their own personal, self-directed work—often with very creative and innovative variation as well Over the years the range of
those applications has gone from proposing new or better PMPs to rap and other language realizations of the basic
repertoire. In fact, when you carefully examine the placement of the various sound complexes in the visual field on a learner by
learner basis, e.g., vowels, intonation, pitch change, you find that the precise locations of the nodes and movement patterns may
vary considerably, but the relative distance or contrast in movement type between sounds that stand in phonemic contrast
in English remains.
With or without prompting or assignment, students generally begin using PMP anchoring in conjunction with their homework
and personal pronunciation improvement efforts about half way through the program..
IV. APPLICATIONS
Field tests continue to confirm that AH-EPS works in a wide range of instructional contexts, with learners of most ages and proficiency levels. Most of the classroom
applications to date have been done with teenage or adult pre-academic and adult immigrant populations. For instructors who teach children, the AH-EPS system can
be used for effective modeling. Young students learn the system easily without conscious attention to the techniques.
A. Features of general pronunciation work that AH-EPS does not do much with
1. Concentrate explicitly on early listening comprehension work – Any comprehensive L2 instructional program will involve extensive listening
comprehension training. It is assumed that for beginning-level learners, typical LC work is being provided in conjunction with other skill development. For instance,
Gilbert 2010 provides an excellent model of integrated listening comprehension with pronunciation instruction. I would recommend both Gilbert’s books Clear
Speech; Clear Speech from the Start as basic resources, especially for the untrained instructor. See Instructors Notes on kinesthetic listening as well.
2. Utilize traditional repetition drills – Although there is a considerable amount of non-contextual, oral work and “rich” repetition involved, it does not focus on oral
mastery of specific patterns or sounds in isolation. Most sounds or patterns are introduced and practiced in context--with minimal number of repetitions--in a
multiple modality framework, where the sound is experienced along with its somatic sensation, limited collocation and haptic “choreography.” cf. Messum, 2013
Acton©2014 Page
36
B. Reports from the classroom based on Acton, Baker, Burri Teaman 2013
This section discusses two components of the AH-EPS system that have proven to be effective in a second languageESL learning context, plus a brief, informal observation as
to the positive impact that haptic learning and teaching has had on a non-native instructors.
Classroom correction
Burri implemented aspects of the AH-EPS system and haptic classroom correction principles in an advanced seven-week long academic preparatory course at a
postsecondary institution in Canada in the summer of 2012. There were 18 students in class and the course syllabus covered common academic components such as
interactional strategies, a survey assignment, a debate, a final presentation, as well as vowels, consonants, rhythm, and intonation. At the beginning of each week, students
were introduced to a new pedagogical movement pattern PMP with instructions to practice it during the week three times, and then on Sunday reported back to the
instructor in the form of an electronic audio diary, elaborating on difficulties, results and insights gained during practice.
The class consisted primarily of Asian and Middle Eastern students, many of whom faced typical challenges in distinguishing – both receptively and productively – between tense
and lax vowels. Learning and experiencing the lax and tense vowel PMPs in class provided students not only with a haptic anchor but also with a visually clear picture of
the difference in vowel positioning. In terms of correction, during regular speaking and listening instruction, the instructor used the vowel PMPs extensively to give feedback
and to correct students’ pronunciation of words, particularly new vocabulary. Seeing, doing and experiencing these vowels frequently resulted in at least an “Aha” effect for
many of the students. Their audio diaries not infrequently reported awareness of “corrected” vowels in spontaneous speaking as well.
Rhythm Fight Club Protocol
Burri also used the Rhythm Fight Club Protocol as all of us do regularly at the same institution in a seven-week long intermediate speaking course. At the beginning of the
semester, students were taught to parse text and to identify focal stress. For this particular process, basic guidelines based on Gilbert’s Clear Speech 2010 were used. Once
students were able to apply these guidelines to fixed text, they were then taught to hold a tennis or golf ball, sometimes even a boxing glove, in one hand to attend to focal stress
and experience the rhythm of the English language through “boxing-like” movement and touch.
Once students were introduced to the Rhythm Protocol, they were utilized frequently in a variety of speaking tasks. Students often reported that this particular protocol helped
them feel the rhythm of the language when they speak English. In fact, it was observed that if students practiced the RFCP regularly for approximately 5-10 minutes, about three
Acton©2014 Page
37
times a week on their own, their overall fluency and their ability to speak rhythmically often improved markedly within a few days.
Non-native instructor identity
Recently, in a graduate applied phonology seminar, the teachers-in-training enrolled in the course, learned, practiced and demonstrated all of the AH-EPS protocols as part of
their final course assessment. Learning and experiencing these haptic protocols and PMPs has been shown to be particularly beneficial and empowering for some the non-native
speakers. One student from Korea, for example, very quiet and shy at the beginning of the program, reports that the haptic work was responsible in large part for a remarkable
transformation in her identity, confidence and oral production. In one of her weekly reflective papers, she explained that both the warm-up and intonation PMPs, which she
practiced daily, were especially helpful for developing her confidence and expressiveness. Both the instructors and the classmates’ observations confirmed the
student’s report. She has since even done some impressive, expressive and well-received presentations at provincial and international conferences.
C. Specific class types and contexts
