Humans are animals of habit. From a very early age we
become recognizable by our idiosyncratic habits: our posture, how we move,
breathe, and speak. Most of our behavior is highly habitualized. A risk in
language learning is that we may develop a comfort zone for certain aspects of
our speech.
We may stick to certain kinds of intonations, may
develop the habit of not finishing sentences (a personal ”sin” of mine) when
talking. From observing students over the years, a very strong habit is speed
in speaking. At a certain point, students choose ”their” preferred speed in a
new language. Even as they progress, they tend to continue to speak in that
speed “comfort zone” .
How to break out of it? Karaoke speaking with fast
role models is a first solution. Use it with talk shows or sports commentators.
Another cure is to practice reading out loud with a
stopwatch running.
Needed: a
stopwatch (most probably on your smartphone or on a website); a reasonably long
paragraph; the table below to track your progress.
Track your ratios over a fixed period of time, say 21
days, using the table below, entering only the first and fourth (or last)
indicator for each day. If you enjoy drawing graphs, use Excel or any
statistical pages to draw a curve highlighting your progress. If statistics is
your passion, run significance tests on your changes.
Advice
·
Do this with all kinds of different
texts: fiction books, contracts, newspaper stories, scientific articles, job
descriptions, etc.
·
Find websites with tongue-twisters.
To leave sufficient time to operate your stopwatch, decide to repeat each
tongue-twister a certain amount. Otherwise, it will be hard to measure speed if
you say every tongue-twister once, since you need to track milliseconds of
differences. The speed of you starting and stopping the stopwatch may become a
source of error.
·
Share your results with your
accountability partner.
·
Search the web for tips on
speed-reading. There are various techniques which include focusing on certain
points in each row.
·
Practice in advance words or numbers
that are particularly hard to pronounce, for example using a metronome, where
each click falls on the main stress of the word.
If you want
be notified about the upcoming book or more articles and materials on the
psychology and quality management of language teaching, please subscribe to my mailing list.
If you want
to read more about quality management in language teaching, please check out
the other articles on this blog. If you have not read it yet, I recommend those
on student feedback
questionnaires and on how to standardize
your teaching.
Please out my online courses on language learning.
Stay tuned!
Gerhard
About the
GO Method
The GO Method applies research
in psychology as well as principles of quality management to the language teaching
process. It conforms to key elements of the ISO 9001 standard, while being more
specific on teaching-related issues. Customers get access to easily adaptable
document templates.
About me
Psychologist and polyglot from
Hamburg /Germany (*1979). Married with children. MA in psychology from the
University of Hamburg. More than 15 years of experience as a university
lecturer in psychology as well as a consultant for UNICEF, Terre des Hommes,
IOM, the EU and private companies. Coordinator of the GO Method network, with
representatives in more than 90 countries worldwide.
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