Up standing (haptic) pronunciation teaching!

Early on we realized that at least for orientation and training where the primary goal of instruction is improved oral production of English, having adult or young adult students standing up for haptic pronunciation work is at least better, probably essential in most cases. If the focus is vocabulary development or when working with children, explicit training in the pedagogical movement patterns may not be critical. (See earlier posts on "kinesthetic/kinaesthetic listening," for example.)

Once the pedagogical movement patterns are introduced, whether using the AH-EPS haptic videos or done by the instructor "in person," using them for subsequent modelling, feedback and correction can be very effective.

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A new study by Knight and Baer of Washington University,  as reported in Science Daily,* adds support to such "up standing" practice. In essence, during a problem solving task, teams of subjects were assigned to teams such that they, " . . . worked in rooms that either had chairs arranged around a table or with no chairs at all." Not surprisingly--from our perspective at least-- " . . . team members were less protective of their ideas; this reduced territoriality and led to more information sharing . . . (they) also seemed more efficient and purposeful."

A good opportunity to experience the "vertical" side of haptic pronunciation teaching, of course, would be the upcoming August workshop!

*I have had several inquires as to why I cite Science Daily summaries, rather than the research publication itself. Three reasons: First, many of the studies are inaccessible if you are not at an institution that subscribes to the journal. I will not ask a reader to simply trust my interpretation of research at face value without being able to get to it independently. Second, many newly published articles cost at least the equivalent of 7 Starbucks Vente Carmel Frappuccinos--where I draw the line. Third, the SD summaries are not always deadly accurate but are generally very readable, often entertaining and understandable to the non-technical reader. As always, Science Daily, caveat emptor!

9 ways to add more confidence to your pronunciation teaching!

There have been several earlier posts focusing from different perspectives on the role of confidence in pronunciation learning and teaching. Most of the research cited involved some type of physical action or physical response that functioned to make the speaker immediately more confident. You may start off with something of a gender gap, but here are some possibilities:

• You can create "Flow-ency" using one of the AH-EPS techniques, the Rhythm Fight Club.
• You can have learners strike Amy Cuddy-like poses or just move more confidently before they start speaking.
• You can make sure that learners are well-connected to their network.
• You can do some more work on basic phonemes  . . . 

  

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  Library of Congress

• Learners can lower the pitch of their voices.
• You can switch to being more of a coach than a teacher.
• You can get learners to be more physical or "listen to that voice in their heads."
• Learners can go to a proposed workshop at TESOL 2015 if they are Asian female professionals with accents.
• You can, of course, just get learners to feel better about themselves . . . 

Any other suggestions to add to the list?

Visual "Socailization" and visual pronunciation teaching methods

In a recent interview, Robert Thomson, chief executive officer of News Corp, commented on the far reaching impact of "visual socialization" on today's media and news organizations. One observation was that we are only beginning to understand the new,  overwhelming dominance of visual learning, what that means to both social connectedness and education. To get a feel for what visual connectedness and "Socail media" may be like, watch this "Socail Cave" video by Tiazzoldi or even check it out on Pinerest.

Photo credit: Moses Lam

Well . . . yes, there may be a bit of  random "dys-graphia" involved there, but the two pieces together do underscore Thomson's point, the all consuming influence of visual media. I may just adopt that acronym: SOCAIL? (So, Over-the-top  visual-Cognitive pronunciation teaching really Ain't It, Lads?) 

It is easy to underestimate the impact on our work. There are several methods or companies that appear to be more explicitly visual, such as "EyeSpeakEnglish.com." How well the new "visually socialized" generations of learners (VSLs) can learn pronunciation, can connect up sound and movement to their primary learning modality, visual imagery, is, of course, the question. In general, research and practice up to this point suggests that visual dominance simply overrides not only auditory but tactile as well. (See--literally--dozens of previous blog posts here on that topic!) 

My guess is that many highly visual pronunciation teaching methods (that do not involve strong compensatory auditory and movement components by design) are anachronisms, at best, created before the the emergence of new media and VSLs, overcompensating for earlier attraction of "colourful" or engaging visual images on those who had not experienced them previously. 

The antidote? (And I could provide anecdotes ad infinitum, of course.) Haptic. Keep in touch. 

Why use of gesture often does not work in pronunciation teaching--and when it does!

