Commitment- Doorway to Clear English Mastery
Commitment Doorway 17 to Clear English Mastery
Article 17 for series Elements of Clear English Speech Mastery
Hey you, nonnative speaker of English, what’ll get you to change to clear, not “What did you say?” English?
Key to new learning, new habit is commitment, past and present.
First, social bonds to family or school or workplace or church light the way to stir to action. Gotta have motivation for new systematic muscle learning. Gotta be impelled for perseverance. Gotta be propelled to make habit the clear speech mode and accurate enunciation of AE (American English).
Enter Social Bonding Theory’s four processes: commitment, involvement, attachment and belief: the light to efficient and durable learning.
Efficient versus takes forever? Easy choice.
Durable versus gone-after-training? Double-easy choice.
Enter Social Bonding Theory’s processes that encourage vital behavior patterns that make thrive social groups and individuals.
Take the process of Commitment.
High success to get clear and easy to understand AE requires time, focus, effort and perseverance.
High success needs sound logic to commit.
It needs systematic learning, not just learning on inefficient unorganized or need-to-know basis.
Want sound logic? Diagnostic assessment fits the bill.
First tell us and yourself: what’s your learning already? Current skill? Needs, desires? For present, for future? That’s personal stake.
Then show what you’ve got: a dozen oral skills.
Numbers, numbers: what’s the meaning of measurements? How do you compare to non-native and native-born speakers of AE? Which are your error sounds? Intonation skills? Written word to pronunciation rules skill?
One size does not fit all ‘cause different reasons for diversity. Too soft speech because of muscle strength. or mother tongue habit, or your-choice habit? Errors in AE speech sounds due to using tongue, lips, teeth, larynx in mother- tongue fashion? Or habit of slurring words together? Or ignorance of AE pronunciation rules? Gotta get the six “whys” to know the six “hows” for acquiring effective fresh skills.
Whopper encouragement comes from the dreaded “What”, “What did you say?”. Or from self-pursuit of life choices, pursuit of uplifted social engagement, applying to grad school, career lift. Frequent incentive is supervisor ask to get better English speech at beginning of job or yearly review. The more sparks the better to fuel commitment to clear AE short-term course of learning.
Strange but true: self-pay versus sponsor-pay doesn’t seem to make a heck of a lot of difference. Ack, money’s worth a lot, but time and effort the precious more.
Circle back: Commitment for adults comes first from current bonds to familial, educational or school, workplace, church or ethical group. Over-18ers already have drivers for motivation and behavior patterns from these.
Now gotta get Commitment to short-term course of learning. After that get ignited involvement, attachment, belief.
What’s the short-term course for clear English mastery?
Seventy days of daily deliberate practice. That is the average to get every day habits. 1*. Ten weeks times seven days. Assessment and feedback makes twelve weeks total, same as semesters or quarters in academia.
Deliberate practice means not mindless and deliberate accuracy. It’s not practice makes perfect, but perfect practice makes perfect. 2
Want skill durability? Get with distributed or spaced schedule. Throw in massed practice, add deep learning. Thus the Clear English Mastery recipe with icing. Works every time.
Effortful, you’re dern right. Gotta make motor memory strong in the brain. Plus gotta batten down, inhibit. the old way. Accented English be gone.
There’s more. Commitment needs notable inducement for investing time, energy, the self in an activity path. Social Bonding Theory says inducement ideally is immediate desirable position or outcome and realistic promise of status in near future.
Immediate inducement is successful talk: listener gets it the first time. Gone is “What?”, the quizzical look.
Realistic promise of status in near future? Could be getting satisfying projects at work or at school. Could be promotions; could be landing job. Could be approving nod of colleague, friend, family member. Mastery is laudable.
Clear English is downright beautiful.
Next time- The social bonding process of involvement – what you’ve gotta do!
