What do you expect? (A "Tsough" question for pronunciation teaching!)

Intriguing title of  recent piece/summary on ScienceDaily.com: "Flaw in Rubber Hand Illusion raise tsough questions for psychology" (a real double threat: not only a spelling miscue, but a grammar issue as well.)  Do those two little "glitches" affect your expectations as to what is in the article? Unavoidably, eh . . . and that is too bad. The research by Lush of University of Sussex being summarized is potentially paradigm shaking (original title): Demand Characteristics Confound the Rubber Hand Illusion.

From the summary: 

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"The Rubber Hand Illusion, where synchronous brush strokes on a participant's concealed hand and a visible fake hand can give the impression of illusory sensations of touch and of ownership of the fake hand, has been cited in more than 5,000 articles since it was first documented more than 20 years ago."

What that appeared to establish early on is that the brain was in some sense "hard wired" to tranfer sensation throughout the body, as a function of consciousness. The problem, according to Lush, and demonstrated in the study, is that the results from experiments exploring that effect, may be hopeless biased by what are termed "demand characteristics," of the study, in effect (hypnotic-like) suggestion as to what the researcher expects to find and the subjects experience. 

In other words, subjects will do their best to exhibit the effect being elicited. In Lush's study, subjects' expectations for how they would respond to the "rubber hand", having read the original introductory protocols, were striking to the extent that they were biased in favor of experiencing the "ghost sensations" in the rubber hand. 

Since in haptic pronunciation teaching the hands play a central role in linking sound, gesture and concepts, we clearly have a "pony in this race" as well.

A couple of decades ago, in a piece on the role of suggestion in language teaching in the JALT Language Teacher, I cited a paragraph from a (then) popular student pronunciation book (bold-face, mine):

"Acquiring good pronunciation is the most difficult part of learning a new language. As you improve your articulation you have to learn to listen and imitate all over again. As with any activity you wish to do well, you have to practice, practice, practice, and then practice some more . Remember that you cannot accomplish good pronunciation overnight; improvement takes time. Some students may find it more difficult than others and will need more time than others to improve" (Orion, 1989, pp. xxiii-iv).

I went on to note: "In those . . . words and phrases . . . can you not hear echoes of that famous line above the door in Dante's Inferno, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here?"

This relates back to two blog posts ago on "pronunciation preambles," that is the way instructors set up work in pronunciation. Human beings, at least most of them, are highly suggestable. They have to be to be capable of picking up subtle cues in their environment quickly and efficiently. Pronunciation teaching, and pronunciation, in general, has gotten a bad rap, some of it deservedly so, of course, but how it is presented to learners, consciously and subconsciously, makes an enormous difference in outcome.

A "slight of hand" in the truest sense. What are you suggesting?

Source: 

University of Sussex. (2020, April 10). Flaw in Rubber Hand Illusion raise tsough questions for psychology. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 15, 2020 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200410162432.htm

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!

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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!

How watching curling can make you a better teacher!

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Tigger alert: This post contains application of insights from curling and business sales to teaching, certainly nothing to be Pooh-Poohed. 

The piece linked above by Dooley on Forbes.com, How watching curling helps you sell better, explores the potential effects of ongoing attention to sales, brushing away obstacles, influencing the course of "the rock." Most importantly, however, it emphasizes the idea of constantly examining and influencing the behavior of your customers (your students.)

It sounds at first like that analogy flies in the face of empowering the learner and encouraging learner autonomy, let alone questionable manipulation . . .  Not quite. It speaks more to instructor responsibility for doing as much as possible to facilitate the process, but especially the whole range of "influencing" behaviors that neuroscience is "rediscovering" for us, many times less explicit and only marginally out of learner awareness, such as room milieu, pacing, voice characteristics, timing and even . . . homework or engagement with the language outside of class.

Marketers, wedded to the new neuroscience (or pseudo-science) consultants, are way out ahead of us in some respects, far behind in others. What are some major "rocks" that you might better outmaneuver with astute, consistent micro-moves, staying ahead, brushing aside obstacles? One book you might consider "curling  up with, with a grain of salt" is Dooley's Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing.