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One of the strengths of haptic pronunciation instruction is that the use of touch on stressed syllables, accompanying gesture, makes kinaesthetic learning more systematic and effective. For a number of reasons, simply kinaesthetic or gesture-based techniques that do not attend to touch may or may not work in any classroom.

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A. Part of the problem is the natural selection involved in those who love teaching pronunciation; part of the problem, what we use gesture for or what it is synchronized with. Many "natural" pronunciation teachers are what I'd call "hyper-gesticulators," highly expressive themselves and, in part because of their ability to connect verbally and nonverbally with students, they are able to get students to do some pretty strange out-of-the-box stuff. They can be very successful in their classroom, themselves, but their method often may not transfer all that well to "newbees" and the less "gesticulate." (I am presently putting together a book proposal that will examine in depth strongly paralinguistic and gesture-based methods of several like-minded, clinical practitioners.)

B. And the fact that in English, as in most languages in varying ways, gesture and physical movement can serve as a motivator or "exuberator." In other words, physical action, by itself, helps motivate learners and loosen them up to instruction, etc. (Some instructors tend to lean of cheerleading to a fault in motivating students.) Hence the problem for systematic work w/gesture: what can motivate on the one hand (no pun intended there!) can, on the other hand, seriously undermine focus and attention to specific sound-movement targets in instruction.

C. And more. There is a great deal of research on the neurophysiological basis and clinical application of  "emotional control." See, for example, this summary from the website Psychologyinaction.org.  The bottom line, for our work, is that both lack of emotional and physical engagement--as well as uncontrolled, over-exuberance physically and emotionally--can be about equally counterproductive. Our experience in the classroom in 4 years of field testing certainly confirms that. Often a very outgoing, verbal and physically expressive learner may still have substantial difficulty both in mirroring the pedagogical movement patterns and achieving satisfactory improvement in pronunciation or accent.

D. In addition, one of the reasons for the sometimes inconsistent results in using gesture in teaching in general, especially for the more eidetic-visual learner or instructor (those with near photographic memories), is that if the position of the gesture varies even slightly upon repeated application, it can be very frustrating for them, nearly impossible to interpret to respond to.

The solution, or at least one haptic pronunciation teaching approach (EHIEP/AH-EPS), is to carefully control or manage movement and gesture work so that even the most reticent will join in and the emotionally overreactive will be throttled back, at least temporarily. (See also a new research summary by ScienceDaily of work by McGlone of Liverpool John Moores University in England and colleagues on the connection of "soft touch" to emotion.) How can you do that?

For a (moderately) good time, one that involves extensive use of touch as well as gesture, go to www.actonhaptic.com!

New pronunciation teaching videos by Adrian Underhill!

Credit: Youtube.com

Macmillan has just released the first of Adrian Underhill's new pronunciation teaching video series. Here is the announcement from his blog, AdrianPronChart.wordpress.com. Adrian has always been one very tuned in to the visual/physical side of pronunciation teaching. His Pronunciation Chart is excellent. Aspects of that framework were instrumental in the design of the Essential Haptic-integrated English Pronunciation (EHIEP) framework.

The complete video series, planned to be 35, 3-minute videos should be a good complement to the Acton Haptic English Pronunciation System (AH-EPS) haptic video program. Knowing Underhill, it will, I'm sure, provide a thorough and entertaining presentation for both teachers and learners. (Once a little more of it is available, I'll review it in depth and link it to our work.)

What he typically does well is provide understanding of key elements of (British) pronunciation for learners and instructors, a wide range of applicable techniques--especially kinaesthetic--and practice opportunities/guidelines following from that. If that is what you are looking for, you probably cannot find a better video-based source. (If you are still more dead-tree-bound, Gilbert's work is my recommendation as a good place to begin.)

By contrast, for a number of reasons, AH-EPS:

• Does not do as much explicit explanation and metacognitive management
• Is haptic-based rather than kinaesthetic
• Presents a more restricted set of formal features to work with
• Uses a vowel chart that is the mirror image of the AdrianPronChart
• Focuses on doing some limited teaching for the instructor, in class
• Sets up impromptu, spontaneous modelling and correction of pronunciation
• Is designed primarily for instructors with little or no background in pronunciation teaching

A most welcome addition. Check it out.

(Haptic) pair-a-linguistic pronunciation teaching

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Saw a recent discussion thread that (incorrectly) identified gesture as a paralinguistic feature of speech. That term, paralanguage, typically refers to pitch, loudness, rate and fluency. Gesture or body movement may be synchronized with speech in a way that it can reflect some aspect of paralanguage, as in when arm gesticulating is coordinated with the stress or rhythm pattern, such that a baton-like gesture comes down on key points for emphasis in a lecture, etc.

