Correction... how useful...?

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Re: Correction... how useful...?

Postby Cainntear » Tue Mar 21, 2023 10:04 pm

Le Baron wrote:Surely these two things are opposites and ignore obvious context?

As you said, context is usually enough.
Learners don't need to be able to hear the ee/ih distinction in order to distinguish between sheep and ship -- the context is definitely enough here because you can't shear wool off a ship, and you can't catch a sheep across the English Channel from Dover to Calais.

As such, there is no impetus for learners to acquire the correct phonemes -- a poor phoneme map is adequate at lower levels.

The only thing is, that poor phoneme map becomes an impediment to improved learning later on down the road.
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Re: Correction... how useful...?

Postby luke » Wed Mar 22, 2023 5:51 am

Cainntear wrote:The problem is (as I said) that minimal pair practice really only appears to develop the ability to consciously distinguish between them, but doesn't lead to being able to do it unconsciously.

... a poor phoneme map becomes an impediment to improved learning later on down the road.

You've mentioned moving through the stages of conscious incompetence to unconscious competence in another context. It seems like it would apply here as well.
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Re: Correction... how useful...?

Postby Cainntear » Wed Mar 22, 2023 2:59 pm

luke wrote:
Cainntear wrote:The problem is (as I said) that minimal pair practice really only appears to develop the ability to consciously distinguish between them, but doesn't lead to being able to do it unconsciously.

... a poor phoneme map becomes an impediment to improved learning later on down the road.

You've mentioned moving through the stages of conscious incompetence to unconscious competence in another context. It seems like it would apply here as well.

Sort of yes, sort of no. I guess it sort of indicates that there's a fuzzy line between the two. People doing minimal pair practice aren't particularly conscious of the process they're following -- they're just unconsciously following a process that achieves the immediate goal but not a long-term goal.
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Re: Correction... how useful...?

Postby tractor » Wed Mar 22, 2023 7:27 pm

Cainntear wrote:
luke wrote:
Cainntear wrote:The problem is (as I said) that minimal pair practice really only appears to develop the ability to consciously distinguish between them, but doesn't lead to being able to do it unconsciously.

... a poor phoneme map becomes an impediment to improved learning later on down the road.

You've mentioned moving through the stages of conscious incompetence to unconscious competence in another context. It seems like it would apply here as well.

Sort of yes, sort of no. I guess it sort of indicates that there's a fuzzy line between the two. People doing minimal pair practice aren't particularly conscious of the process they're following -- they're just unconsciously following a process that achieves the immediate goal but not a long-term goal.

Doing these minimal pair exercises, are they only listening? Or are they also speaking out loud? Have they been explained why they are doing these exercises? Are they doing any other activities or exercises in order to learn proper pronunciation?
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Re: Correction... how useful...?

Postby Cainntear » Wed Mar 22, 2023 8:11 pm

tractor wrote:Doing these minimal pair exercises, are they only listening? Or are they also speaking out loud? Have they been explained why they are doing these exercises? Are they doing any other activities or exercises in order to learn proper pronunciation?

I believe the study was fairly standard in its use of minimal pairs, in that students listened to the isolated words spoken and picked the correct answer from a choice of two on a preprinted list
eg
1. ship sheep
2. lack rack
3. pen pin
etc.

The test subjects were on a full time study course in English language and so had lots of additional learning tasks to do.

I don't know what they were told specifically, but it came from teachers and they were likely to be assumed as a positive influence.

My memory of what I read is flaky (for previously discussed reasons), but I have a feeling that minimal pairs originated as a way of testing language ability rather than developing it.
Then I suspect the whole teach-to-test kicked in, because if you are going to grade someone on something, you're going to make damned sure they can get as good a grade as possible.

In fact, thinking about it, that may well have been the point of the paper -- if minimal pair training means higher results in minimal pair but doesn't translate to better language skills outside of the minimal pairs tests, not only should you not do minimal pair training, you shouldn't do graded minimal pairs testing either because (a) it arguably isn't a good measure of skill and (b) even if it is a good measure (which I suspect it actually is) it results in teach-to-test, which means learning to identify minimal pairs while concentrating on them.
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Re: Correction... how useful...?

Postby Iversen » Wed Mar 22, 2023 9:20 pm

.. and now for one of my pet peeves: I do think that some focused listening to minimal pairs is relevant, but I can't see any need to let it last more than max. an hour. After all there aren't that many minimal pairs in any language, and if you haven't heard the differences in that time then yu probably never will.

The real problem is that our use of languages is based on phonemes, and that the allophones with all their individual or dialectal differences willy-nilly have to be distributed to the canonical set of phonemes in a given languages. And that process is automatized to the extent that we tend to ignore the very real differences between the sounds they cover and just notice the phonemes they have been reduced to. So to switch to another language with another phonemical structure you need to suppress the urge to fit all sounds into the phonemes of your base language. And here I have to acknowledge that I don't do the relevant exercises often enough, but the goal is to try to hear the sounds as they really are before you try to allocate them to that predefined set of phonemes. But I do try to get that perspective on at least some of my listening sessions.