References:
- Lally, Phillippa; Van Jaarsveld, Cornelia H. M; Potts, Henry, W.W.Wardle; Jane, How are Habits Formed: Modelling Habit Formation in the real World, European Journal of Social Psychology, 40, 998-1009, University College London, London UK (2010) The time it took participants to reach 95% of their asymptote of automaticity ranged from 18 to 254 days, average 66 days. 62 individuals. As evidenced in the study, many participants found it easier to adopt the habit of drinking a glass of water at breakfast than do 50 sit-ups after morning coffee.
- Famous quotation of Jack Nicolaus, golf master and icon.
- Copyright 2024 Clear Talk Mastery, Inc
Buy One, Get Three Free and the Human Brain
Buy One, Get Three Free and the Human Brain– Aarticle 12
It really is true, for mastering American English, you can “Buy one, get three free.” Every time you push the blade and tip of the tongue forward in your mouth for the accurate TH no voice speech sound, you are also deliberately practicing the TH with a voice, the L, and the American English Short Vowel A as in “hat.”
That’s because of how the human brain controls speech.
What Part of the Brain Controls Speech?
Control of speech is part of a complex network in the brain. The brain regions called lobes which control speech include the frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes which formulate or put together what you want to say and are located usually in the left hemisphere (Cafasso, 2019). —– More later about the importance of “usually”—which is actually critically important for human brains.
The motor cortex in your frontal lobe enables you to speak words. The brain’s language regions work together as a coordinated network with some parts involved in multiple functions and redundancy in some processing pathways (Abbott, 2016).
To speak clearly, you must move the muscles of your mouth, tongue and throat. This is where the motor cortex participates. Located in the frontal lobe, the motor cortex takes information from the Broca area, in the front part of the left hemisphere, and tells the muscles of your face, mouth, tongue, lips, and throat how to move to form speech (Cafasso, 2019).
In particular, past studies have found that a part of the human brain called the ventral sensorimotor cortex, or vSMC, controls speech. Using electrical stimulation, researchers found which general areas of the vSMC controlled which parts of the face and mouth. But that kind of electrical stimulation couldn’t trigger meaningful utterances. That finding reveals that speech sounds are not being stored in discrete brain areas, but rather arise from coordinated motor patterns involving multiple areas (Wein, 2013).
Electrical patterns in the brain transitioned within tens of milliseconds between distinct and different representations or patterns for different consonants and vowels. (Wein, 2013)
Importantly, regions of brain activity during speech have a hierarchical, overlapping structure organized by phonetic feature. Examples of phonetic features for American English include whether the speech sound has a voice or no voice (like P vs D, F vs V), or for instance whether there is prolonged audible friction of air as in S, Sh, F, V or in contrast, the speech sound is quick ( such as J, CH, P, D). Also, scientists found that consonants that require similar tongue locations have overlapping areas of activity (for instance American English T, D, J, Ch for tip of tongue, and NG, K, G for back of the tongue). Notably, patterns of brain activity differ the most between consonants and vowels. (Wein, 2013).
Wein also emphasized that although the researchers used English, they found the key phonetic features observed were ones that linguists have observed in spoken languages around the world.
For acquisition of clear American English speech when it is a second or other language (ESL, English as a Second Language), a key skill to master is changing and making different the movement and positioning of the muscles, and the tension of muscles in the tongue, lips, jaw, and the muscles in the throat for the vocal folds or chords.
To reiterate because it is so important: speech sounds and spoken words require coordinated motor patterns, which are hierarchical and overlapping. An example of this coordinated motor or movement pattern is the coordinating of making a voice at the vocal folds in your throat with pushing out air from your lunghs and positioning of the top front teeth on the lower lip to make the American English speech sound V.
The research cited above gives physiological and brain insight for an important facet of learning or acquiring clear English pronunciation. That is, researchers have discovered that the brain is organized for speech according to movements of the face and mouth which includes tongue, lips, jaw and for phonetic features which include voicing or no voice, and audible air friction such as in S, Z, SH, ZH which is SH with a voice. You probably already know that positioning of muscles of the lips is a critical articulator difference which distinguishes the English speech sound of S from SH and Z from ZH.