Actually, I like that idea, combing or pairing (haptic-anchored) gesture with paralanguage. In EHIEP work we do something of that with pitch, rate and fluency, using special gestures terminating in touch, what we refer to as pedagogical movement patterns (PMPs), that function to control those three features of speech in various ways (typically done in either modelling or error correction or expressive oral reading of fixed texts). To see a demonstration of each go to the Demo page on the AH-EPS website:

pitch - the Expressiveness PMP
rate - the Rhythm Fight Club PMP
fluency - the Tai Chi Fluency PMP

We have yet to figure out an effective PMP for loudness. If you can think of one . . . give us a shout!

Keep in touch.

NEW! AHEPS v2.0 Haptic Pronunciation Training videos available for download!

For the first time, individual AHEPS haptic training videos are now downloadable. Each of the AHEPS modules focuses on one techniques, what we term pedagogical movement patterns (PMPs). Each module involves basically 6 procedures: (a) a warm up, (b) review of previous module, (c) a demonstration of the PMP/technique, (d) a 5-minute training video, (e) a 2-minute practice video, and a short conversation to practice with. 

If you'd like to work on just a specific PMP, all you need to do is go the the New AHEPS training videos page, check the (free) demonstration video, look over the description page for that PMP, and then download training video:

Acton Haptic English
Pronunciation System
(AHEPS)

• Matrix (use of gesture in the visual field) training 
• Warm up training 
• Single (Rough/short) vowels training  
• Double (Smooth/long) vowels training    
• Syllable Butterfly training
• Basic Intonation training
• Advanced Intonation training
• Tai Chi Fluency training
• Rhythm Fight Club training
• Baton Speaking Integration training

Training videos for consonants will be added gradually over the next three months. 

v3.0 (Fall 2014 or Spring 2015) will probably be both download and subscription-based. 

Gesture to teach L2 vocabulary (and pronunciation) by!

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Required reading: New, 2014 article by Macedonia (University of Linz) and Klimesch (University of Salzburg), published in Mind, Brain and Education 8 (2): 74-86, entitled, "Long-term Effects of Gestures on Memory for Foreign Language Words Trained in the Classroom." In essence what the study revealed (or confirmed) was--as the title declares--that systematic use of gesture, especially dramatic and iconic gesture, enhanced long term memory for vocabulary. The comprehensive literature review on the function of gesture in learning and memory alone makes the piece worth reading.

Although from the description of the treatment in the experiment it is not entirely clear just how many of the gestures involved touch, those that were used were reported to be generally dramatic and/or iconic (representing an object by tracing its shape in the air). Words learned with accompanying gesture were remembered better, even 4 months out in the follow up.

And the fascinating aspect of that research for out haptic work is that the terms were learned generally in short phrases or as single words in isolation, out of any context such as a story, conversation or other narrative. Our upcoming workshop at TESL Canada this weekend in Regina focuses on just that: haptic (gesture +touch) anchoring of relatively out of context terms taken from the Academic Word List. Good to have a little more empirical evidence for the efficacy of gestural anchoring with us as we do!

Keep in touch!

Vancouver Haptic Pronunciation Teaching Seminar - Cancelled!

Photo credit: 604now.com

We had planned on holding a 5-day, 40-hour, Haptic Pronunciation Teaching Seminar in Vancouver, August 4th through 8th, 2014. The plan now is to offer it again, next year at about the same time and place. (Announcement will be made later this fall!)
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The description:

By the end of the seminar, participants will be fully trained in haptic pronunciation teaching and certified to conduct teacher training using the Essential Haptic-integrated English Pronunciation System (EHIEP) and Acton Haptic English Pronunciation System (AH-EPS), the haptic video system. The venue will be the Sandman Hotel, Langley, BC, just east of Vancouver. (Hotel rates, about $130 CAD daily.)

Cost per participant: $2000 (includes breakfasts and materials.) Group discounts available.

