Reminder: English Accent and Pronunication Improvement course (EAPIC) Wednesday Nite L4 Feedback session.

 The session starts at 8 EST on Google Meets. Lesson 4 focuses on single vowels in English and basics of (remembering) word stress. Even if you have not been attending the course, feel free to drop by and see what it is about. Tonight is the last free feedback session.

Link to the feedback session.

See you in an hour!

Bill

Hapticanar #11 - 20 Haptic Techniques (in 30 minutes!)

 If you'd like a preview of the new KINETIK Method Pronunciation Teaching Certificate Course, join us later today at the next Hapticanar, at 6 p.m., PST. Go to: https://www.actonhaptic.com/ to sign up for the free webinar. If you have missed any of the haptic (web) inars, or you can't join us live, you can always get caught up at: www.actonhaptic.com/archives.

For more on the certificate course: https://www.actonhaptic.com/kinetic or info@actonhaptic.com

Bill

KINETIK Hapticanar #5: Double Vowels and (haptic) friends

The next Hapticanar (Haptic webinar) is part two of the haptic system for teaching the vowels of English, at the regular wenbar time, July 13th, at 6 p.m. (PST). To sign up for the series of 12 webinars, go to www.actonhaptic.com. 

The "double vowels" in general North American pronunciation in the haptic system are these: (A common set used in student pronunciation texts.) 

• 1y [iy] “me”
• 11w [uw] “moo”
• 3y [ey] “may”
• 9w [ow] “mow”
• 6y [ay] “my”
• 8y [Ɔy]“boy”
• 6w [aw] “cow”

Their "friends" are simple tense vowels in English: ([i], [e], [u] and [o]. To do the double vowels, students need a little work on the simple tense vowels first. 

As usual, come for the singalong, stay for vowels!

Keep in touch!

Bill

KINETIK Hapticanar #4: Single Vowel-arama! (Or: How I learned to love stress and vowel it!)

Haptic pronunciation teaching does an especially good job of teaching vowels and basic word stress. In this webinar we begin with what we call "single vowels," that is simple, not complex "short" vowel sounds such as in: chicken, cooks, best, with, salt, fat, love, hot. (Later in the system we do work on some other simple vowels such as tense vowels that are not stressed, such as: [i] in 'pronunciation' or [e] in 'atypical'. You'll have to wait for webinar #10 for that, however!)

If you have missed the first four KINETIK hapticanars, Introduction, Rhythm, Fluency and Consonant Supreme 1, you can both get caught up at www.actonhaptic.com and sign up for the coming webinars! 

See you there!

 

TESOL 2018 Convention Haptic Pronunciation Teaching Proposals

It's that time again! Proposals are due June 1st! A number of topics have been suggested for us Hapticians. If you see one you like and want to participate in, let us know SOON!

• Half-day pre-convention institute - Basic training in haptic pronunciation teaching
• Research colloquium on haptic pronunciation teaching - This year's colloquium was very successful. Much more to report on next year. 
• Embodiment and the body in TESOL - This is a broader topic, one that has been suggested to me repeatedly. Reasonably certain it will be proposed.
• Unstressed vowels (a haptic approach) - The haptic pedagogical movement pattern system for unstressed vowels, especially schwa, is innovative and effective, used now primarily in accent reduction.
• Visible gesture in pronunciation instruction - With the recent publication of a couple of articles, this topic is finally getting some serious discussion. (This deals with visual signalling, more than the anchoring of gesture in the body of the learner.)
• Haptic pragmatics - I have done three successful workshops on this topic with Angelina VanDyke. The model has developed considerably.
• Haptic discourse intonation teaching basics - This one follows somewhat from the Haptic Pragmatics workshop. 
• Haptic pronunciation in literacy work - This would be a follow up on one of the presentations in this year's haptic research colloquium. 
• Haptic pronunciation for kids - The haptic model is used by many elementary school teachers.
• Haptic pronunciation teaching for volunteer teachers - The current haptic pronunciation teacher certification course developed out of work with volunteer teachers
• There will be a publishers session on v5.0 of the Haptic Pronunciation Teaching Certification course. 

