AND THUS THE UPWARD
SPIRAL SOARS:
Notes
on Dr. Olle Kjellin’s Pronunciation Teaching Method
By
Joel Brodsky bewhap@hotmail.com (html)
I: “...PROSODY
IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND TUITION” [1],[2]
I’ve been teaching
English pronunciation with Spanish and Burmese speakers using the Kjellin way. Both the learners and I are often delighted to
hear pronunciation improvements during one to three hour sessions. The
learners’ pleasure from their quickly experienced success motivates them to
practice more, have more quick success, more pleasure, more motivation, practice more... and thus the upward spiral soars. [3]
Olle Kjellin,
MD, [4],[5] of Sweden, has a medical practice in hearing, swallowing
and voice disorders, thirty five years of L2 pronunciation teaching experience,
as well as an extensive knowledge of research in neuroscience, language
acquisition and pedagogy. He has synthesized this unique combination into an
elegant choral repetition method of L2 pronunciation teaching (the K-way).
In many L2 learning
situations, pronunciation teaching is the shortchanged “stepchild” tagged on to
the preponderant teaching of the other language components (in which many of
the learners become skilled). Sadly, due to these learners’ resulting frequent
listener-unfriendly pronunciation, native conversation partners often don’t
stay engaged with them for long.
Inspired by the knowledge of infant L1
acquisition, the K-Way turns this upside down. Beginning with a few weeks of
practicing only massive choral repetition and developing a robust neural
foundation of L2 auditory perception and prosody, the learners delight in their
growing new listener-friendly pronunciation. They thus more quickly develop the
confidence to increasingly speak English in spontaneous conversation, where the
greatest spoken language acquisition occurs.
Basic grammar,
vocabulary, syntax and other language components develop and emerge along with
the robust prosody foundation. After the first few weeks, teaching time for the
other language components can be increased, and the choral rep time lessened,
as deemed. And upon their solid prosody foundation, the motivated ones’ L2 will
continue to flourish lifelong.
II: WHY IT WORKS .
In the womb, and after
birth, during several hundred hours, over several months, the infants’ auditory
and vocal neural networks are being stimulated by the sounds spoken around
them, and developing the sound patterns and prosody bedrock upon which their L1
acquisition develops. The cooing [6] and gurgling [6]
that infants start making at about three months, and the babbling [6]
that they start making at about seven to eight months, are essential practice
for this.
Adult L2 learners come
to their L2 language learning process with L1 auditory-vocal neural networks already
well-developed and functioning and containing some of the new L2 sound
patterns. During about 200 to 300 hours of massive K-way choral repetition,
their auditory neurons are being stimulated to develop new networks that can
perceive the listener-friendly sound patterns and prosody of the L2 that the
learners don't already have in their L1.
Auditory perception
develops before and then monitors pronunciation. Each time that the auditory
neurons are stimulated with new sound patterns during L2 learning they reach
out, striving to make contact with other neurons. From the earlier stimulations
the outreaches are weak and don't endure long without repeated stimulation.
With massive reps, the neural outreaches and connections become more complex, stronger
and longer lasting, and eventually become habituated long-lasting memory. Only
then can the learners hear the new sound patterns and produce them with the
necessary listener-friendly pronunciation. Massive enough reps are ESSENTIAL
for this to happen. Many less effective pronunciation teaching methods stop far
short of this point.
I frequently remind the
learners that if they want to keep native listeners engaged they must produce
listener-friendly pronunciation. The auditory system of the native speaker has
to work harder to perceive and understand pronunciation that is outside the
range of expected native pronunciation. As the auditory system fatigues, the
listener becomes more uncomfortable, loses interest in conversing and the
learner loses L2 learning opportunities, and confidence. Many native speakers
will expend little extra effort to listen to listener-unfriendly speakers. The
few friendlier ones eventually reach their listener-unfriendly fatigue limits
and tune out. [7]
III:
HOW IT WORK .
At the first class the
learners each tell their name, address, phone number and where they’re from. We
then use some of the street addresses as an introduction to the choral
repetition method, for example,
After
many choral reps with thurdyaitsevnteen inernashenal bulavard apartmantwenyfive, I intro “ha ha”
for focusing more directly on the underlying prosody - ha-ha-HA-ha-ha-HA (thurdyaitseventeen) ha-ha HA ha-ha (inernashenal)
HA ha-ha (bulavard) ha-HA-ha-ha-ha-ha (apartmentwenyfive). [8] We
alternately do many sets of “ha ha” and word reps. This is interspersed with individual coaching, as needed.
