we are confident. (In the original study, however,  they seem to have not controlled for the intentional mental focus on anything other than stage/speaking fright--a near fatal flaw--an effect well-established by research and practice in several fields.)

Acton Haptic -
English Pronunciation System

Mea culpa. I tend to be a little skeptical about claims in "confidence before competence" models, especially in pronunciation teaching. An interesting 2007 doctoral thesis by Montha Songsiri of Victoria University, nonetheless, demonstrated, at least in part, how pedagogy can indeed engender confidence in speaking that appears to show up in greater intelligibility and more accurate pronunciation.

And then recently I did a 10-day intensive speaking/pronunciation/accent reduction program using a modified version of the AH-EPS system with pre-MBA nonnative speakers--and may have watched it happen: Beginning with a great deal of speaking in public (oral reading and highly formatted interactions, coupled with public speaking confidence tricks such as posture, breathing)--and concentrating on something other than performance anxiety--seemed to "work!" (In this case, the pedagogical movement patterns of AH-EPS to some extent, I assume.) Where participants' improved pronunciation came from exactly and so quickly is, of course, impossible to say, but the degree of reported improvement alone was almost surprising.  But I am confident in speaking from that perspective, of course!