The general structure will be:

Monday a.m. - Preliminaries and Research review
Monday p.m. - Visual field management and haptic warm ups
Tuesday a.m. - Haptic phonetics
Tuesday p.m. - English vowels and words stress schema
Wednesday a.m. - Rhythm
Wednesday p.m. - Pitch and fluency
Wednesday evening - Public seminar
Thursday a.m. - Basic Intonation
Thursday p.m. - Discourse intonation
Friday a.m. - English consonants
Friday p.m. - Teacher training protocols
Friday evening - Party 

Minimum number of participants: 12; maximum, 24
We will be accepting applications until June 1st. $500 deposit due by June 15th. It the training seminar is not fully enrolled by June 15th, deposits will be returned.

If you are interested in attending, please contact us at info@actonhaptic.com. The training seminar is open to all ESL/EFL instructors who have at least two years teaching experience and recognized formal training in ESL/EFL teaching methodology. Preliminary SKYPE interview and professional references may be required.

Post-method Pronunciation Teaching and Research: Myths and (Haptic) Method

To understand something of the conundrum faced by teachers new to pronunciation work today, you probably need to begin with Kumaravadevilu's (2003) initial characterization of the "Post-method" era, or, even better, Kumaravadevilu (2007). That, along with a great new book just out, Pronunciation Myths, edited by Grant and Brinton, provides a good perspective on the question. 

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In essence, the first (a) builds a compelling case for the idea that no one method can possibly work in all contexts and (b) provides a set of 10 strategies for, in essence, building your own personal classroom teaching method--while at the same time warning that an inflexible "method" is to be avoided at all costs. In part that is because the only way you can test a method is to try it yourself, in your classroom. And also you must--at least temporarily--believe the "testimonies" of those who use it, while you test it. 

The second, "Myths," while thoroughly dispensing with several common misconceptions (and a few "straw men") about pronunciation teaching, provides a very useful review of the range of research-tested techniques that have, in fact, been shown to be effective. (I count 40 or 50 discrete techniques or variants in all.) 

Add to those two the current theoretical perspective that pronunciation must to the extent possible be integrated into general instruction and you have the post-method conundrum: How do I personally assemble the techniques that can be integrated and will work in my (unique) classroom? (Murphy's chapter in "Myths" addresses that issue quite well in fact.) 

What we refer to as "Haptic-integrated pronunciation teaching" is, in fact, a method based on the use of a wide range of well-established and proven techniques. (All reported in "Myths!") What makes it different is just that (a) the techniques are generally anchored (or reinforced) using movement and touch--based on multiple "haptic" studies in other disciplines, and (b) the method focuses principally on modelling, feedback and correction--and to some extent integration into spontaneous speech. Those are dimensions of pronunciation teaching that have been studied extensively in "the lab" but not in the classroom, especially in terms of long term improvement. 

And to finish up the post-modern stew: EHIEP (Essential Haptic-integrated English Pronunciation)  work is essentially experiential, both learning with it and about it. The best evidence that we have now that the method, itself, "works" are about a decade of reports from students in the classroom and related research from a dozen other disciplines. The same is the case with all methods, of course. 

For a number reasons, it is exceedingly difficult to test a method, among them the fact that no matter what the results, in today's "hyper-localized" theoretical view of methodology,  the nature of the learner population may radically limit generalizability. Few if any classroom studies or action research in pronunciation teaching provide much in the way of detail as to how the techniques or treatments were actually conducted or relate to the other instruction or ongoing experiences that students/subjects were involved in at the time of the study.  

Theoretically, one should, of course, be able to generalize from the local. (That is, after all the raison d’etre for the dominance of qualitative research in the field currently.) In practice, research is today still so thoroughly “critical-agenda-driven” that general applicability of methodology cannot be of interest. In time, in depth studies of one teacher's method will again be in fashion and doctoral dissertations. (I'm working on a book proposal that will do something like that.) 

For the time being . . . Just do it!

What teachers must know about pronunciation teaching!

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Found an interesting 2012 study by Wahid and Sulong entitled, "The Gap Between Research and Practice in the Teaching of English Pronunciation: Insights from Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices." Their conclusion is that teachers need to know more and researchers need to be better at talking to them. Amen. One interesting finding was that the teachers in that study identified their "pronunciation" work as follows. (Frequency of teaching activity chart from page 136):

Repeating a sound after the teacher (as in error correction) - 23; Reading aloud - 22; Dictionary work - 10; Oral drills e.g. tongue twisters - 9; Choral reading - 3; Games - 2; Role-play - 2.

Now, granted, that may be a bit "extreme," in that today, at least among those teachers more exposed to contemporary methodology we would expect a wider range of activities and explicit pronunciation instruction (e.g., Baker, 2012.) 

