If you’ve scrolled through earlier blogposts, you may have run across my “teaching principles”—realizations I’ve come to, after decades of teaching ESL and EFL, that have made my teaching of pronunciation (and student learning of it) more effective, more efficient, and more systematic. One of my principles is that DISEQUILIBRIUM is a good thing for learners. You can read more about it in this earlier blogpost. This idea is hot in other fields also. I linked to a youtube video discussing similar trends in business: disruption in business, and check out this article in Psychology Today: absurdity increasing learning.
The point is this: Absurdity creates disequilibrium. Disruption creates disequilibrium. Disequilibrium causes learners to leave their comfortable existing mental schemas and examine closely the new information that doesn’t fit with what they already know. Once you’ve captured an adult’s attention, you can teach them something new. But if you give them the same old instruction with the same old methods for the same old processes and information, you’ll get the same old results.
You have to surprise adults with a new schema before you can help them change their pronunciation. I have a new 5-part pronunciation and intonation program that employs disequilibrium at the start, to capture my adult learner’s attention. It’s especially useful for students who already are advanced English learners and users and still have trouble being understood. By designing disequilibrium into our program, we upset their existing schema and create a new, more effective schema for mastering English sounds. Keep watch here, and on Facebook.com/peggy.tharpe for upcoming publications and video trainings. I look forward to sharing it with you.