To thrive (but not arrive) in a second language: socio-cultural capital

Clker.com

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.

Pronunciation anxiety? Don't worry, be "haptic!"

Have done several previous posts that "touch" on the effects of interpersonal touch, such as "healing touch." In our kind of haptic pronunciation teaching, for a number of reasons, we use only "intra-personal" touch, typically the hands touching or hands touching the arms and shoulders or the outside of the hips. Generally, that's it. A new study by Koole and colleagues at the University of Amsterdam, reported in Science Daily in a summary entitled, "Touch may alleviate existential fears in people with low self esteem," re-opens that intriguing area of research and development for me.

Credit: AMPISys, Inc. 

I earlier explored interpersonal touch in private work, for example where a couple or two female learners practiced the EHIEP pedagogical movement patterns together, where one touched the hand of the other on stressed syllables in anchoring new pronunciation. (Have also had reports from instructors who work with child L2 learners that various group-based hand clapping or "give-me-five" gestures seem to work well, too.) The reports from the students were quite positive. Have always wanted to get back to figuring out culturally and interpersonally appropriate use of interpersonal touch.

There are certainly good reasons for that. Koole's work suggests that even our "intra-personal" touch gesture work may "work" better than we thought! Although this is close to being filed in our "Well . . . duh! file" (a study that empirically validates common sense), in essence, interpersonal touch, even touching inanimate objects, for some people, lowered anxiety--and anxiety can easily cancel out any kind of instruction, let along haptic engagement. What caught my eye was the last sentence: "The researchers are currently exploring the possibilities of simulated interpersonal touch through the use of a "haptic jacket," which can electronically give people the feeling that they are being hugged."

Hug your local haptician . . . and bring your teddy bear to class today. 

Let's (not) get (too) physical in pronunciation teaching!

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With apologies to Olivia Newton-John, I still get that response occasionally in workshops and in reaction to blogposts. The focus of HICPR is not on developing a "physical" method or approach to pronunciation teaching but rather on ensuring that the body is given an appropriate place in the process, especially with the development of technology and haptic-grounded virtual reality. Those who are not by nature "connected" to their bodies, either they (a) don't listen to it much at all or (b) are overly sensitive to how it feels and looks, may not be at ease in the "haptic" lesson or integrating movement, touch and general body awareness in their work.

art: 

Have done a couple of earlier posts related to mindfulness theory, meditation practices and body representation. A fascinating study by Dykstra and Barelds of Groningen University, entitled, "Examining a model of dispositional mindfulness, body comparison, and body satisfaction," suggests something of a different approach to better orienting learners and instructors to haptic engagement: dispositional mindfulness training. The research demonstrated " . . . a positive relation between mindfulness and body satisfaction: as individuals are more mindful, they are more satisfied with their body . . . consistent with the fact that non-judgment, a central component of mindfulness, is also highly relevant to the construct of body image . . . "

by Clker

The key element there is "dispositional," part of a general, eminently trainable, response to internal and external pressures and stressors, characterizing one's disposition or style of responding (varying from extremely reactive to non-reactive, for example). Combine that with mindfulness, a general, relatively nonjudgmental  awareness or comprehension of what is going on, and you have what appears to be a near optional mindset for learning pronunciation for any . . . body. Dispositional (haptic-integrated) mindful pronunciation learning: DHIMPL!

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Some of that is embodied in EHIEP today, the felt sense of confident, comfortable, (dimpled?) managed pedagogical movement, but it should also be the model underlying language instruction in general. The secret to getting there is your point of departure, Lessac's dictum: Train the body first!

ERN more with self-esteem; correct more (pronunciation) errors!

Clip art: Clker

Clip art: Clker

Interesting study by Legault and colleagues of Clarkson University, summarized by Science Daily, which looked at the effect of self-affirmation on responding to errors or mistakes. Self-affirmation was operationalized by having subjects rank their top six personal values and then write a 5-minute mini-essay on the top one. In a subsequent experimental task they proved to be better at correcting errors than the control group. Now having students do something like that every class is probably not feasible but the underlying principle is worth considering. Self-affirmative thought, according to the researchers, activates a neurological response termed "error-related negativity"(ERN)--which, in turn makes one more alert to errors and, apparently, better able to respond to them. In this case, with attention just having been focused on "higher" values, the "negative" reaction proves beneficial. The importance of insuring that learners' attention is continually brought back, if only temporarily, to the tangible progress that they have made--and where they are headed--is almost a given in the field. How that works and how to nurture it consistently (and haptically!) has remained something of a mystery. Until now. But we are l-ERNing . . . 

Confident, successful pronunciation?

Clip art: Clker

Clip art: Clker

Yet another potential piece for your "Well . . . duh!" file. The term "self confidence" and "pronunciation" are commonly associated, getting over 1,000,000 hits on Google . . . For example, in this introduction to a short piece by Shelly Vernon, the website ESLBase.com begins like this: "Do you avoid teaching pronunciation in your classroom? In this article, Shelley Vernon suggests going right back to the level of the phoneme to build learners' confidence." (Bold face, mine.) Now although implying it perhaps, Vernon never actually says that explicitly in the article. I do like that point of departure, nonetheless.

In a research report, entitled "Minority Report" about to be published (with apologies to the real Minority Report, one of my favorite movies), however, one of the findings may relate to the impact of confidence "on the job" --seemingly supporting Vernon's perspective. In a Science Daily summary, Hasmath and colleagues at the University of Melbourne report " . . . a strong correlation between confidence and occupational success." There are several other tidbits included such as one referring back to earlier studies suggesting height and attractiveness may also contribute to confidence or

 " . . . that workers who described themselves as 'extroverted', 'neurotic', 'open to experiences' or 'agreeable' (standard indicators of conscientiousness) were also found to be more motivated, and doing well professionally." And then the pies de resistance: "Interestingly, members of visible ethnic minorities reported lower rates of confidence, but similar levels of conscientiousness . . . This may partially explain why their wages and rates of advancement are consistently lower than members of a non-visible ethnic minority."

Where to begin . . . psychotherapy, obedience training, elevator shoes, cosmetics or phonemes? 

Cultural body image in haptic-integrated pronunciation teaching

Clip art: Clker

Clip art: Clker

I am often asked if there aren't some students and instructors that feel uncomfortable with moving their hands, arms and upper bodies in anchoring pronunciation. There are occasionally. In previous posts I have looked at factors that may influence a learner's ability to benefit from haptic engagement and the kind of attention management that is involved. There is an extensive research literature related to  personality, body image, self-confidence, self-esteem, culture and gender. For example, this  MA thesis by Baird at Western Kentucky University  or this gender-based study of body image and self-esteem by Cheanneacháin and Quinn at Dublin Business School.  In our work, it is, of course, important to be alert especially to the cultural "gestural constraints and spaces" of our students. Over the years I have "discovered" any number of potential pedagogical movement patterns, especially related to hand movements across the visual field and facial configurations, that violate rules in some culture. In general the current inventory of PMPs has been thoroughly tested on all the main cultural groups that we encounter, but there will always be surprises. When we do encounter a  resistent or reticent learner the underlying cause of the problem seems more often to be related to the fit between learner's satisfaction with some idealized L1 "body culture' and his or her own. In the Cheanneacháin and Quinn study, the typical female-bias in terms of body image dissatisfaction was not evident; in the Baird study, it was the African-American males' perceived or identified fit to that culture's male ideal that affected body satisfaction and identity. Body satisfaction in full-bodied interventions (FBIs--see recent posts) is always a factor, at least initially. Time to hit the gym? (Consider taking a couple of your more recalcitrant students with you!)