To do this efficiently it is practically to have a mechanism that can repeat very short snippets of sound just by pressing a key. I mostly use Audacity, but another possibility is to let a sound synthesizer (!) do its thing on a word or two - and here you can of course choose some that present the known ninimal pairs, but also some that present one alleged phoneme in different contexts. Or even better: get different native speakers to pronounce the same words - then you hear how big the differences in pronunciation really are. And ideally the same thing should be done with suprasegmental intonation patterns, but it's harder to invent simple training methods for them.

Whatever the concrete technique: the goal is to break up the accostumed assignment rules for one language so you can hear the sounds that make up the phonemes in new language with minimal interference from your base language. Some people are for some reason good at this - those that can mimick the speech of others or catch the tone of other languages at the turn of a hat, whether they speak them or not. Others have to train it so that the new assignment rules with time also can become automatized.

And as Tractor asks: should you also try to pronounce the things your hear? Well, you probably should, but I tend just to train my internal voice. Speaking loudly to myself is not something I yearn to do... shudder, shudder...
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Re: Correction... how useful...?

Postby luke » Wed Mar 22, 2023 9:36 pm

Cainntear wrote:(b) even if it is a good measure (which I suspect it actually is) it results in teach-to-test, which means learning to identify minimal pairs while concentrating on them.

That sounds like conscious competence.

Minimal pair training in FSI Programmatic Spanish, FSI Basic Spanish, and FSI French Phonology involves both listening and production.

I'd be inclined to think that minimal pair training that doesn't include production is incomplete. Using the sheep/ship example, if one can use the context around those words to understand which of the words speaker means, they are bypassing what minimal pair training addresses. (I've read that infants don't use minimal pairs. Some people say that adults learn languages differently than young children).

Just so everyone understands what sort of words might be juxtaposed in minimal pair training:
ship sheep
chip cheap
hip heap
dip deep
lip leap

If you're inclined to follow the folks in academia: https://soar.suny.edu/handle/20.500.12648/172

The intervention (use of minimal pairs) was used in this study for approximately fifteen minutes each time, four times per week over a four-week period. Three instruments were used in this study: pretest, post test and oral assessment (based on observation). This research was designed using pretest and post test to determine if there was any improvement with the pronunciation of specific English consonant phonemes (/p/, /ʒ/, /v/, /tʃ/ and /ŋ/) by the study participants. Finally, the findings revealed that teaching strategy, minimal pairs, is effective in improving the pronunciation of the 2nd intermediate grade Arab speakers.
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Re: Correction... how useful...?

Postby Cainntear » Wed Mar 22, 2023 10:11 pm

luke wrote:
Cainntear wrote:(b) even if it is a good measure (which I suspect it actually is) it results in teach-to-test, which means learning to identify minimal pairs while concentrating on them.

That sounds like conscious competence.

But can it be considered conscious competence if they're not consciously aware of the competency they're using...?

I'd be inclined to think that minimal pair training that doesn't include production is incomplete.

So do I, because I believe that the most effective way to build an accurate phoneme map is through producing the correct phonemes. How can a teacher judge the correctness of a student's phoneme map except by their production of phonemes, after all...?

If you're inclined to follow the folks in academia: https://soar.suny.edu/handle/20.500.12648/172

Hmmm... I'm dubious.

First up, the section the background of minimal pairs only mentions studies that found them effective; secondly, there are a few too many quotes that tell us what things mean at a basic level; thirdly, the sample size is far too small for definite language like this:
Finally, the findings revealed that teaching strategy, minimal pairs, is effective in improving the pronunciation of the 2nd intermediate grade Arab speakers.


I would expect a strong passing dissertation to really go into detail on the papers that don't agree with them and present an argument about why they might not be right, or might not be applicable in this case.

In particular, I note that it mentions papers supporting minimal pairs in Japanese education in the 90s, but didn't mention the more recent ones that questioned the value of them. In the author's shoes, I would *probably* argue that looking into minimal pairs in Arabian learners of English might be more effective because it necessarily deals with a much smaller number of potentially problematic phonemes -- but he doesn't say this. Instead, he just acts like there's no controversy in the question... so why is he asking it? If the answer is known (like he claims), what is he trying to prove?

Now I would note that there were 13 students in his studies. In my masters dissertations, I had hundreds of participants and I still didn't feel I could talk about my findings with any real certainty -- everything I said was presented as something that was *maybe* true, but needed further study to prove.
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Re: Correction... how useful...?

Postby luke » Thu Mar 23, 2023 12:54 am

Cainntear wrote:
luke wrote:I'd be inclined to think that minimal pair training that doesn't include production is incomplete.

So do I, because I believe that the most effective way to build an accurate phoneme map is through producing the correct phonemes. How can a teacher judge the correctness of a student's phoneme map except by their production of phonemes, after all...?

I agree. Getting minimal pairs right is like being able to play note transitions smoothly and accurately on a musical instrument.
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Re: Correction... how useful...?

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Thu Mar 23, 2023 5:50 pm

luke wrote:I agree. Getting minimal pairs right is like being able to play note transitions smoothly and accurately on a musical instrument.


Speaking of music, I once heard a lecturer give examples of minimal pairs - they happened to use list intonation. :roll: I'm sure that even a tone deaf listener would be able to pass such a test.
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