Next, I ask each learner
to say the English alphabet solo, and I coach each one along, as needed. This
tells me how well each knows the alphabet, plus more about problem sounds. Then
I introduce the alphabet song - ABCDEFG HIJKLMNOP...XYZ. This helps them to review
or learn the letter names. Some already know this musically simple song. After
many choral reps of an alphabet chunk, the HIJKLMNOP letter names, for example,
I intro ha ha ha ha HA-ha-ha-ha-ha, the underlying prosody. Or I may ask the
learners to try to figure out the “ha ha”. This is
difficult in the beginning and I coach them along. With practice some get
better at doing this alone as the course goes on. We alternately do many sets
of “ha ha” and letter name reps. Doing the whole
alphabet song from “ABC... to ...with me please.” may take 2-3 hrs.
Next, we practice with
“Happy Birthday.” This is a good exercise for the learners to practice getting
the “ha ha” by themselves, as most ethnicities have a
version of this and know the music. The learners quickly get the English words.
I might ask them to do the “ha ha” for homework for
the next class.
I ask the learners to
write down, in their L1, or in English, simple dialogues that they frequently speak
outside of class, in their L1 or in English, – 4 to 5 short sentences, about 6
to 9 words each - and bring them to class. We work together to translate these
dialogues into colloquial pronunciation, and then use them for our choral reps,
for example, “I went nowhere. I stayed at home.” and “When are your day-off?” –
becomes “Didn't go anywhere. Just stayd
home.” and “Whenz yer day
off?”
For the next level, we
use the names of numbers in rhythm with the syllables. The HIJKLMNOP of the
Alphabet Song becomes “one two one two ONE-two-one-two-three.” After we get
this going smoothly with number names we “dance” to the numbers, speaking the
numbers, and stepping out in rhythm. This takes practice, and the learners work
in pairs, one stepping out and the other monitoring and coaching. Also, I move
amongst the pairs, coaching. This is a good Total Physical Response (TPR)
activity.
The next level is doing
the “dance” together with speaking the original words with correct prosody – aich aye jay kay EL-em-en-oh-pee..., and etc. Engaging listening, speech
production and full body motor activities together stimulates the whole neural
system at a greater language acquisition energy level.
Learners of some ethnic
groups come with music, dance and rhythm experience. Others I've worked with
know few or no music or dances from Western countries, and sometimes little
from their own culture, as well. They often have to work more to improve their
rhythm and musical sense.
Note: the various
exercises described herein are given as much time as the learners need. This is a process rather than a curriculum and I don't
necessarily try to fit any one exercise into a class period.
_________________________________________________________________________________
1.
Prosody is the varying intensity, duration and tones of sound flow
patterns - the “music” of the language.
2.
Quote from “Who am I, the Speech Doctor... and why?” (my CV) on http://olle-kjellin.com/SpeechDoctor/
3.
Dr. Kjellin says, “...(my)
students keep practicing during breaks... I attribute that...to...the
motivation induced by the addictive feeling of success.”
Practice ==>
Success ==> Pleasure ==> Addiction ==> Motivation ==> Practice.
(PSPAM)
4. Dr.Olle Kjellin has 35 years of L2 teaching experience with a
special interest in pronunciation. He is an M.D. with specializations in
swallowing and speech disorder radiology, a PhD in Physiology and Speech
Science, and has academic degrees in Linguistics, Phonetics, English, Japanese,
and Russian. He presently assesses, diagnoses and
treats speech, cognition and learning disorders in dementia patients. He also lectures in phonetics at
5. You can read more about Dr. Kjellins’s method at:
http://olle-kjellin.com/SpeechDoctor/LP98_Top.htm http://olle-kjellin.com/SpeechDoctor/TESOL.htm
http://olle-kjellin.com/SpeechDoctor/ http://olle-kjellin.com/SpeechDoctor/Choral_Practice.pdf
(some of
these cite research sources)
6.
COOING: oohh and aahh
sounds. GURGLING: running-water-like throat sounds. BABBLING: consonant-vowel
syllable strings, dadada, bababa,
etc
7. Motivating learners to speak English out of
class is my BIG teaching challenge. I heartily welcome any help on how to be
more skilled and successful with this.
8.
For written notation, ha = unstressed, HA = strongest stress, Ha = secondary
stress, hyphenated ha-ha = faster rhythm.
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