Remembering new pronunciation (or anything) . . . in a flash!

Here is another for your "So THAT's why it works" file, from neuroscience. (Hat tip: Robert Murphy.)

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The phenomenon, explored by Morris and researchers at Edinburgh reported by Neuroscience News, is called: flashbulb memory. (See full citation below.) Working with mice, they found, basically, that a vivid, striking event can cause the release of dopamine by the locus coeruleus, which, in turn " . . . carries dopamine to the hippocampus . . . " which affects how effectively memories are stored.

So, if you (and your mouse) are about to learn something new--or just did, it will be remembered more efficiently if it is "bookended" by a "flashbulb" event . Talk about counter-intuitive! I have done dozens of posts over the years on how attention figures into learning. (In our haptic work, for example, we often note that we need the attention of the learner for only 3 seconds to anchor a new sound.) In the Neuroscience news summary it is noted that "Our research suggests that a skillful teacher may be able to take advantage of these little surprises to help pupils learn and remember.” Really? How so? They don't speculate--for good reason. How might you adopt that insight?

My first thought was to go find one of those camera flash attachments and try it out next week. But wait. There may be more to this, more than just dopamine.

About 35 years ago, I was very much interested in clinical hypnosis, in part as a way to better understand unconscious communication and learning in the classroom. One basic feature some models of trance work was that you had to be very careful to distract the learner (or client) immediately after a significant suggestion has been provided or "uploaded".

The explanation was that that would keep the conscious mind of the learner from deconstructing and dismissing or undermining the suggestion or metaphor, not letting it be absorbed in toto, in effect. That could be accomplished in any number of ways, such as switching topics abruptly, showing a picture or doing something more physical or kinaesthetic, such as standing up or a gesture of some kind.

In other words, the principle, of selectively partitioning off classroom experience makes sense. Rather than thinking in terms of always integrating the entire class period and lesson so that learners are metacognitively "on top of it all", so that they constantly know why they are learning what and consciously (metaphorically) attempting to file everything away for later use, think: switch-flash-divert-surprise.

I knew that my distinct tendency toward ADHD-like excessive multi-tasking was really a good thing! If you have a good "Flash dance" technique that you can share w/us, please do!

Keep in touch!

Full citation:
University of Edinburgh. (2016, September 8). How New Experiences Boost Memory Formation. NeuroscienceNews. Retrieved September 8, 2016 from http://neurosciencenews.com/experience-memory-neuroscience-4991/

Correct pronunciation by talking about it: Think or swim . . .

Photo credit: Seaglobe.com

Ever notice how students often will not notice well enough to "get it"  when you point out a pronunciation issue for them and skillfully provide them with a preferred form on the spot?

A recent study of noticing by Hanna, Mullainathan and Scwartzstein (2012) suggests something of why from a different perspective. When their subjects, seaweed farmers, were presented with data that was potentially very valuable for them in improving their work and problem solving, they didn't "uptake" much either--unless the relevance of the key elements was also explicitly linked back to why they were critical or relevant.

In other words, the new data had to be immediately linked (somehow) to acknowledged and perceived (or felt) relevance, what we (following Gendlin, 1972) refer to as "felt sense." In pronunciation teaching with adults, that at least means "getting back in touch with" earlier explicit explanation and guided practice. The problem is often, without sufficient physical experience and practice of the sound change in the first place or in the referring "teachable moment," there is little chance for most that merely pointing out or covertly throwing in correct models is going to work.

And taking valuable class time in the middle of a content-based discussion, for example, to go into an impromptu explanation right there as to why that particular sound issue is important to intelligibility for some subset of learners will probably not be productive either. So what should you do?

What does work, in our experience, in EHIEP/AHEPS, is haptic anchoring (gesture + touch on stressed words or syllables), that is much more strongly body-based initial experience of the sound or word. Having intensely experienced the physical properties of the sound early on, learners then have better access to that anchor when it is activated in a meaningful context. (The basic trick involved in hypnotic suggestion.) The primary contribution of haptic engagement in pronunciation learning or any learning system is integrating the senses, providing the link back to the experience and sound later.

