A four-part (haptic) "metanique" for improving English pronunciation . . . and teaching!

Since Haptic Pronunciation Teaching started back in 2005, a basic technique was the "Movement, tone and touch technique," the MT3. It consisted of a gesture carried out while speaking a sound, word, phrase or clause, accompanied by a tonal contour (intonation) embodying emotional or affective meanings, concluding with hands touching on the main-stressed syllable of a word. 

A "metanique" (in haptic work) is a teaching technique format that has a basic function or two, such as assisting learners in getting or remembering language and also has one or more components. (Something analogous to a "tagmeme"). The new haptic metanique i the MT4: Movement, tone, tempo and touch technique, adding the component tempo to the earlier MT3. Tempo, in this case, is something close to pace, or simply speed of articulation. That was added for a number of reasons but primarily to help manage and modulate learner "movement" through the readings. The MT4 uses an annotation system similar to music tablature. 

Haptic work involves the use of a wide variety of "embodied oral readings" where typically there is an MT4 assigned to most, if not all, prominent stressed elements in a word, phrase or clause. To get a good sense of how those work, watch some (or all) of the four videos of lessons from the new Haptic English Accent and Pronunciation Course. That should give you a good introduction to KINETIK method and the new "MT4s."

Introduction (45 minutes)

Lesson 1 (30 minutes)

Lesson 1 Follow up/feedback session (45 minutes)

Lesson 2 (30 minutes)

The complete course will be available on Vimeo later this fall!

Keep in touch!

Play it again, HIRREM! (A musical tone approach to balanced pronunciation learning?)

Clip art: Clker

With apologies to Humprey Bogart, one of the basic "learning" assumptions in most training systems is that some degree of balance between relevant areas of the brain, whether left~right, top~bottom or front~back (or all of those) is optimal. How that is to be achieved is the question, of course. As blogged earlier on several occasions, brain research (e.g., as in neurotherapy) is now beginning to offer alternatives or at least compliments to cognitive and physical exercises or disciplines: brain frequency "adjustment."

In a new study by Tegler and colleagues at Wake Forest University (summarized by Science Daily), musical tones were mirrored back to the brains of subjects to achieve a more balanced overall brain frequency profile--which appeared to successfully lessen insomnia, at least for a month or so. Tegler does note that " . . . the changes observed with HIRREM, could be due to a placebo effect. In addition, because HIRREM therapy involves social interaction and relaxation, there may be other non-specific mechanisms for improvement, in addition to the tonal mirroring."

Now granted, this specific technology may not directly impact a learner's ability to learn new or repaired sounds--or even "HIRREM" better, but it is clearly on the right track. (Nothing to lose sleep over if you can't spring for the 30k to get you a " . . . high-resolution, relational, resonance-based, electroencephalic mirroring or, as it's commercially known, Brainwave Optimization™ . . . " set up!) But multiple-modality and balanced "all-brain" engagement is the key to pronunciation change. It's coming. Keep in touch. 

Expressiveness in pronunciation instruction

Clip art: Clker

A few blog posts back I assembled a set of musical terms that could be used to characterize speaking performance. For example, as part of a set up for the mood of a dialogue, you could indicate something like "con spiritu, a placere" (with spirit, but need not follow strict rhythm pattern). Another term, espressivo (expressively), appears (as "expressiveness") commonly, for example, in rubrics used in public speaking or classroom presentations, etc. I have over the years done several workshops with titles like "Expressive pronunciation," the idea being that if you can get learners to be more "expressive" (however that is defined) you should be better able to move them to fluency and integration of focus-on-form targets. What is "expressiveness?" Here is 2005 a study by Fabian and Schubert that looked at how that concept was unpacked and used in a study of listener judgment of two versions of a Bach violin concerto. Some of the parameters of expressiveness and related criterion used in the study were:

Clip art: Clker

• Phrasing (Continuous, Legato, Articulated, Detailed)
• Tone Production (Vibrato, Intensity, Straightness, Lightness) 
• Rhythm (Grouped, Strict, Measured, Flexible)

Subjects were also asked to rate each performance on more global criteria : Romantic Expressiveness  and Baroque Expressiveness. Not surprisingly, each of those two correlated quite directly with very differing subsets of the three "linguistic" categories. The point of the study was to demonstrate that expressiveness can be understood from a set of parameters such as those and that its realization in any piece or context will depend upon the style in which it is situated. The same goes for oral production or interpretation of any text used in pronunciation-focus work: By systematically and explicitly varying those or similar parameters, learners can be assisted in speaking "expressively" within their own personal L2  expressive style or identity, whether more "Baroque-like" or more "Romantically." Just because the learner seems relatively over-"buttoned down," rigid or emotionally constrained does not mean that he or she cannot develop genuine, authentic expressiveness. In other words, If it's Baroque, don't (be too quick to try to) fix it!

Passion or anger? (pitch-accent vs stress-accent)

Clip art: Clker

Clip art: Clker

Watched a fascinating video today where the speaker (a native speaker of English) who was attempting a motivational presentation had an extremely limited pitch range in his voice and appeared, for the most part, to be using primarily volume for stress accent, rather than "pitch accent," the combination of pitch and volume, common in most dialects of English. Combined with his rapid rate of delivery it was, at times, difficult, even for me, to tell when he was transitioning between thoughts or quoted and unquoted speech. I can only imagine the problem for a nonnative speaker in the audience.

At the end of the video, there was a fascinating interchange between two attendees: one sensed that the speaker was "passionate:" the other, that he seemed "angry." The former was familiar with the general content of the lecture: the latter, was not, adding that the overall effect was a very "pushy," demanding presentation. The scene reminded me of working with some Korean businessmen who, initially, would come off the same way.

But most intriguing was the body motion of the speaker who, rather than moving forward and back with upper torso motion or gesture, moved rhythmically--almost hypnotically--back and forth, from side to side, behind the podium. Often the stressed word would occur at the end of the "sway," either left or right, paralinguistically conveying something of the same message of flat tonality. (We can fix that haptically, of course.) For most in the room, the "pitch" fell decidedly flat as well!