The "story" of pronunciation teaching: Engaging Preambles

One of the potential advantages of having taught pronunciation for a few years (in my case, almost 50) is that you have on hand a near endless supply of "success stories" from former students, no matter what you are teaching, ways to introduce and (hopefully) motivate yourself and students at the "drop of a hat."

Was reminded of that recently after viewing a plenary by one of the great storytellers in our field, Mario Rinvolucri. Although he does not talk about the use of stories as "preambles" in instruction per se in that talk or in this nice piece in TeachingEnglish.org,  I'm sure he'd concur with their value as such. Several other studies of storytelling in the field cover a wide range of classroom possibilities, but none that I have been able to find examine the "preamble" function.

My introduction to this function of storytelling was the work of Milton Erickson, back in the 1980s. (One of my all time favorite books on that was Erickson's classic "My voice will go with you." Here is an example of one of Erickson's stories done by Bill O'Hanlon (The audio of the originals with Erickson actually telling the stories is available but less accessible.)

I'll begin with one of my favorite personal "pronunciation preambles." Please add one of yours. Let's see where this story takes us!

Better pronunciation: over night!

Clker.com

I did a 1-hour workshop at a Korean University for about 400 undergraduates. The objective was to improve the rhythm of their spoken English . . .  overnight. All of them had conversations classes the next morning. (Important note: Only one of about 6 of the conversation teachers came to the workshop, although all were invited.) I trained the students to act like they were boxing when they spoke along first with easy dialogues on the screen and then, before we finished, with simple roleplays, in pairs. It got a little chaotic, as you can imagine, but they loved it! And just before I concluded the workshop, I gave them a "secret mission" . . . The next morning, in their speaking classes they were to use the same feeling in their upper bodies--without punching the air as boxing, as they were speaking in class WITHOUT LETTING ON TO THEIR TEACHERS THAT ANYTHING WAS DIFFERENT. I heard some amazing stories back. In the classes that pulled it off, the teachers were stunned by the difference in the rhythm and energy . . . and even playfulness evident in the speaking of the class.

Never fails. To see the basic technique, go here and check out the RFC demo.

Give us your best Pronunciation Preamble!

The Schrödinger's Cat(ch) of Pronunciation Teaching

Clker.com

Bottom line: It’s almost impossible to LOVE pronunciation teaching unless you have seen or heard or had it done to you. And if you love it, much of your best work will be spontaneous or at least seem to be. And for the most part, up until now, there has been no “virtually” useful research or methods stuff that can take you there

Until now. . . Introducing a new podcast (working title): Teachable Moments in Pronunciation Teaching (TMPT)

Once a week or so I'll be chatting with a real, practicing master pronunciation teacher/lover, not a “non-practicing” theorist or methodologist—to learn from. Our conversations will take place as soon as possible after a good class they have just taught, where we talk about what actually happened, moment by moment . . . how and why it worked, based in part on an audio recording of the session. 

Here is what inspired it:

One of the most striking thought problems of all time, “Schrödinger's Cat”, revealed a potentially fatal flaw in a school of quantum physics. in effect it exposed a “black box” in the theory where two contradictory states had to be present, where it was logically impossible to know which condition was in effect (whether a cat in a box was dead or alive).

In pronunciation teaching, just like the (in)famous "black box" in Chomsky's early work, we have our own enigmatic box as well: What actually goes on in the classroom, the quality of the moment by moment engagement that underlies every research study but is practically never mentioned or analyzed. There were good reasons for that, a broad range of (quickly) researchable variables, cognitions, techniques and features of students' L1s to be explored and understood. 

Almost without exception, research on pronunciation teaching effectiveness that looks at classroom work reports only at the activity-level, noting which techniques were used generally, something like: presentation and then various kinds of controlled and freer practice. The data is there, however, in any number of studies where transcripts of actual class sessions were analyzed for specific features, but we do not have publicly accessible studies of the messy, thick instructional discourse itself. That is the window that the podcast will look through: recent replays of pronunciation teaching as rich conversational engagement between students and instructor.

Know somebody we should talk to? Let me know!