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Teango
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| Message 17 of 24 27 July 2011 at 1:56am | IP Logged |
@Slucido
Olle Kjellin offers lots of interesting advice on chorusing with the help of a tutor, and I imagine his routines could well be adapted for self-study purposes too (as indicated in his reply here on the forum).
Just to recap, here are some quotes from his paper: "Accent Addition: Prosody and Perception Facilitate Second Language Learning":
"Allow for at least 50-100 student repetitions of a phrase (seldom single words) at a given session to generate a kind of statistical "feel" for the phonological, syntactical, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of the phrase, i.e. to really "learn" it."
"Although there will perhaps be 100 repetitions for the teacher, for the learners each repetition will be a new version! Except, hopefully, for the last 20-30 repetitions, which should keep within the limits of permitted variation, consolidate the automatized pronunciation, and be that pronunciation which will remain ringing in the ears of the learners and provide the mental templates to be related to in their continuing language acquisition."
"Later on, when automaticity is achieved, considerably fewer repetitions will suffice at any particular time or for any particular learner, say, 10-15 per practice phrase."
And here are some more detailed snippets taken from Dr Kjellin's paper: "Choral Practice - the Neurophysiological Opportunist's Way":
"The teacher utters the target phrase 7 times before the students to enable them to grab the whole phrase into their working memory. Then the teacher and the chorus speak in unison for 15-25 times, and so they keep alternating as long as the teacher deems necessary."
"Well-automatized motor skills are stored as procedural memories. Procedural memories will never disappear: You can't unlearn how to swim, ride a bicycle, or speak your first language. It only takes up to 15 minutes of careful practice for the central nervous system to automatize a new skill. But it will require many daily repetitions to be consolidated into procedural memory. Do you dare practice the same phrase for 15 minutes a day in three weeks? Children in the process of acquiring their first language actually practice much more than that, though less conspicuously and for many years rather than weeks and months. Everybody knows the result: "Perfect.""
"On introducing a new phrase I will say, "Just listen to me 7 times, then we will say it all in unison." By the 3rd-4th time most mouths will begin to mimic me silently. And by the 8th time every mouth will be prepared and ready to speak it out, and thanks to the chorus they will manage it, particularly the rhythm and melody, which will be rather irresistible, due to those direct neuronal connections between the auditory centres in the temporal lobes and the mirror (imitation) neurons in and around the oro-facial motor areas in the frontal lobes. After another 10-15 repetitions I'll ask them to silently listen again. Because by then they are ready to discover new details. And then "get back into chorus when you feel ready for it"."
Apologies if you've read through these papers already, but I thought I'd post up the relevant sections just in case and for the benefit of others interested in chorusing. I hope this helps to guide you in the right direction. :)
Edited by Teango on 27 July 2011 at 2:10am
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jeff_lindqvist
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| Message 18 of 24 27 July 2011 at 10:32am | IP Logged |
slucido wrote:
| Yes, I have a Youtube video, but this video is more a question than an answer. I am thinking aloud about answers. What do you think apart from the mortal boring factor? |
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Teango has posted some info from Olle Kjellin's website. I think it was maxb who said that (or maybe he quoted Olle) an A4 page or two filled with sentences would be sufficient to learn the prosody of a language (with the proper number of repetitions, of course). While I'm sure this method has its merits, I also think there are hopeless learners who just can't follow the rhythm.
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| Cainntear
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| Message 19 of 24 27 July 2011 at 11:40am | IP Logged |
slucido wrote:
| How can we become much more specific and scientific? |
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Is the answer:
A) By asking a bunch of people on the internet
or
B) Doing a PhD in applied linguistics?
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| mrwarper
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| Message 20 of 24 27 July 2011 at 12:08pm | IP Logged |
Given the current state of "science" in applied linguistics, asking a bunch of people on the Internet will spare you the time to get the PhD while achieving pretty much identical results ;)
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| petteri
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| Message 21 of 24 27 July 2011 at 4:30pm | IP Logged |
That is interesting. I think pronunciation as three concepts. Phenoms and combinations of them, intonation and rhythm.
Phenoms I would split to two groups, critical and noncritical. Critical phenoms are the ones which give the language its typical sound. Critical phenoms can differ depending on what kind of language background learner has. On the other hand noncritical phenoms are relatively easy get right enough to sound like a native.
Exaggeration is one possible tool of getting the harder parts more correct.
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| Cainntear
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| Message 22 of 24 27 July 2011 at 4:36pm | IP Logged |
petteri wrote:
That is interesting. I think pronunciation as three concepts. Phenoms and combinations of them, intonation and rhythm.
Phenoms I would split to two groups, critical and noncritical. Critical phenoms are the ones which give the language its typical sound. Critical phenoms can differ depending on what kind of language background learner has. On the other hand noncritical phenoms are relatively easy get right enough to sound like a native.
Exaggeration is one possible tool of getting the harder parts more correct. |
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It's very difficult to find a truly "non-critical" phoneme in any language, because all phonemes interact, and two phonemes that appear "non-critical" in isolation may simply be incompatible if pronounced wrong....
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| slucido
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| Message 23 of 24 27 July 2011 at 5:26pm | IP Logged |
Teango wrote:
Apologies if you've read through these papers already, but I thought I'd post up the relevant sections just in case and for the benefit of others interested in chorusing. I hope this helps to guide you in the right direction. :) |
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Thank you. Yes, I have this papers and that's the reason I am writing about this.
I wrote in other forum about the chorusing method and how to DIY.
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=24341&PN=1&TPN=4#284899
slucido wrote:
Is it possible to practice your chorusing method with recordings?
