Not part of the project; just for fun.

Last chance

For this my final recording, I elected not to be listening to the original while I recorded, instead doing my utmost from memory. At the beginning of this project, I drew my inspiration from the list of elements to work on provided by Dr.O in the project description, but I never did follow the suggested order. Instead I tackled the passage in an order that made sense to me based on my awareness of certain difficulties. I ended up spending a lot of time improving the original recording quality via Audacity's multiple track and playback features. I found myself immensely grateful for my knowledge of how to use Audacity, since my cousin used a recording format that no other program on my computer can even play. I think, that when embarking on any kind of project like this, it will be important to instruct students on the tools available. Audacity also provides a great way of commenting. You can record commentary on another track, and hear it as things happen in the original recording, then delete it for subsequent work. The only thing Audacity misses, and should have given its conceptual use is for music editing, is an ability to write on the tracks, a lyric track (like Pratt's annotation tracks). I started with Rhythm rather than voice quality or consonants and vowels because Rhythm and Intonation are the most identifiable features of a language. I took my guidance on this not only from my own previous experience with accent work (I learned both RP and cockney for a single play) but from Child Language which talks about the fact that extremely young children can recognize their mother's language based on Rhythm and Intonation. It made sense to me that since it seemed to be among the first thing children pick up, it would be a good starting point for my project attempts. Rhythm work led naturally to vowels, since for me, the trickiest areas to keep fluid centered around the transitions across multiple discrete vowels in 'matuod' and 'tuhoi'. Repetitions of the same vowel, as in 'paabuton' were far easier. Partially because of the lack of movement, and more because 'Paalam' means 'Goodbye' in Tagalog, the related language I'd actually studied before beginning this project and it was a grouping I was fairly practiced at saying. Analysis of the vowels in Pratt, which I undertook because I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong by ear alone, led me to the startling and frustrating discovery that most open syllables in Binisaya were cut off with a glottal stop. Between that and the unaspirated consonants, double releases were common and my glottis was spending more time shut than open. In practicing this, a physical technique worked extremely well. I was able to incorporate the glottal stops initially by practicing while lying down, thereby reducing the airflow I needed to cut off. To the end, I used a similar physical technique. None of the good recordings were done with my head held high, but with my chin slightly tucked to make it easier to cut off airflow. Of course the challenge there was not allowing that vocal posture to drive air into my nasal cavity either. There, I was thankful for voice lessons. My singing teacher spent ages teaching me to shape my airflow so that it was drawn across my palate rather than shifting into my nasal cavity. I was able to make use of those old lessons to maintain voice quality while incorporating the glottal stops. If I was doing this with a student however, maybe to work on a students' nasality, I would want to get in touch with her about the exact exercises. I remember a lot of ridiculous analogies to dolphins, but not exactly how she taught me the technique. While I was making use of that voice technique, I was also taking advantage of the fact that my archetype was a song. I may have been using the spoken lyrics for the actual archetype, but that didn't mean I couldn't use the sung version as a practice tool. I used it to get my vowels where they needed to be in my mouth, and also to practice general accent features. Singing is a method I often use to learn accents, as it tends to eliminate accentual features unless the singer makes the effort to keep them, like Herman's Hermits or The Proclaimers. I've always been able to sing an accent before I can speak it. This did create rhythm problems though, I kept trying to say the words to the much, much slower song rhythm than to the spoken rhythm, which is why I created the clap along and dual tracked versions where the recordings included both my cousin's voice and mine. Next, I entered into my battle with aspiration. This battle would continue throughout the remainder of the project with brief breaks to work on other problems such as the stress work needed as I shifted from a stress-timed to syllable-timed language and began working on matching the archetype's prominence. The most important part of the prominence and stress work ended up being mostly keeping the syllables distinct. I kept trying to use US style reductions, obviously a serious mistake. Binisaya not only has different reductions, but the archetype is someone reading the lyrics to a song, and the speaker knew when recording it that I was using it for school. The recording is careful speech. No reductions except those caused by the grammatical forms (Ako to ko when the agent occurs at the end of the sentence instead of the beginning, following the Patient-Agent pattern which makes the language look like VOS). This was of course made especially difficult by the fact that stress can be discriminatory in Binisaya. For the remainder of the project, I mostly focused on battling aspiration. I received some help from Kira's explanation to Mohamed of what happens during the reduction of the present participle. Her example of walking to walkin gave me a link to use in English that I could connect to what I was trying to do in Binisaya- that k in walkin isn't aspirated. This is exactly the same primary technique I used with my tutee, although in that case we were working on making connections from already mastered English rather than from L1 to another L. Beyond the aspiration, I mostly just focused on not losing what I had already fixed while I concentrated on aspiration and on getting the memorization down. I even ended up singing it into a mic, acapella, for an audience at the East Elementary International Food Fair. Due to my mind glitching and continuously trying to switch to the Philippine National Anthem (which is in Tagalog, not Binisaya) due to some superficial similarity in line beginnings and endings, it wasn't until that performance that I truly managed to get the whole thing memorized- just in time for the tricky holistic attempts at the end of the project. All in all this was a major challenge. I think that while this careful speech recitation of song lyrics provided me with a lot of useful ways to approach it, if I was doing this again, I'd prefer to do more natural speech. Of course, as I pointed out before, most Filipinos code-switch through at least three languages in the course of their conversations, so it would have been extremely tricky. I also should have perhaps taken more advantage of my family's status as native speakers, getting them to check on my progress. On the other hand, I found my dad's contribution of immediate and constant interruption of 'that's not how you say it' and 'you sound like an American' during Spring Break distinctly unhelpful and extremely annoying. I might also, with another semester of Japanese available, try to muddle through more of the established linguistic literature on Philippine languages, though it is mostly on Tagalog and much of it is in Japanese. Finally, I would, if such a thing is available, really appreciate an actor's guide to the accent/language, such as the one I used to pick up Cockney or the one I saw in Scotland written by Dr. Chris. Brian's tips were extremely helpful, and there's a lot more crossover than most realize exist. I would really encourage any student working on their pronunciation and presence (like the TAs in Lara's class) to try some basic acting exercises or, if they have time, classes. Nothing teaches volume and pitch control like being on a stage reciting spoken words, not even singing.