Now to swing back to the “Buy one, get three free” proclamation. A practical application is that if you train your motor system in the brain for the accurate positioning of your tongue “forward” for TH with voice—such as “the”– you are also training the positioning of the tongue for TH with no voice – such as “think”–and also for the consonant L—as in “light” and “tall” and the tongue forward movement for the American English Short Vowel A as in “hat.” The same principle applies for the accurate pronunciation of English speech sounds K, G, and NG which uses the back of the tongue hitting the roof of the back of the mouth. Do one of those K, G, NG accurately and you are making stronger the neural connections in the motor cortex for two more speech sounds.
Do you want motivation or a reason for doing a lot of accurate speaking (including reading words and sentences)? The “Buy one get two or three free” motivation is powerful reason.
Recall that the same kind of bonus to “Buy one get one free” motivates humans to buy products in grocery or other stores and online.
To add important actionable information: Evidence indicates that daily practice of 400 to 800 times leads to reorganization of the brain connections after a stroke, also called “brain attack” or CVA, Cerebrovascular Accident (Vearrier et al 2005; Flint Rehab 2023. If my arithmetic is accurate, to speak 400 speech sounds consecutively, as in connected speech, reading aloud, takes about 30 minutes. If you are using a recorded video lesson or recorded audio lesson to accurately imitate, then the practice time is longer because you must listen and perhaps watch before you imitate. With our more than 800 different student/learners for more than 20 years, most frequently they do 30 minutes of deliberate practice with their voice speaking Clear English (Careful Leveled-Up Mode or Work-Out Mode) and add minutes for the listening to audio recorded spoken English with or without video. For humans, listening and imitating accurately clear English words is quite efficient for learning and mastery for accurate American English pronunciation.
The take-home message is quite good! The good news is that accurate American English is not some random collection of phonetic or speech sound features – unknowable because they are random. Instead, systematic learning – which has been our mission for more than 20 years–which uses the scientific evidence of brain organization and function for English speaking can lead to excellent efficiency in learning. The systematic learning is the crux of the exercises and tasks for learning from video recorded lessons, different audio recorded lessons, and customized textbook with additional tasks for independent speech practice without imitation for deeper learning..
Yay for efficient and long lasting learning based on brain research and evidence and experience with student-learners. Yay today for “Buy one, get two or three free!” Way to go, human brain! Way to go for human being learning!
copyright 2023 Clear Talk Mastery Inc
The Endgame is Procedural Memory
Accent Reduction: The Endgame is Procedural Memory Article 11
Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasures nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing. William Butler Yeats.
The endgame is to type on a keyboard without looking at the keys. Or to safely ride a bike, or safely drive a car, or accurate English speech!
All are procedural memory which end up as automatically retrieved. When needed procedural memories are automatically retrieved and used for execution of the bringing together of procedures involved in both cognitive and motor skills. These skills also range from tying shoes, to reading, to acquiring grammatical rules according to Koziol et al, 2012, Wikipedia, 2023, and Ullman et al, 2005.
Acquisition of clear and accurate English speech communication is procedural learning. Procedural memory is a type of long-term memory which aids the performance of particular types of tasks without ongoing conscious awareness of the previous experiences of learning.
Procedural memory is created through procedural learning, or repeating a complex activity over and over again, until all of the relevant neural systems work together to automatically produce the activity. Implicit procedural learning is essential for the development of any motor skill or cognitive activity. Procedural learning and memory are implicit because the actual learning is inferred from an individual’s improvement in performing the task.
Repeating the task over and over is critical. It is in the repetition that all the relevant and needed neural systems get connected to work together.
We’re lucky to be living in 2023. Originally, Beaunieux and colleagues (2006) in empirical research confirmed the existence of three separate phases of procedural learning. They conceptualized the three phases as a combination of explicit and implicit contributions to the formation of procedural memory.
Specifically, during the repetition of the task, at the beginning of learning a task is where the effortful learning of the cognitive phase happens. Repeating of a task over and over at the beginning of learning is marked by a steep learning curve. Then with more repeating of a task, that is followed by gradual improvement and ends in high performance levels without further improvement. The gradual increases to higher or better performances characterize emerging automatization of the associative phase. Sustained highest performance characterizes autonomous procedures when procedural memory has formed (Hong et al, 2019).
