Flicking off unstressed (and less stressed) vowels in English!

Some vowels just get no respect (or much attention in teaching!)--but they should! 

If you are in Des Moines, Washington this Saturday, come to the 2022 WAESOL conference for our workshop, "Stressing and teaching unstressed and secondarily-stressed vowels in English." This is something of an update and reprise of a workshop I did in 2014. Since then the relevance of working with "backgrounded" vowels has become much more evident in the field, e.g., Szigetvár (2021).

There are many occasions when having students work on an unstressed vowel briefly, such as the 'e' in the word 'the' as in the noun phrase, 'in the circus.' Although for some, just being able to hear the vowel quality in that vowel is sufficient for their purposes--many can almost immediately begin using it in speaking. For others, especially those who are highly "auditory-kinesthetic" (such as myself) experience actually producing the sound may be enormously helpful if not essential. 

The "flicking off" refers to the near-haptic, dismissal-like gesture used in anchoring unstressed vowels, something of quick thumb "flick" in the direction of the vowel in a version of the IPA chart used in the KINETIK Method. It is termed "near-haptic" in that the thumb does not actually touch the other hand, as is case in all the usual "Movement, tone and touch techniques" (MT3s) in the KINETIK method. 

If you can't join us, the video will be available on the other side. 

Keep in touch!

Bill

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.