Recently, on a professional discussion board of pronunciation researchers, the question came up as to exactly WHAT teachers should know. (Kudos to Levis of Iowa State University who got the original discussion going.) I later gave my grad students that list and asked them to order and edit it some. Here is basically what they came up with.  (Note the obvious bias on that first item on the list!) 

• Pronunciation work should be embodied in movement as much as possible.
• Spoken language is different from written language. 
• Pronunciation actually does matter.
• There is always time to include pronunciation. 
• All well-trained teachers can teach pronunciation effectively. 
• Any thoughtful pronunciation work is better than none. 
• Suprasegmentals are pronunciation. 
• There must be a working familiarity with segmental and suprasegmental features of speech. 
• Teachers must learn how to put more emphasis on suprasegmentals. 
• Teachers must understand how to systematically integrate pronunciation into language teaching. 
• Pronunciation can be included in or integrated in classes for all language skills.
• Pronunciation is closely connected to receptive skills and should be taught that way. 
• Some pronunciation issues should be made explicit while others can be left implicit. 
• Student needs should drive pronunciation rather than pre-selected targets. 
• Teachers must listen to and identify L2 speech problems, separating pronunciation from other elements of spoken language.
• Pronunciation work does not disrespect a learner’s L1, home culture or identity.
• Thought groups/tone units are the basis of all prosody work.
• Vocabulary should always be taught with elements of pronunciation, such as the stress pattern. 
• The word is the basic conceptual unit for pronunciation.
• Awareness of vowel duration and the alternation of long and short syllables is essential. 
• Stress-timed rhythm and syllable-timed rhythm may both be appropriate depending on the context. 
• Some errors are more important than others. 
• There must be practice in marking errors and classifying them according to importance. 
• Teachers must know how to provide useful feedback. 
• Teachers must understand how to help learners develop automaticity.
• Teachers must know how to teach compensatory strategies such as oral spelling.

Interesting list. What do you know . . .

Communicating with touch in (haptic) Pronunciation Teaching

In answer to the question: "What does touch add to pronunciation teaching?", the 2010 (free pdf downloadable) piece "From active touch to tactile communication - what's tactile cognition got to do with it?" by Nicholas of Haukeland University, Norway, is a good place to begin. It certainly was for me. (It has been cited in earlier blogposts.) 

Those who work with the deaf-blind have, understandably, a different, more informed perspective as to the nature of what Nicholas refers to as "tactile communication." Of particular interest to us is the concept of "active touch":

"Active touch, also described as haptics, is when the individual deliberately chooses his or her actions in the exploration and manipulation of an object. Active touch plays a regular and frequent role in our everyday life . . . It is only our sense of touch that enables us to modify and manipulate the world around us (McLaughlin, Hespanha, & Sukhatme, 2002)."

Image: Socialstyrelsen

For the deaf-blind the links between tactile cognition and emotion and interpersonal communication are, in a very real sense, primary. For the sighted and hearing, in varying degrees, tactile modality is a complement to visual-auditory-kinaesthetic processing--although the inner-connectivity and overlap between locations in the brain for tactile processing and the other senses is extensive. 

What Nicholas' brief essay demonstrates, however, is both the power and potential of touch in learning and communicating. We have known from the outset in haptic pronunciation teaching that the methodology itself, of using haptic anchoring on words and phrases to be remembered, along with the regular "full-body" warm ups, generates not only quality attention and engagement, but also a rich, interpersonal "dialogue" about pronunciation change.  In other words, not only does the learner use touch to learn more efficiently, but the ongoing, generally impromptu "conversations" with instructor and fellow students, signalling unobtrusively with gesture to model or correct pronunciation, should be both interpersonally and emotionally rewarding as well.  

Communicating together in that manner about pronunciation, or form in this case, becomes not only nonthreatening and non-disruptive of language learning--it becomes a rich source of collaborative, professional, focused exploration and engagement--and even fun. 

Required reading for "Hapticians" and the otherwise out-of-touch! 

Basics of Haptic Pronunciation Teaching

In addition to the v3.0 Instructors' Guide, here is your recommended reading list!

Acton, W., Baker, A., Burri, M., and 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

Teaman, B. and Acton, W. (2013). Haptic (movement and touch for better) pronunciation. In N. Sonda & A. Krause (Eds.), JALT 2012 Conference Proceedings (pp.402-409). Tokyo: JALT. Umeå universitet. (2012, October 26).