Learning to drive is one of the most widely known examples of procedural learning among adults. The more you drive, the better you get at it. Just reading a manual on driving or observing your parents drive will not suffice, and hence you won’t be a good driver unless you put your foot to the pedals.
What does this have to do with acquisition of clear English speech communication? Typically nonnative-born adults who find that others are having difficulty (and likely frustrated) with understanding their English speech seek fixing their English speech communication. (Alternatively, their supervisors recommend instruction.) Since these adults have spent 18 or more years of speech production in their first language, the ground floor or core task is their learning how to produce the American English (AE) 25 consonants and 14 vowel sounds accurately so they are easily understood by native-born Americans and other internationally- born persons. There is cause for rejoicing for the first language consonant and vowel sounds which are the same as American English. Ground floor is thus focusing on acquiring the position and speed of the articulators of tongue, lips, teeth and jaw and making a voice or no voice for American English consonants and vowels which are different from the first language. This is the cognitive stage of learning for the procedural learning of accurate American English speech communication.
In order to go from the first phase of procedural learning which is the effortful phase and cognitive phase (steep curve of learning), through the associative phase (more gradual learning) and onto the final autonomous phase of learning for sustained high performance—all this takes practice over and over again for the speech articulators, vocal folds, and pushing of air from the lungs. The repeated practice must be accurate!
Again, good thing we live in the 21st century. Procedural memory is created by repetition of complex tasks until all the requisite neural systems work together to produce automatically the activity. We actually know a great deal about those required neural systems. More about those neural systems later.
Copyright 2023 by Clear Talk Mastery
How Many Words for English Proficiency
English Speaking Skills: How Many Words for English Fluency?
Here are some rough word counts according to Jakob Gibbon, 2023:
Advanced: With 4,000-10,000 words your communication goes beyond everyday conversation and into specialized vocabulary for talking about your professional field, current geo-political and local events and news, opinions and vocabulary for more complex abstract verbal vocabulary. This is also the C2 level in the Common European Framework for Reference (CEFR).
Fluent: 10,000+ words. At around 10,000 words is considered near-native level of vocabulary, with the requisite words for talking about a wide range of topics in detail. Most importantly, you recognize enough words in every utterance or sentence so that most frequently you understand the unfamiliar ones from context. That means you can easily add words to your vocabulary if you read English a lot.
And just so you know: Estimates of words known by the average native American English speaker vary from 10,000 to 65,000 words.
Don’t stop now deliberately adding to your vocabulary! It’s no wonder that proficiency in American English speech communication continues for native-born Americans throughout their life. They are adding vocabulary, along with accurate pronunciation for professional words, scientific words, geo-political words, necessary words (like pandemic, corona virus), and skill for persuasive and information giving speaking communication, and skill for stimulating social conversation and presentations.
Research suggests that the average American hears between 20,000 and 30,000 words during the course of a 24-hour period according to Rebecca Lake, 2014. That’s a major source of “continuing education” for English speech communication, a source for increasing vocabulary and honing or making better the skills for communicating information, emotion, doing presentations, even refining body language to emphasize ideas.
Relatedly, many (most?) professions in the education world, tech, medical, lawyers, etc. require continuing education. Got to keep up with the profession and improve communication within the organization. Such is lifelong learning.
In the human development of proficiency for English speech communication throughout the lifespan (that’s what native-born speakers of AE do), just remember that the best kind of practice for English speech communication skills is deliberate practice where the purpose is to get better.
Along with expanding their spoken vocabulary, nonnative-born persons can experience “pronunciation drift.” Pronunciation drift is real and happens when AE pronunciation has gotten sloppy or inaccurate or the speaker has forgotten how to do American English speech sounds accurately or has forgotten the pronunciation rules. Most likely is drift to accented- English (Chinglish, Spanglish, Indian English, Arabic English, etc.) Most likely is also drift or movement of articulators (tongue, lips, jaw) to go lax and not tense, with decreased force or range of movement, and into difficult to understand consonants and slurring of words.