Those could be in any of several formats, colloquia, workshops, teaching tips, etc.

Keep in touch - and check in if interested by May 1st!

Lost in space: Why phoneme vowel charts may inhibit learning of pronunciation

In a recent workshop I inadvertently suggested that the relative distances between adjacent English vowels on various standard charts, such as the IPA matrix or those used in pronunciation teaching were probably not all that important. Rather than "stand by" that comment, I need to "distance myself" from it! Here's why.

Several posts on the blog, including a recent one, have dealt with the basic question of to what extent visual stimuli can potentially undermine learning of sound, movement and touch (the basic stuff of the haptic approach to pronunciation teaching.) I went back to Doellar and Burgess (2008), "Distinct error-correcting and incidental learning of location relative to landmarks and boundaries" (Full citation below.), one of the key pieces of research/theory that our haptic work has been based on.

In essence, that study demonstrated that we have two parallel systems for learning locations, in two different parts of the brain, one from landmarks in the visual (or experiential) field and another from boundaries of the field. Furthermore, boundaries tend to override landmarks in navigating. (For instance, when finding your way in the dark, your first instinct is to go along the wall, touching what is there, if possible, not steer through landmarks or objects in the field in front of you whose relative location may be much less fixed in your experience.)

Most importantly for us, boundaries tend to be learned incidentally; landmarks, associatively. In other words, location relative to boundaries is more like a map, where the exact point is first identified by where it is relative to the boundary, not the other points within the map itself. Conversely, landmarks tend to be learned associatively, relative to each other, not in relation to the boundary of the field, which may be irrelevant anyway, not conceptually present.

So what does that imply for teaching English vowels? 

• Learner access in memory to the vowels when still actively working on improving pronunciation is generally a picture or image of a matrix, where the vowels are placed in it. (Having asked learners for decades how they "get to" vowels, the consistent answer is something like: "I look at the vowel chart in my mind.")
• The relative position of those vowels, especially adjacent vowels, is almost certainly tied more to the boundaries of the matrix, the sides and intersecting lines, not the relative auditory and articulatory qualities of the sounds themselves. 
• The impact of visual schema and processing over auditory and haptic is such that, at least for many learners, the chart is at least not doing much to facilitate access to the articulatory and somatic features of the phonemes, themselves. (I realize that is an empirical question that cries out for a controlled study!)
• The phonemic system of a language is based fundamentally on relative distances between phonemes. The brain generally perceives phonemic differences as binary, e.g., it is either 'u' or 'U', or 'p' or 'b', although actual sound produced may be exceedingly close to the conceptual "boundary" separating them. 
• Haptic work basically backgrounds visual schema and visual prominence, attempting to promote a stronger association between the sounds, themselves, and the "distance" between them, in part by locating them in the visual field immediately in front of the learner, using gesture, movement and touch, so that the learner experiences the relative phonemic "differences" as distinctly as possible.
• We still do some initial orientation to the vowel system using a clock image with the vowels imposed on it, to establish the technique of using vowel numbers for correction and feedback, but try to get away from that as soon as possible, since that visual schema as well gives the impression that the vowels are somehow "equidistant" from each other--and, of course, according to Doellar and Burgess (2008) probably more readily associated with the boundary of the clock than with each other.

 (Based on excerpt from Basic Haptic Pronunciation, v4.0, forthcoming, Spring, 2016.)

Doellar, C. and Burgess, N. (2008). "Distinct error-correcting and incidental learning of location relative to landmarks and boundaries", retrieved from http://www.pnas.org/content/105/15/5909.long, December 19, 2015.

/i/ or /ɪ/: Perception to Production

Nice piece of research by Lee and Lyster (Lee and Lyster, 2015 - Full citation below) demonstrating the impact of feedback on "instructed" L2 speech perception. (Hat tip to Michael Burri for pointing me at it!) In a simulated-classroom setting, native Korean language students significantly improved their ability to perceive the distinction between /i/ and /I/ in English. The full article is worth the read. Just a couple of caveats before we talk about what that might mean for teaching in the classroom:

• The title is a bit deceptive, as the authors note: " . . . our use of simulated classrooms in this study begs the question as to whether such intense instruction would be feasible in a regular classroom curriculum and whether the results would be similar."
• The tasks are, indeed,  excellent and well controlled--but give almost any competent pronunciation teacher about 6+ hours of classroom time with a homogenous group to work on just that single contrast and see what happens. (I may try to do that, in fact!) 