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2014/09/more-than-gesture-when-to-use-gesture.html
http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2014/03/anchoring-with-touch-in-haptic.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2014/03/deep-learning-giving-haptic.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2014/02/pre-and-post-haptic-englsh.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2014/01/hapic-teachable-moments-in.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/12/haptic-pronunciation-teaching-as.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/12/haptic-pronunciation-teaching-as_17.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/12/why-out-of-body-haptic-pronunciation.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/11/giving-aural-comprehension-hand-in.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/11/when-is-ah-eps-haptic-pronunciation.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/11/when-is-ehiep-haptic-pronunciation.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/11/pay-attention-to-pronunciation.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/11/pronunciation-anxiety-dont-worry-be.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/11/minding-your-ps-and-qs-pronunciation.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/10/aha-change-uptake-versus-practice-of.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/10/hmm-correcting-english-pronunciation.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/10/guidelines-for-using-haptic-gesture-in.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/10/use-of-haptic-gesture-in-pronunciation.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/10/the-touch-ture-of-haptic-pronunciation_3.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/07/dealing-with-problem-pronunciation.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/05/in-search-of-touch-for-pronunciation.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/05/paying-attention-to-touch-in.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/05/haptic-cinema-and-ehiep-tic.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/05/better-pronunciation-with-grit-tenacity.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/04/more-hard-hitting-evidence-as-to-why.html

http://hipoeces.blogspot.ca/2013/04/why-practicing-pronunciation-in-group.html

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice, there is." (Yogi Berra)

Keep in touch!

Pronunciation "Flow-ency!"

Ran across an interesting note on prerequisites for speaking fluently, posted on the website of the "Effortless English Club": "To speak English fluently, of course you must understand instantly and speak without thinking." It then goes on to pitch its program:"After only 5 hours, most of my seminar students show improvement with their English speaking. They speak more quickly and more clearly. How? Mostly by changing their feelings and beliefs– by developing strong confidence in their English speaking ability." After only 5 hours . . . Wow.

Actually, they may be on to something. We could take the idea of "speak[ing] without thinking" in several directions, including the use of mindless drill,  but what is intended (I think) is closer to "flow," as proposed by Csíkszentmihályi, the experience of "completely focused motivation" -- or being in the zone.

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We have all had the experience of at least temporarily speaking very well about something that we believe in so strongly that the words seem to flow from us almost "without thinking." (One of the parameters of holistic lie detection, on the contrary, is evidence of the interviewee "making things up" on the fly.) In our work, a protocol called the "Rhythm Fight Club"is designed to give the learner a feel for what "being centred, confident and on a roll" is like. (Preliminary findings of a research project on the process are again confirming that effect.)

A couple of nights ago, for the first time, I tried to do a 3-minute talk about haptic research and teaching using RFC "Flow-ency" accompanying or driving everything I said. In part because I had rehearsed the talk a number of times--and it is something that I probably have "completely focused motivation" about, it went very well (at least from my perspective, if not that of the audience!) At least a couple of very partisan observers agreed with that assessment!

I have experimented with the "Flow-ency" technique with learners for a number of years. Will now get it operationalized and more "teachable" as an extension of RFC. If you still haven't signed on as a haptician, try that for a couple minutes sometime with a topic that you are truly passionate about. And keep in touch.

Gym-glish! Fiona gets physical!

Fiona's ESL Blog this month has a brilliant excerpt from the second issue of Here Magazine: AT THE GYM - a beginner's workout (PDF downloadable!) For some, body-based pedagogy can be enhanced considerably by a little "body work" up front--and other places! Required reading.

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

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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. 

Haptic "INTRA-diction!" in Pronunciation Teaching

Credit: Henrichsen, BYU

Our new, favourite new word: INTRA-diction! (You may have noticed that we, hapticians, occasionally have to come up with new terms to accurately characterize what we do (e.g., haptician.)) Hopefully, it will be the focus of a new haptic workshop that we are proposing for TESOL 2015 in Toronto, next March: "On the spot, impromptu haptic pronunciation modelling, feedback and correction." (See earlier blogpost on the range of topics that we are considering for proposals at upcoming conferences.) Here is a great example from Henrichsen at BYU. (It is not, strictly speaking, haptic--the learner does not have something to squeeze in his right hand--but it does beautifully illustrate the concept, using what we call the "Conversational Rhythm Fight Club" PMP.

