The "Fly-Chi": All you need is a little embodied, fluent rhythm--for "supra" vowels and consonants!

About a month ago, I stumbled on to a pair of "haptic" techniques, using "supra-segmentals," that is rhythm, stress and intonation--when used in sequence, that appear to dramatically and quickly improve the pronunciation of some multi-syllable words, including the pronunciation of individual vowels and consonants in them. I know that is a claim and a half! 

Here is the story . . . 

For over 15 years, two of the basic techniques of Haptic Pronunciation Teaching, have been the Syllable Butterfly and the Tai Chi Finger Flow Fluency. (Check out the links to those two from version 2.0.) The Butterfly focused on syllables and rhythm; the Tai Chi, on fluency. In a recent class where learners were trained in the Tai Chi, there was some additional time left at the end where we work on problematic words have noted during the week. The first student had several multi-syllable words, including 'custodial" and "maintenance." There was almost no contrast between stressed and unstressed syllables--and no obvious rhythmic structure. The Tai Chi technique made little difference, other than speeding up his speech a bit. 

For the first time ever in working with vocabulary, I had him do the Butterfly first, which exaggerates both stress contrast and rhythm/length of each syllable, and then the Tai Chi. The student and the class were almost blown away by the improvement. He sounded almost  . . . Canadian! Actually, his pronunciation of the segmentals, per se, did  not change much if at all, but the relative amplitude and length of the syllables certainly did! The same happened on another dozen words or so after that. In subsequent weeks, the final segment of each class has become basically problematic vocabulary done to the tune of the Butterfly and Tai Chi. Have already included the "Fly-Chi" in Lesson 2 of the KINETIK method!

It is well established in the field that if a learner has relatively good rhythm, including contrast between stressed and unstressed vowels, that problems with segmentals (vowels and consonants) should be less  . . . problematic. Actually, and more importantly, with unstressed syllables somewhat backgrounded, vowels tend to be "reduced" and consonant near misses are not only not as noticeable but elide (blend with) adjacent  sounds. The process is very evident developmentally in child language learning, as well as the efficacy of embodied techniques such as handclapping in facilitating enhancement of segmentals, e.g.,  Baills and Prieto, (2023.)

There are "billions and billions" of videos on the web demonstrating the phenomenon and the effect. What those demonstrations do not do, however, is show how to help learners work with the process consistently so that the changes "stick." In preparing for a recent class, I seem to have "discovered" a way . . . The problem with either just using hand clapping with sentences or longer texts, such as songs, or focusing on just one word at a time is that the learner generally not able to take the process out of class effectively, consistently, and remember what was temporarily "embodied" in the process.

Students are using the Fly-Chi now in homework. (I have three weeks of good data so far!) And at least initially, their ability to both change and remember targeted words appears greatly enhanced. Just a fascinating "theory" at this point, Help me test it--and report back! 

Baills, F., & Prieto, P. (2023). Embodying rhythmic properties of a foreign language through hand-clapping helps children to better pronounce words. Language Teaching Research, 27(6), 1576-1606. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168820986716

Workshop on stressing and de-stressing unstressed vowels: the haptic “thumb-flick” technique

On the 22nd of November at the local BCTEAL regional conference, I'll be doing a new haptic workshop on unstressed vowels, with Aihua Liu of Harbin Institute of Technology and Jean Jeon, a graduate student her at Trinity Western University. You can see an introduction to the technique here.

Summary:

Clip art:
Clker.com

This participatory, experiential session presents a haptic (gesture + touch) procedure for helping learners produce and better “hear” unstressed vowels in English. In essence, as words are articulated, learners touch hands at specific points in the visual field on stressed vowels and “flick their thumbs” on the unstressed vowels.

Proposal:

Working with unstressed vowels in English is often neglected. The problem is often “solved” by avoiding the issue entirely or by emphasizing suprasegmentals (rhythm, stress and intonation) which, research suggests, do indeed help to determine the prominence of unstressed syllables to some extent. In addition, there may be some limited, indirect attention to unstressed vowels in oral practice of reduced forms, especially in fixed phrases (e.g., “salt ‘n pepper) and idioms.

Research has recently demonstrated that disproportionate attention to suprasegmentals (rhythm, stress and intonation) without a balanced, production-oriented treatment of key segmentals (vowels and consonants) may be very counter-productive, undermining intelligibility substantially. That is especially the case with learners whose L1 is Vietnamese, for example.

This technique helps to address that issue by facilitating more appropriate, controlled focus on the vowel quality in unstressed syllables.  It involves the use of two types of pedagogical gestures, one that adds additional attention to the stressed vowel of the word and a second that helps learners to better approximate the target sound and maintain the basic syllabic structure of the word.

The session is experiential and highly participatory. Participants are provided materials and links to Youtube.com videos demonstrating the technique.

Vowel reduction and word stress: one word at a time

Clipart: Clker

Especially in pre-academic ESL/EFL instruction, the common strategy is to devote considerable instructional time to rules and patterns of word stress assignment, and attention to principles of vowel reduction. As noted in earlier posts, some of that emphasis is due to the fact that many acquire pronunciation through reading--not speaking and listening-- and need good strategies for figuring out word stress and vowel reduction, especially with technical terms. With the advent of good audio sources for pronunciation, at least some of the need for essentially "phonic" decoding has been lessened. Flege and Bohn's 1989 research inked above came to the striking conclusion that " . . .  L2 learners acquire [word] stress placement and vowel reduction in English on a word-by-word basis." In that study, the vowel quality of the vowels in the words that were being learned appeared to be impervious to alteration or enhancement once the word had been assigned meaning and use conditions. If that is indeed the case in general--and that has certainly been my experience in working with stress and vowel reduction in conversational language, especially with intermediate-level and above, then the key to developing accurate pronunciation at least at the segment-level seems to be experiencing and anchoring the felt sense of a word as a whole, not as simply a token of a pattern or process. Now the pattern of the stress assignment or vowel reduction involved may generate to other new words in some manner, but basically, those aspects of the word that are learned as part of the initial, overall configuration, which includes any number of factors in addition to those that are sound-related, are highly resistant to change later. In other words, the brain of the learner apparently grasps whatever pronunciation of the new word is immediately available or possible-- and then doesn't look back much or continue trying to approximate the L2 target much further, if at all. In a word, we do appear to learn the pronunciation of the language . . .  one word at a time. 

Post-focal compression (vs shortening): slugging it out--or in!

Clip art: Clker

One of the earlier EHIEP protocols, termed the "Rhythm Fight Club," was designed to compress unstressed syllables, creating both more of a contrast between stressed and unstressed elements, and also aiming at the "felt sense" of conversational speech rhythm--and just to have fun. (No need to do  that one unless you have boxing gloves handy!) Newer versions w/tennis ball have worked toward more compression on post-focal syllables, rather than pre-focal or entertainment value.

In pre-focal there is a natural build up in pitch and volume that is less evident after the focused syllable. The idea is to concentrate on compression, not softening or simply lowering volume, from the learner's perspective--as most methods recommend. Conceptually, the space between the syllables is what is being compressed; in reality, everything is, of course. (Check this note from University College London Phonetic Lab.)

Of all the protocols, this one often has the most dramatic and immediate effect. (What you see in the video is the final "product," not the pedagogical sequence that leads up to it, but you can probably figure out a version of that yourself.) So . . ."take the gloves off" sometime and go a few rounds with your class, especially if they are predominantly native speakers of  "syllable-timed" L1s. It is great for "de-compressing" as well!