Step together now

As the semester moves towards the end, I need to move towards wrapping up. To that end I started working on combining two aspects of concentration for each recording. This one for example: combines my voice quality practice and my aspiration practice. Interestingly, I found that concentrating on both at once solved the distraction problem, albeit with the addition of a rather ridiculous looking mnemonic gesture where I closed my spread fingers into the shape of a talking hand continuously as I spoke. This gesture reminded me to produce less breath, to round my lips a bit more and to draw my vowels out more fluidly rather than kind of spittting or snapping them out as I do in English. Thankfully, in later attempts I was able to drop the ridiculous looking gesture, but it really helped during the earlier combination practices.

Full of hot air.

The most serious difficulty I've had with this language and this passage throughout the semester has been aspiration. Binisaya does not aspirate initial consonants. This was a difficult thing to catch and the single most salient difference between the accent of a Visayan speaker and an English accent. In English, our unaspirated consonants are limited to stops in consonant clusters. When my father came to visit, I even had to point this out to him, a native Visayan speaker. He'd never noticed the addition of breath when speaking English. After working on this for so long, I think I can safely claim that my cousins could rightly say that Americans are full of hot air. To work on aspiration for this recording, I put my hand in front of my mouth, and if I pronounced a stop with aspiration, I repeated it until I couldn't feel anything during the consonants. This was especially difficult when the stop was in front of a breath heavy lax vowel like 'a'.

Double time

I'm not entirely certain how that 'kay' ended up in the wrong line, but as I was consistently saying it in the wrong place, trying to fix it, and spending half the practice saying those lines just behind when I'm supposed to. Timing is everything. Therefore, to check and be certain I had the rhythm down, especially that 'kay', I practiced saying it with the right intonation and pauses in various contexts, at all speeds. Here's a better example of one of my sped up attempts. You can hear that I kept the rhythm of the language constant despite the varying speeds.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

One of the most interesting things to remember in this project is that I'm not just learning a passage,  I'm doing an impression. I wasn't sure what was different about it, but I could tell that I wasn't quite where I wanted to be. To my own ears, I sounded much more native, but I didn't sound like Barbie. Therefore, I spent this bit working on matching her exact voice quality. To do this, I recorded my best attempts with and without listening to her as I recorded. While my rhythm and voice quality were definitely improved by speaking with the recording, I can definitely note for both attempts that my voice quality improved by the second verse. The first verse always sounded off until I got into my stride.

Solving the Multitask Problem

I am a consummate multitasker. My father often expresses his disbelief; he can't understand how I can read, watch TV, play a game, bike, whatever all at more or less the same time. What does this have to do with learning? The problem is that I'm so used to multitasking I have immense trouble settling my brain down enough to engage in deliberate practice. My body and at least half of my brain scream in protest at being asked to sit quietly while the rest of my brain is engaged in concentration. Further, while I consider myself a visual learner- I remember most of what I read- that only applies to content retention NOT to word for word recitation. Between years of vocal performance, marching band, and drama, I connect memorization to movement. As Dr. Oshita put it, I need to dance when I remember things. Previous encounters with deliberate practice have only reinforced the need for movement: I've used it for martial arts, percussion practice, and plays. Beyond the recitation-movement connection, part of my brain needs to be engaged in some background activity for me to concentrate fully. I study with music or television that I've seen before. Contrary to most study advice about minimizing distractions, if I don't have something going on in the background, my brain distracts itself. As pursuant to this project, I'd find myself halfway through a line and wondering if the word was the same in Javanese or looking up an article on comparative lullaby topics or thinking about something else entirely. Surprisingly, I found an answer. I found myself, without any real decision to so, practicing in my car. I spend a lot of time driving, and for whatever reason, while most of my brain and body were engaged in driving, I found it considerably easier to do my practicing. Also, it was isolated, giving me an environment free of people, unlike my office or home. Of course that led to a different problem. While I can manage to practice while driving, I am not so stupid as to try recording while driving, and my brain usually skipped subjects by the time I got back to somewhere I could open my computer. In the future, when I work on something like this, or have a student experiencing problems with concentration: I can suggest taking the exercise for a walk, or giving a presentation while doing it (pointing out things on the screen, making good use of gesture). After this, I have considerably more sympathy and ideas for kinesthetic learning. After this attempt, I sounded more like a native speaker to my own ears, but not so much like Babs. I sounded more like myself. I need to work on reducing the intensity and audible effort it takes me to produce those sounds at those speeds with the reduced aspiration. I also need to go lighter and a bit higher. Honestly, I feel like I'm back at choir practice with my teacher telling me to stand a foot further back from the microphone.