That does not diminish the importance of the study. The point is that with focused instruction, perception of vowel contrast can be radically improved--and by implication, production also. The question is, how can we begin to approximate that effect in the classroom? (If you are a regular reader of the blog, I'm sure you can see what is coming!)

Photo credit: EHIEP, v4.0 logo
Anna Shaw

Dealing with that /i/-/I/ distinction in North American English (as opposed to British or Australian) is one of the most straight-forward and effective features of the EHIEP (Essential, haptic-integrated English Pronunciation) system. Rather than taking about 5 hours to set things up (and in Lee and Lyster, 2015 there is no long-term follow up on the effect of the study), the EHIEP method, were it to focus only on that contrastive pair, would in toto run less than 1 hour initially and then be integrated into general classroom instruction from there on. 

Without going into all the details here (detailed in AHEPS v3.0 and coming this fall, v4.0), check out the free demos: lax/rough vowels, tense/double vowels and/or our 2012 conference write up, citation below), the procedure is basically:

• Introduce the EHIEP lax and tense vowel pedagogical movement patterns, either with the video (about 15 minutes each) or do it in person.
• Practice just those two vowels in word lists and in context in class: about 30 minutes
• Begin providing both modelling and corrective, in context feedback in class regularly.
• Watch how the contrast shows up in student spontaneous production

I realize that sounds far too simple and obvious to be effective. Great classroom techniques are often like that! We now have over a decade of experience using that basic procedure. Given Lee and Lyster (2015), a classroom-based study using the EHIEP framework, and integrating some of those tasks, especially the Bingo and card sort techniques, seems very possible. Before we get to that, try it yourself and let us know. 

Full citations:

Acton, W., Baker, A., Burri, M., Teaman, B. (2013). Preliminaries to haptic-integrated pronunciation instruction. In J. Levis, K. LeVelle (Eds.). Proceedings of the 4th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference,Aug. 2012. (pp. 234-244). Ames, IA: Iowa State University.

Lee, A. H., & Lyster, R. (2015). The effects of corrective feedback on instructed L2 speech perception. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 38. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0272263115000194.

20 contexts for haptic pronunciation teaching

I am often asked in what contexts or classrooms haptic pronunciation teaching works. Assuming enthusiastic, full-body buy-in by the instructor and student, here is a new list of contexts and

Credit: Anna Shaw

classrooms where features of the AHEPS - haptic pronunciation system are being or have been used so far.

Keep in touch!

(info@actonhaptic.com)

Haptic solutions: [i] versus [I] - Not even close to a close vowel!

Clip art: Clker

Got any students who have difficulty making or hearing the distinction between [i] and [I] or [u] and [U]? In articulatory and perceptual terms, those two pairs of vowels are problematic for learners from many different L1s. Phonetic descriptions refer to [i] and [u] as close vowels; the other two are said to be done with the tongue "not so close" to the roof of the mouth.

Advice to learners on how to produce the differences ranges from "Smile more on [i]" or "Round your lips more on [u]," to "Tense your jaw more on one," etc. Vowel charts typically have them located very close together visually, often in the same high-front or high-back box. (Why the IPA chart or something close to it is used for learners has always been a mystery to me. Probably something to do with the linguists who set it up?) As explored in several earlier blogposts, even the choice of the left to right (front to back) lay out of the vowel chart is apparently arbitrary--and from a phonaesthetic perspective, probably backwards. (EHIEP does go right-to-left, in fact.)

The importance of spatial positioning in anchoring conceptual and emotional "closeness" has just been highlighted in a new study by Maglio at the university of Toronto-Scarborough and colleagues, briefly and informally summarized by our friends at ScienceDaily.com: " . . . something that feels close in one way, such as physical distance, will also feel close in time, probability, and social similarity." 