That way, in spontaneous conversation or classroom talk, after a problematic word or stress pattern occurs, with a quick "haptic-anchored noticing" as the word is repeated by the instructor, often w/out even saying the word out loud, the connection is made. The same principle holds if the instructor, aware of a feature that a student or students are working on, haptically anchors some element as he or she produces it in doing an explanation or providing a comment: the visual gesture accompanying the spoken word is often enough for students to "feel" and register that token.

How well that works consistently is, of course, an empirical question, one that can and will be researched in time. In the meantime, take it from the seaweed farmers. The only way to experience this level of somatic, whole-body, experiential learning . . . is to jump in the (haptic teaching) water .  .  . and notice what happens. As we say, "Think or swim . . . take your pick!

Keep in touch.

Better pronunciation with grit, tenacity and perseverance!

Clip art: Clker

If getting the pronunciation of your L2 does not come easy (or accomplishing anything that requires mobilization of all your "noncognitive" resources--according to a US Department of Education 2013 study)--you have another option: grit, tenacity and perseverance. A while back (1997) I did a paper on a related topic, looking at the optimal classroom environment for pronunciation learning, that began with this great quote from a popular student pronunciation textbook of the time:

"Acquiring good pronunciation is the most difficult part of learning a new language. As you improve your articulation you have to learn to listen and imitate all over again. As with any activity you wish to do well, you have to practice, practice, practice, and then practice some more. Remember that you cannot accomplish good pronunciation overnight; improvement takes time. Some students may find it more difficult than others and will need more time than others to improve." (Orion, 1997, pp. xxiii-iv).

My point at the time was to "suggest," ways of using techniques derived from hypnosis (e.g., Suggestopedia) and related disciplines that appear to require less GTP on the part of the learner, allowing the learning to go on either subconsciously or at least with less overt "practice, practice, practice . . . " The quote from Orion (1997) was supposed to represent the wrong way to set up the class or students for what was ahead for them. According to the study, which identifies GTP as "critical factors for succes in the 21st century," I may have been wrong . . . or at least not doing justice to a key dimension of the process.

The more I work at developing a good system for promoting, monitoring and compelling essential pronunciation homework in AH-EPS, the more "Orion-esque" I have become. If learners do not have intrinsic GTP, the system has to provide it for them. The research on exercise persistence is full of guidelines on how to do that. It is not easy to figure out, but with a just a little GTP . . . 

The "Nocebo" effect in pronunciation teaching.

Clipart: Clker

Clipart: Clker

I wrote an article in 1997 entitled "Seven suggestions of highly successful pronunciation teaching." It began with a quote from the introduction of a then popular pronunciation book (no longer in print):

"Acquiring good pronunciation is the most difficult part of learning a new language. As you improve your articulation you have to learn to listen and imitate all over again. As with any activity you wish to do well, you have to practice, practice, practice, and then practice some more . Remember that you cannot accomplish good pronunciation overnight; improvement takes time. Some students may find it more difficult than others and will need more time than others to improve (Orion, 1988, pp. xxiii-iv)." 

My point in quoting that rather foreboding piece was to illustrate the sometimes "less than encouraging"  language (and attitude) used by instructors to orient learners or attempt to motivate them during pronunciation work. At the time I didn't have a term for it; now I do: a "nocebo"--as contrasted with a "placebo." In the research summary by Winfried Häuser and co-researchers of the Technical University of Munich, summarized by Science Daily, defined 'nocebo' effects as " . . . adverse events that occur during sham treatment and/or as a result of negative expectations . .   or by unintended negative suggestion on the part of doctors or nurses. . ." The above "nocebo" may, for many, be at face value a realistic prognosis, but there is almost certainly a less "nocebic" way to put it. So, along with "noticing" we need to add the term "nocebo-ing" or "nocebo-ation" to our haptic toolbox--or try to eliminate it!

Shhh! Overcoming pronunciation (and haptic) anxiety--one word or phrase at a time.

