Haptic bonding: connecting new or modified L2 pronunciation back to visual images of words or graphemes

Clip art: Clker

Clip art: Clker

Haptic bonding! I love that term! It has been common practice with children to use tactile engagement in working with pre-reading, helping them link the sounds with graphemes. The same ideas have been applied widely in rehabilitation as well but the underlying mechanisms involved have not been well understood. In a fascinating-- and very relevant--study by Gentaz and colleagues at the Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurocognition in Grenoble (CNRS/Université Pierre Mendès France de Grenoble/Université de Savoie), Learning of Arbitrary Association between Visual and Auditory Novel Stimuli in Adults: The “Bond Effect” of Haptic Exploration, summarized by Science Daily, it was demonstrated that " . . . When visual stimuli can be explored both visually and by touch, adults learn arbitrary associations between auditory and visual stimuli more efficiently." And there you have it!

Pronunciation teaching without repetition?

Clip art: Clker

Indeed. In a good paper in the Proceedings of the 2011 PSLLT Conference, Messum, applying his application of Gattegno's work, Teaching pronunciation without using imitation: Why and how," makes that argument persuasively. As noted in previous posts, I am a fan of Messum and Young's PronSci. The problem with their framework, as he readily concedes, is that it takes a rather radical change of approach and re-training to work within "Silent Way" methodology. That it works in some contexts is irrefutable, with over 50 years of "data" and experience to draw on.

(To repeat again!) my reservations about that approach are only that it (a) is relatively difficult and time consuming to learn to do well, that it (b) has a strong "visual-auditory" bias in basic classroom "inter-diction," and that it (c) depends on associating approximation of motor control of sounds with auditory schema, mediated by color-coded symbols. In other words, the anchoring and keys to accessing anchored sounds are essentially visual-auditory, not haptic as in EHIEP. Our experience is simply that haptic-integrated anchoring is more efficient and accessible to instructors, especially for those with little or no previous training in linguistics and pronunciation teaching.

But don't take my word for it or Messum's. Get trained in the Silent Way so you can work with it in one class and see how it works . . . and then get the complete EHIEP system of haptic videos (which will be available in late Spring 2013) and let it train you and your students in 8, 30-minute weekly segments . . . Note: Versions of many of the basic EHIEP system haptic videos are linked off the blog in earlier posts. If you are interested in seeing some recent, pre-release stuff and perhaps field testing it in your class for us, let me know (wracton@gmail.com)!

Full citation: Messum, P. (2012). Teaching pronunciation without using imitation: Why and how. In. J. Levis & K. LeVelle (Eds.). Proceedings of the 3rd Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference, Sept. 2011. (pp. 154-160). Ames, IA: Iowa State University.

Disembodied Pronunciation done well--by Rosetta Stone

Although there appears to be no readily accessible published research as to the efficacy of the widely promoted language teaching program, Rosetta Stone, if the testimonials on the website are to be believed,  it certainly works for at least some learners.  Having reviewed the Korean and ESL programs, I am struck by how well it does a little--a good business model.

Image: Rosetta stone.com

For the visual-auditory, literate learner (See previous posts on the myth of learning styles, however!)  for whom pronunciation will not be much of an issue, it offers reasonably good, low cost, individualized access to at least functional vocabulary and structure. In fact, that it does not do active pronunciation instruction (other than repetition with some feedback) may almost be a plus, as opposed to presenting it even more "disembodied," as is the case with many current, computer-based systems.

A haptic interface could certainly be developed to use with it. I suggested that when I talked to one of the designers a couple of years ago. Basically, he confidently informed me that according to Krashen and most experts in the field, comprehensible input and aural comprehension were generally sufficient for developing acceptable pronunciation--and selling the product. Well . . . duh. He was at least half right. And besides, recall that the pronunciation of the original Rosetta Stone took over three decades to figure out . . .

Magic pronunciation change: Look at that sound in your ear!

One of the great mysteries (or complexities or frustrations) of working with multi-sensory or multiple modality pronunciation learning systems is understanding the relative contribution of one sense to the effectiveness of the process. As you might guess, some research reveals that the senses are in some contexts highly integrated; in others, quite the opposite: the incoming data is interpreted and remains relatively partitioned. In looking at the range of possible configurations of learner cognitive styles (e.g., visual, auditory, kinesthetic--and all possible combinations of those three where one is dominant and the other to some degree less prominent, such as: visual-auditory, auditory-visual, auditory-kinesthetic, kinesthetic-visual, etc.) the puzzle becomes even more complicated. What some research suggests, such as this 2009 study by Jacobs and Sham, is that some degree of separation or isolation of the senses might work for us in changing pronunciation.

An earlier post, Change the Channel Fallacy, focused on how difficult it can be to change "the channel," for example, modify auditory output by doing simple repetition of the correct sound, without engaging a learner's nondominant modalities, perhaps visual or kinesthetic.What that could mean is that the best avenue or potential impact  might be through nondominant modalities, not catering to the learner's preferred modality as is the common practice.

So, for the visual-auditory learner, emphasize auditory; for the auditory-visual, visual; for the kinesthetic-auditory, auditory, etc. And for almost any combination of the three main senses, try teaching more through haptic (adding touch to movement), which is generally even more outside of conscious awareness, less likely to disturb ongoing communication or thought. EHIEP methodology is not magic, but it certainly does involve a focus of attention away from the problem channel to a parallel modality where change can take place less obtrusively, a nice,  haptic "slight of hand", if  you will . . . and you should!