In the case of haptic vowel positioning, the opposite should apply; those perceived as more haptically dissimilar should be easier to distinguish and produce. In the EHIEP system, those pairs of vowels are experientially "distanced" by: 

1. Being visually distinct: [i] is represented as [iy]; [I], as [I]

2. Pedagogical movement patterns that are very different. On [iy] the left hand had brushes by the right hand (positioned at 1 o'clock in the visual field) and continues on to just above the middle of the forehead at the hair line. On [I], the left hand lightly taps the right hand, positioned at 2 o'clock. 

3. The typical student reaction to learning the haptic distinctions between close and non-close vowels  involved being something like "Those vowels are really not that close at all!" Exactly. 

See demonstrations of double smooth (tense vowel + off-glide) and single rough vowels (simple lax or tense vowel) there on Vimeo.com or on the AH-EPS website. If a demo is password-accessible only by the time you go to look at it, email info@actonhaptic.com for temporary access.

Stay close; keep in touch. 

New Colour Vowel Clock for haptic pronunciation teaching!

We have just revised the AH-EPS v2.0 vowel clock. I say "we" because Karen redesigned the clock to include all of the key words and symbols. I added a new colour overlay to her design that is, I think, a little more compatible with the general phonaesthetic qualities of the visual field. (See earlier post related to the colour issue with the popular Color Vowel Chart.) Kudos to Karen. Will have various v3.0 sizes available on website, too.

Keep in touch!

Announcing new AH-EPS v2.0 packages and Demonstration videos!

Along with release of v2.0 of Acton Haptic English Pronunciation System will be a new set of 4, 2-module packages: Vowels and word stress, rhythm and linking, intonation and expressiveness, and fluency and integration. Any one of those packages can be used as a set. Each also includes some basic introductory material to AH-EPS for students as well. 

Also for a limited time, links to Vimeo-streaming demonstrations of the haptic pedagogical movement patterns (PMPs--See the Teaman and Acton paper) are available, included below. Each video will give you an idea of the basic haptic (movement + touch) gesture that is used in presenting, practice and correcting pronunciation in that module.  (If you cannot access Vimeo, email actonhaptic@gmail.com for a demonstration DVD or further information.)

NOTE: Some of the demo links below are now password protected but will be available shortly as part of AH-EPS v2.0, either on the AH-EPS DVDs or as streaming off Vimeo.com. If you would like to view some of the demos, please email me at actonhpatic@gmail.com for a temporary password!

Credit: AMPISys, Inc. 

A module typically includes instructional and student materials, plus a set of videos, including:

(a) A warm up DEMONSTRATION

(b) Demonstration of new PMP

(c) Review of PMP from previous module(s)

(d) Training in new PMP

(e) Practice of new PMP

(f) Practice of new PMP in conversational dialogues

Package 1. Vowels and word stress
(Module 2) Short vowels (lax vowels) DEMONSTRATION
(Module 3) Long vowels (tense vowels, and tense vowels + off glides) DEMONSTRATION

Package 2. Rhythm, phrasal stress and linking 
(Module 4) Syllable grouping DEMONSTRATION
(Module 6) Rhythm training and linking DEMONSTRATION (rhythm training only)

Package 3. Intonation and expressiveness
(Module 5) Basic Intonation DEMONSTRATION
(Module 8) Expressiveness (discourse intonation) DEMONSTRATION

Package 4. Fluency and integration
(Module 7) Conversational fluency DEMONSTRATION
(Module 9) Integrating pronunciation change DEMONSTRATION

Each package includes:
Instructor materials: Complete Instructor's Guide download and Vimeo video streaming of 2 modules (hardcopy and DVDs available)

 Student Workbook materials from 2 modules: Workbook download and Vimeo video streaming of 2 modules (hardcopy and DVDs available)

Cost will be about $35 for download/streaming version, or $90 plus shipping for the hardcopy/DVD version.

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Cost of other packages will range from $50 (consonants) to $400 (including student practice DVD/videos for a class of 12).

