The body language of pronunciation teaching: Karaoke Affect

Clip art: Clker

One of the potential "turn offs" for some instructors and students in buying into the gestural and somatic basis of pronunciation work is . . . how "goofy" it looks (with apologies to Goofy, of course.) And some of it does, unquestionably. If you need to get to "goofy," you have to ramp up use of wilder gesticulation gradually, what we call "Karaoke Affect." As long as you establish the context carefully and set up good conceptual partitions, most students will come along with you . . . to goofy and beyond.

But to one who is not in the typical pronunciation teaching box, or just passing by, who has no clue what the class is about, what do the typical, gestural classroom techniques communicate: (a) clapping hands, (b) snapping fingers, (c) stretching rubber bands, (c) humming with a kazoo, (d) thumping on the desk, (e) stamping feet, (f) waving hands in the air to imitate intonation, (g) tracing lines on worksheets with fingers, (h) stepping up and down with sentence stress, (i) popping candy in the mouth on certain vowels, (j) throwing bean bags on stressed words, and (k) let alone the dozens of mouth machinations done for teaching specific vowel and consonant articulation?

According to recent research by Aviezer of Hebrew University, Trope of New York University and Todorov of Princeton University, summarized by Science Daily, it is the body that accurately communicates feelings (at least), not the face and mouth. In the study, subjects were much better at determining emotional state by focusing on movement and gesture, not looking from the neck up.

Situating and contextualizing those "bizarre" behaviours and what they communicate requires a coherent system to use them in. As we have seen in research in dozens of blog posts, it can go either way. (The EHIEP "way" is a good start, of course!) So, climb in your Karaoke Affect Box, affect your best your Eliza Doolittle, and  Show me! 

Marking the territory: What wolves can teach us about integrated anchoring and learning of L2 pronunciation

Clip art:
Clker

There are many who report using haptic anchoring in teaching pronunciation, techniques such as clapping hands, stomping feet, tapping on the desk or pulling at rubber bands-- coordinated with stressed words or rhythm groups in speaking. Such "marking of the territory" does certainly help to reinforce the goal of the activity, but it is not "haptic-integrated," in the sense that we use it here.

In the 2003 study of the marking behavior of wolves in Poland, by Zub, Theuerkauf, Jędrzejewski, Jędrzejewska, Schmidt and Kowalczyk, an elaborate system was revealed such that each incidence of territorial marking could only be interpreted by considering three parameters simultaneously: (a) significance, (b) variability, and (c) relationship to other marking(s). In other words, the efficacy and meaning of the "mark" was dependent entirely upon its relative place in an integrated, multi-dimensional map of the territory.

In the same sense, haptic anchoring of new pronunciation only contributes effectively when it is thoroughly integrated into speaking, listening, reading or writing tasks. If it is experienced outside of meaningful discourse, narrative and task sequencing, as traditional, isolated pronunciation exercises inserted in the midst of a lesson--no matter how vividly or dramatically the haptic anchoring is executed, chances are it will not be all that different or memorable in principle than when the wolves, themselves, employ the same marking "technology" for other, more mundane functions in the Bialowieza woods . . .