In a recent workshop, we had an especially anxious (and nearly belligerent) participant. In talking with him it became evident that the haptic-integrated pronunciation work was really not the problem, although something was certainly triggering his strong reaction to the process. Recently, with the aid of fMRI technology, the underlying basis of such responses was for the first time mapped in the brain by Shervin at the University of Michigan. Freud would have been very pleased, indeed, to get empirical validation that subliminal, unconscious messages can, indeed, set off reactions to present events--based on either past experiences or continuing, underlying psychological conflicts. It is not uncommon for learners or instructors to experience anxiety when first asked to consciously move their bodies in public. (In general, the latter are far more restive and problematic than the former!) Embodiment theories provide a number of perspectives on how and why that may happen as well. Such reactions can usually be diffused in a number of ways, from a brief explanation to carefully staged introduction of pedagogical gesture, but occasionally they cannot. When that happens the learner should be allowed to remain in a disengaged, observer role. (See earlier posts on effective modelling in that context as well.) Although we cannot possibly anticipate every action or random expression which might set off such aversion to EHIEP protocols, we must work to create experiences that capture learners and their attention--for about 3 seconds at a time--so as to at least moderate counterproductive reaction. The disaffected instructor in the workshop suggested an alternative which I intend to explore further. (Just need to find a "new" class to try this out on! Any volunteers?) At least temporarily, we'll set aside all the "pointless and confusing" warm ups and introduction to the various (8) sub-systems of English pronunciation that form the basis of the overall, haptic-video-based EHIEP approach, and, with only the briefest of visual (spoken or written) rationale, "simply" use the pedagogical movement patterns to correct mispronunciations or introduce new sound processes, as necessary during normal speaking or conversation instruction. There is some anecdotal evidence that that works. The question is in what contexts and how efficiently, of course--and whether it can be done without at least a quick, simultaneous, accompanying, subliminal, heartfelt haptic "hug." (Shhh!) 

Triggers that "figure" . . .

Clip art: Clker

Clip art: Clker

When you look at that picture to the left of the trigger (or Picasso) fish, what does it bring to mind? An aquarium that you like? A scuba diving trip to the Bahamas? A recent Disney movie? A paint-by-number project you did in elementary school? A favorite sushi? What memory (or appetite?) does it trigger? In a couple of earlier posts I reviewed research on the effect and mechanisms involved in triggering. This piece from Lifehacker.com does a nice job of informally characterizing triggers and prescribing what to do about them to manage those in your life and work more effectively. The previous blogpost on how anchors work, especially the role of visual (and auditory) triggers in haptic-integrated pronunciation work, was addressing much of the same idea. The Lifehacker review of a couple dozen techniques for dealing with them in just organizing the clutter around your laptop could easily be translated into a recipe for design and monitoring of optimal classroom milieu (cf.,"boutique" Suggestopedia method.) It takes a little semiotic extrapolation, of course, but once you get into that temporary "hyper-sensual" frame of reference--where virtually everything in the instructional environment can potentially affect everything--you are at least capable of making some new choices. And when you do, the impact on learner attention, and yours, will at least for a time work for you. Go figure . . . then "pull the trigger" (in either sense!) 

Post HICP-tic teaching suggestion

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Clker

We have all seen examples of "post-hypnotic suggestion" either on stage or in more clinical settings. Here is an article I wrote some time ago entitled, "Seven suggestions of highly successful pronunciation teaching." Were I to re-write that piece today, I'd add an eight, something analogous to this example of provided by a hypnotherapist where he is basically setting up his clients to experience signs of change or progress in the everyday experience in the week ahead. In HICP work some of what we should suggest to learners is that, as long as they do their assigned homework religiously, (a) they will begin to at least recognize when they are still using a "defective" form of some kind, and then (b) they will begin to recognize when they are using the "improved" or "corrected" form instead. They should also begin to discover other words where an "incorrect" vowel or consonant is hiding out when reading or occasionally when speaking.

You will,  of course, this coming week think of other "suggestions" that you can offer in passing which will help reinforce and integrate what is being learned and re-learned . . . or,  following Dr House's pithy prescription, perhaps "these aren't the druids you are looking for . . . "