In addition to complete AH-EPS packages of Videos and materials (in download or streaming versions), the 2-module packages will be available later this month.

Keep in touch!

Effortless learning of the iPA vowel "matrix" of English?

Image: Wikipedia

Could be, according to 2011 research by Watanabe at ATR Laboratories in Kyoto and colleagues at Boston University, as summarized by Science Daily--using fMRI technology in the form of neurofeedback tied to carefully scaffolded visual images. Mirroring what appears to go on in real time, in the experiment it was evident that " . . . pictures gradually build up inside a person's brain, appearing first as lines, edges, shapes, colors and motion in early visual areas. The brain then fills in greater detail to make a red ball appear as a red ball, for example."

This is an intriguing idea, something of a "bellwether" of things to come in the field, using fMRI-based technology joined with multiple-modality features to facilitate acquisition of components of complex behavioral patterns. The application of that approach to articulatory training alone, assembling a sound, in effect, one parameter at a time, just the way it is done by expert practitioners--should be relatively straightforward.

Clip art: Clker

The EHIEP vowel matrix resembles the standard IPA matrix on the right, except that it is positioned in mirror image and includes only the vowels of English. In training learners to work within it, we do a strikingly similar build up to that identified in the study, lines < edges < shapes < motion (which is different for each vowel.) Each quadrant is then given a colour that corresponds to something of the phonaesthetic quality of the vowels positioned there. Once the "matrix" is kinaesthetically presented and practiced, it is then gradually, haptically anchored as the vowels are presented and practiced using distinct pedagogical movement patterns terminating in some form of "Guy or Girl touch" for each as the sound is articulated.

Out of the box? Not for long, my friends!

A touch of gender in (haptically anchoring) English vowels

Image: Wikipedia

Image: Wikipedia

Grammatical gender is a prominent feature in many romance and germanic languages. In some cases there is a correlation between it and masculine or feminine attributes but it is as often as not just random. 2011 research by Slepian, Weisbuch of the University of Denver, Rule of the University of Toronto, and Ambady of Tufts University, summarized by Science Daily, ends in this "touching" conclusion: "We were really surprised . . . that the feeling of handling something hard or soft can influence how you visually perceive a face . . . that knowledge about social categories, such as gender, is like other kinds of knowledge -- it's partly carried in the body."

Ya think? Subjects basically held something tough or "tender" as they were asked to make judgements on the gender of people in pictures, and, not surprisingly the texture of the object affected their "gender detector," or something to that effect. As noted in earlier posts, in the EHIEP system, each vowel type as it is articulated is designed to be accompanied by a distinct sign-like touch that has very distinct texture. (See also earlier posts on the neurophysiological correlates of textural metaphors.) Turns out we may have unwittingly created masculine and feminine vowel anchors! No wonder they work so well!

• When marking/anchoring stress in words or phrases, (a) use rough GUY-touch for lax vowels in isolation or before voiceless consonants, (b) use tender/static GIRL-touch for tense vowels in isolation or in secondary stressed positon in words or phrases, (c) use gouging/dynamic GUY-touch for diphthongs and tense vowels + off-glide, or (d) use tender/dynamic GIRL-touch for lax vowels in stressed syllables before voiced consonants.  
• When marking/anchoring  the prominent syllable in a tone or intonation group, use smooth/gentle/flowing GIRL-touch!
• When marking/anchoring syllables in groups, use gentle tapping GIRL-touch!

The color and felt sense of English vowels

The "Color Vowel Chart," apparently based on Finger (1985), is a clever mnemonic framework for giving students a memorable key-word and color for vowel sounds. Those CVC color choices are based on the vowel in the color word, etc.

The matrix below, by contrast, shows the EHIEP color schema, based on a number of studies of vowel phonaesthetic qualities, or felt sense, and related neurophysiological properties of the visual field. (See several earlier posts.) In essence, front and higher vowels are lighter; lower and back vowels are darker. The EHIEP vowels are displayed as a mirror image of the standard IPA vowel chart (which the Color Vowel Chart represents in standard format.)

