Today’s pronunciation methodology fails in several respects:
It is over reliant on repetition, it treats pronunciation as a cognitive (rather than physical) activity, and it is linear rather than holistic. This is why pronunciation is not and cannot be integrated into the rest of classwork.
I propose that physicality offers the basis for a different mindset that opens up a new territory of learning activity. This allows a solution to the objections to repetition, the use of a holistic pronunciation syllabus, and a way to integrate pronunciation into all ongoing class activity.
Pronunciation is a physical activity. Our current methodology prioritises both repetition after some sort of ’model’, or cognitive abstraction through descriptions and representations of the physical movements. Both can be helpful as a backup, but lack power as a main approach.
The former emphasizes repetition as the remedy for habit, but you cannot repeat your way out of a habit. First you need the insight into something new and different from your previous habit, then the practice becomes worthwhile. But repetition needs to be smart repetition, where each repetition learns from and is changed by the one before. This is better referred to as iteration.
And the latter emphasizes knowing from outside when what is required is knowing from inside, that is a physical, kinaesthetic, sensing of the movements in the mouth, lungs, breath, and the resulting acoustic impact. This is physical knowing, embodiment, and the more you can do this the more you can help learners do the same.
Our methodology has taken a cognitive problem solving approach to learning grammar and vocabulary, and over-applied this to pronunciation where it fails our learners since pronunciation is primarily a physical activity, having more in common with teaching dance than with teaching grammar. The dance teacher’s job is not just to ‘show’ me the samba, but to help me find the muscles that will enable me to do it. Here’s how I do it for pronunciation: READ MORE
Thank you for your blog, it has changed my teaching and I hope the learning too. My students may be sick of me telling them that they have to see pronunciation as physical and not mental. By the way, have you seen this site https://www.seeingspeech.ac.uk/ ?
It says: The resource provides teachers and students of practical Phonetics with ultrasound tongue imaging (UTI) and lip video of speech, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) video of speech, and 2D midsagittal head animations based on MRI and UTI data.
Visually amazing and fun too.
Thanks Chas. Nice to hear from you. Keep at it. A whole new world of an engaged classroom opens up. I love these visuals, thanks, very clever. But in the end Sts need to look in here, not out there. Otherwise they are back in the world of thought and representation. They need to sense their own reality inside, then once they connect with it all sounds open up. This is why I go on about proprioception
I agree that pronunciation should be taught in an holistic way than by parts. It would do easier our work as teachers and even when we are practicing. I’ve never heard about iteration, but I consider any new way to learn is acceptable and could be useful for those who don’t learn with drills.
Hi Karla
No you probably did not hear about iteration in LT. It is a term for mathematics and computing which I have applied to ELT in order to give ourselves a fluid concept that comes closer to the reality of learning than does the rigid concept of repetition. In my idea of iteration in LT each attempt learns from the previous attempt. So it is based on being watchful aware and present. Which repetition itself does not imply. Have fun!