"INTRA-diction" defined: 

On the spot, unplanned, brief attention to pronunciation (typically taking less than a minute)  during a lesson in any skill area, involving modelling, feedback and correction. That will usually involve providing the learner with a more appropriate model using a "pedagogical movement pattern" (a gesture that terminates in touch on a stressed syllable) and (probably) doing the word, phrase or sentence out loud, together with the learner 2 or 3 times. 

It brings together five ideas:

a. Introspection

b. Interdiction

c. Intra-personal

d. Inter-personal

e. Haptic anchoring

Try that. 

Mind-body Connections in Pronunciation Teaching

Clip art: Clker

For most, the systematic use of movement and gesture--or even haptic is now at least of interest (See, for example the work of Thornbury, Gilbert or Chan.) You really can't be very successful in this business without some somatic (body-based) technique to support or reinforce classroom instruction, even if that just means clapping hands occasionally to emphasize stress placement.

Show me an instructor who loves doing pronunciation work, however, and I'll almost always show you one who is at least an enthusiastic "gesticulator" but probably also a musician of some kind or avid exerciser! Every time I do that informal poll at a conference, the agreement is near 100% in the audience.

Still the best place to get a general understanding of the integration of mind and body in education and therapy is in psychotherapies such as Somatic Therapy: Somatic Therapy: Using the Mind–Body Connection to Get Results. (To access that 7-page primer, however, you'll have to sign on to Psychotherapynetworker.org; go to the "Free reports" tab and download a copy. No need; I've done that for you. I'll be reporting in later blogposts on some innovative and applicable techniques from that source.)

 It is instructive to read comments by clinicians who work in such holistic paradigms, especially to better understand why what we do works. In the piece, Wylie (p. 7) makes the following "prophetic"point--which applies to this field as well: " . . . somatic approaches may become sufficiently ordinary and acceptable that the line between “body psychotherapy” and “talk psychotherapy” may one day disappear entirely."

With emerging video and hapic methodology and technology, I'd only substitute "will" for "may"--and "very soon" for "one day!"

Future (pronunciation) Teaching and Learning? Gesture!

Barras of the BBC in the "Future Education column" this month has a select, light-weight, informal summary of research and opinion on the impact of systematic, body-assisted learning, entitled, "Want to learn quicker? Use your body!" Although the studies referenced have been reported on the blog previously, that is still a readable, almost fun piece, one you can pass on to those new to the idea of kinaesthetic and haptic engagement. Especially like this quote from Cook at the University of Iowa:

"In every study that we’ve tested the importance of gesturing, we’ve found it works,” she says. “Even in the experimental settings where we thought gesturing wouldn’t work.”

I'd paraphrase that this way: In every aspect of pronunciation or teaching context that we've tried "haptic," we've found it works!

So will you.

(Have not formally tried the depicted "inter-nasal" gesture, but who nose?)

TESOL 2014: Why didn't they mention THIS?

As evident in the previous post, it was a good conference for Hapticians and friends. If you work at it and go to a conference with focus, that'll always be the case. A few more post-Portland thoughts:

• The 50/50 rule held. Half of the presentations you attend are good. Half of those involve something that you can take back to your school or classroom. (The other half you can still learn from!)
• Of the roughly 2 dozen refereed presentations related to speaking, listening and pronunciation, a little more than half a dozen provided practical training and techniques. Three of those were haptic. (There were another couple dozen or so unrefereed publishers' sessions pitching books, software and materials.) The others were research-based.
• The three haptic presentations (General workshop, intonation workshop and "fight club" demonstration) were not only packed, but fun. We have do much more of that.
• The reaction to our haptic work was better than in the past, in part because we are getting better at presenting it. We are better now at scaffolding in the "body" training so that few in the audience cannot keep up. (Has taken us a long time to get that right.)
• Haptic work is highly relational. At a conference, when you are trying to connect with your audience, that is great. In the classroom, using the haptic video system (AH-EPS) may be a better strategy, depending on your level of training in pronunciation teaching and the nature of the crowd in front of you. (See several earlier posts on that!)



Clip art;
Clker

• The word, haptic, is finally getting out. That has been our primary objective for the last two years. It is apparently spreading a little better "horizontally" than "vertically" . . . After our workshop, one of the participants came up to me very much excited about what she had just experienced. She begins by commenting that the day before she had been to two workshops on pronunciation by "experts" in the field. Then (using emphatic gesture) she says:

 "Why didn't they mention THIS!!!"

Good question.