Fact is, the kind of work environment makes a difference for vocabulary development, pronunciation (and other English speech communication skills such a voice inflection or presentation skills).
Do you work in an organization where verbal English communication takes between 30 minutes and two hours or more? If so, then you can do deliberate practice of clear English speech daily.
Or does your profession call for less than 30 minutes or even less than 15 minutes of oral communication in English speech? A good number of professions call for extensive computer work (or other forms of solo-work) where hearing and speaking English may be very limited. Especially for the second circumstance, it’s not surprising that persons with English as a second language forget skills and may have very limited opportunity to deliberately practice American English speech skills in work and daily life. Deliberate practice of clear American English is the remedy. Take every opportunity to practice accurate and clear English speech by reading aloud anything from books to your children, online newspapers, several pages from a fiction book, or abstract or portions of a research article.
For English speech communication, deliberate practice strengthens the accurate motor or muscle memory—including adding to vocabulary. Deliberate practicc can be done no matter what stage in the lifecycle. Ack, you could be 99 years old and benefit from doing deliberate practice to improve your deficits or make your strengths even stronger. In other words, producing strong, vibrant, accurate English speaking for a vocabulary of 10,000 words to 65,000 benefits with deliberate practice, no matter the life circumstances or age.
Do native-born speakers deliberately practice pronouncing new vocabulary for work and social life? Absolutely! One strategy is to pronounce words after a news broadcaster or entertaining program while streaming or while viewing YouTube. Another strategy for native-borns is to enter vocabulary words to their smart phone, on the computer, or a notebook, and deliberately practice the pronunciation over and over until it is fluently and easily accurate.
Funny thing is, deliberate practice for the motor and muscle activity of English speech takes about the same amount of time as “mindless” practice. But the results are accuracy, proficiency, and long lasting… and deeper learning. More on “deeper learning” later.
Copyright 2023 by Clear Talk Mastery, Inc.
P for American English and Syllable Pronunciation for Clear Speech
This is our Number 3 in the series of recommended sequence for consonants and vowels.
Like Number 1 which has the word “probably,” this video also directly instructs for the American English (AE) consonant speech sound P.
Ninety, 90, sovereign and non-sovereign entities have English for their official language including India, South Africa, Nigeria, to name a few. (See For more information on “other” Englishes, see http://www.cleartalkmastery.com/blog/2023/03/17/assessment-why-bother/.) However, the pronunciation for the consonant speech sound P is different in other Englishes than American English. The consonant sound for P in American English has a puff of air after the lips are pressed together. If listeners cannot hear that puff of air, they cannot accurately identify it as an American English sound for P. Instead, they are likely to perceive the AE speech sound for F.
To do “clear English speech,” perceptually enhance or make it very easy to hear the puff of air for AE. Make the puff of air loud.
For deliberate pactice here for the consonant sound for P, press your lips together firmly. That tension or stiffness will make the fast twitch muscles grow bigger, stronger. For American English proficiency and mastery, you want the stronger fast twitch muscle fibers in your lips.
Advice for proficiency of AE– practice many times!
That’s why I (Antonia Johnson) am posting this recommended sequence of English speech pronunciation video tutorials (also on YouTube)—to help you get lots of deliberate practice.
English speech proficiency is accuracy in words. In the Accent Reduction Tip Number 71 below, you get video and audio and direct and guided instruction for the AE consonant sound P for the word “anticipate.” Plus, you get coached on syllable pronouncing syllables clearly and accurately. “Clear Speech” is a style or mode of talking where each spoken syllable is clear, not slurred together, so the listener can hear each syllable. All syllables in English have a meaning.
Consider doing this video tip speech instruction (about 2 minutes) multiple times. Aim for AE accuracy each time. Of course, you are getting accuracy on many speech sounds when you deliberately practice words. Deliberate practice means your goal is to get better!