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Olle wrote:
Yes, that's how I do it myself, in the absence of a teacher & chorus or other live interaction. Commuting by car about 45 minutes each way, I spend most of that time listening over and over again on a small number of utterances that I've recorded from any source, even old language courses on cassettes, and burnt on a CD with very short tracks, each the length of one breath group. I set the player on "repeat 1" and have my ears and brain "saturated" with an utterance. Then I'll start saying it in chorus with the CD. Initially with a very large sound that "pushes" my speech apparatus the right way (mirror neurons, I presume). Then with gradually softer and softer CD sound, until I'm saying it by myself. While the quantitative progress is rather slow, the qualitative success is inevitable, unavoidable. What little I can say, I really CAN say.
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Here you have maxb comments about his DIY chorusing method:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=6281
maxb wrote:
I have looked through my old posts on the chorus method and see that I have left out some important information on why it is a good idea to use it. The idea of the chorus method is in principle to teach adult learners the prosody of a foreign language. Furthermore it is important that the prosody is learnt first. Even before the individual sounds are mastered.
Why? Because, according to research, this is the way small children learn their mother tongue and since the outcome of small childrens language learning is always successful (perfect pronounciation, grammar etc.) it would make sense to copy it. From what I have read, mastery of prosody is absolutely crucial for a childs language development. If the prosody isn't mastered the language will not develop normally. There is even evidence suggesting that the grammar of a language is connected to its prosody and that a mastery of prosody would make learning the grammar easier.
So how does Olle Kjellin suggest you go about learning the prosody?
He believes that the first month of language study should be devoted to pronounciation alone. He suggests selecting an A4-page of practice phrases and learning those perfectly. He believes that if these phrases are mastered to perfection you will have mastered most of what there is to learn when it comes to pronunciation in the language. Furthermore he believes that when you work on a phrase you should learn the prosody of it first. Primarily the rhythm. Skip any sounds that you can't pronounce for now. You can even resort to just humming along with the rhythm and melody of the sentence. Since the rhythm is very important he also suggest that you use material spoken at a natural speed since unnaturally slowed down "language learner speech" disorts the rhythm of the language.
Once you have mastered the prosody of the phrase, you can start working on the individual sounds. When doing that you only need to focus on the syllables that are stressed in the sentence, since he claims that those are the only sounds that are noticed by the native speaker. For instance in Swedish you only need to focus on getting the long vowels right.
Once the sounds and rhythm have been mastered and you are saying the sentence bascially identically to the model you should go repeating for a large number of times to fix the sentence in your auditory memory.
He claims that if you practice like this for about a month you will have an almost native like command of the pronunciation of the language. Which means that you will have acquired a very important skill which the native speakers posses namely the ability to repeat perfectly a word you have only heard once. For instance if you are listening to someone speaking in your native language and you suddenly hear an unknown word, you would be able to repeat that word perfectly, if required to do so. You don't even have to repeat it. I find in Swedish that if I listen to someone speaking and hear a knew word I instantly remember how it is pronounced, I don't even have to say it out loud at the time I hear it to remember it. The chorus method lets you acquire this skill for foreign languages as well.
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Other thread:Mandarin help
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=5096&PN=61
maxb wrote:
OneEye wrote:
To edit the audio for chorusing, I just isolate each sentence on a track, hit the repeat button, and mimic the speaker correct? Is it recommended to do this with every sentence you learn, or just certain key ones (maybe ones that give me difficulty) until I'm comfortable with the sounds of the language?
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For chorusing I'd say select a small number of sentences (maybe 20-30) and work very intensively on those for maybe a month until you feel that you can say them absolutely perfectly. Then when you learn new sentences keep using the chorusing method, but you will find that having spent so much time on the first batch of sentences the rest of them will come very easily. You will need much fewer repetitions on the new sentences.
Also I recommend that you use FSI or any other source spoken at a natural speed for you source of sentences.
Pimsleur is spoken much too slowly and unnaturally and doesn't let you learn the rhythm of mandarin properly. |
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Other thread: Perfect pronuntiation.
http://www.how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.a sp?TID=8232&PN=0&TPN=12
maxb wrote:
A method I believe in, and which I have used to success is to learn a fairly long audio piece in the language by heart. What I did for mandarin was to take a 6 minute podcast spoken at rather quick pace and split it up into several small chunks. Each chunk maybe 2-5 seconds. Then I practiced 1-2 chunks per day,using the chorus method, for a period of 2 months, until I had the whole podcast memorized. What I have done since is to use a modified version of the "10000 sentences method" where I use audio flashcards. I use a recording of a sentence as the "question" in supermemo and in order to consider myself passed on a flashcard, I not only have to understand the sentence, I also have to be able to chorus the sentence along with the speaker.
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| slucido
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| Message 24 of 24 27 July 2011 at 5:36pm | IP Logged |
Here you have an English teacher who uses Olle Kjellin’s Pronunciation Teaching Method:
http://www.k-way.home.sonic.net/
Joel Brodsky wrote:
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. |
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Joel Brodsky wrote:
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. |
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Joel Brodsky wrote:
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, 3817 International Boulevard, Apartment 25. First, I repeat the short sentence we are working on about 10 times, with colloquial, but correct, pronunciation (thurdyaitsevnteen inernashenal bulavard apartmntwenyfive). I ask the learners to listen attentively and to silently lip synch the words I m saying, with exaggerated mouth movements. And also, to raise their index fingers and move them across in front of their chest in rhythm with the “music” (like a conductor). Sometimes we also move our feet up and down. Then they silently listen to me again, and then many more choral reps, and so on and so on (minimum 8 learners/class works best).
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. |
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