Notice some of the interesting correspondences/contrasts between the two systems:
(a) The colors green and black are in the same positions,
(b) The "central" vowels are very similar in character, although not similarly aligned, and
(c) The diphthongs have some parallels. In CVC, "oy" is turquoise; in EHIEP it is blue to white. In CVC, "aw" is brown; in EHIEP, brown to green. In CVC, "ay" is white; in EHIEP, brown to white.
(d) In both CVC and EHIEP high vowels are lighter than low vowels.
(e) The CVC vowel color for "e" (red) is close to the EHIEP color (mid-front) of orange.
(f) The CVC vowel in "silver" would be white in EHIEP.
(g) The CVC for "blue" would be green or green to purple in EHIEP.

Light Green	Soft Yellow	Bright Yellow
Dark Green	Gray	Orange
Dark Blue	Purple	Red

For what it is, the CVC works well, but just imagine the impact were it to be a bit more neuro-physiologically tuned in and haptically anchored. Why . . . it'd be "off the charts!"

Teaching pronunciation by the numbers

At a recent workshop I was asked why we use vowel numbers. My standard response (which includes all of the vowels of North American English): "Using or employing vowel numbers for haptic teaching and correcting pronunciation is not just a good idea, it is probably the only way!"

Clip art: Clker

In order,  the vowels there are: 11w+2, 8, 4+8y+2,  6w+12, 7+12, 8, 5+2, 1y+2, 5, 8+4+2, 12+12+1y+3y+12, 2, 6, 7, 12, 10, 6y+1y+12,  2,  2,  6+12+1y+1y, 1y, 9w+1y, 3y! I began using that system when I was a student of Joan Morley back in the 70's at the University of Michigan (Here is the link to her great student text, Improving Spoken English, still one of the best ever written.)

The benefits are several, including being able to quickly make sure that the learner gets the right vowel noted, without having to fish around in class verbally for the right vowel quality--which may not happen anyway. Once the vowel felt sense and number and key word are anchored effectively, ability to change and recall are enhanced significantly.  If you are relatively "dys-haptic" in your work, it probably doesn't make much difference how you correct vowels . . . but your days are numbered!

Your vowels are within you . . .

Clip art: 

Clker

In many religious and meditative traditions, vowels have distinct character, quality and (often incredible) impact. In spoken English vowels do retain some subtle phonaesthetic qualities, as noted in earlier posts, but nothing comparable to those that form the basis of the great chakras and chants. (Not even backward build up drill or Jazz Chants) This video provides a nice introduction to the central role of vowels in that context. (Here is a bit more "analytic" and almost entertaining presentation of some of the same concepts.)

 When we work with the concept of the "felt sense" of a sound, we are working somewhere near the other end of the intensity continuum from the settings of those vowels, but a rich experience of resonance and the momentary, conscious situating of the "feeling" of a vowel someplace in the body is essentially the same goal. Here is one case where today's (over)emphasis (in my humble opinion) on metacognition in pronunciation teaching may just be on the right track. Got a vowel problem? Try meditating on it.

The felt sense of a new or "replacement" vowel: Y-buzz and beyond

Clip art: 

Clker

The first phase of EHIEP training is involved with haptically anchoring the vowels of English. Even if the learner "has" a vowel already in his or her repertoire, it is essential that a new and more focused, conscious awareness of the somatic qualities of the vowel be established to facilitate later change and monitoring of spontaneous speaking.

That concept is based on Lessac's notion of the "Y-buzz" sensation. Here is a 2007 study by Barrichelo and Behlau that looked at the perceptual salience of that highly resonant sound/sensation, as opposed to "normal" production by subjects of the acoustically similar [i] sound (as in the word, "me,' for example.) The unique, therapeutically created Y-buzz vowel felt sense is the model for our work. The learner's ability to produce the Y-buzz is almost entirely body-based, not auditory. In that way, the learner can produce it without having to "go through" the possibly "defective" [i] vowel in his or her current interlanguage phonology. (See earlier post on "changing the channel.")

Need to put a little more "buzz" in your teaching?