Editorial
Autorhythmy - the Importance of Inner Pictures and Rhythm in Foreign Language Acquisition. Part 1 by Mihály Hevesi appeared in HLT, Issue 4; August 2009

Autorhythmy - Part 2 and Part 3

Mihály Hevesi, Hungary

Mihály Hevesi (1970) lives in Hungary, author of Autorhythmy - a language acquiring method based on techniques used by formal and modern polyglots. He advocates for multilingualism and is publishing books on language acquiring and pedagogy. His homepages can be viewed here: www.englishidea.net , www.szepnapkonyvek.hu . E-mail: hevesim@yahoo.com

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Introduction
Part 2: How to be present in a text and why this is so critical
Part 3: How to understand a text in a foreign language without a dictionary

Introduction

In the last article about Autorhythmy I explained the importance of being present in a text we are listening to, in order to recognize the auditive shapes of the words and phrases. Then I was also telling about the most important means for getting used to this: following the rhythm of a text. I think it is important to explore in detail why is this so critical.

Part 2: How to be present in a text and why this is so critical

This situation may be familiar to you as well: my friend had been learning French for ten years, when he travelled to France for the first time. He couldn't understand anything being said there and couldn’t make himself understood. He couldn't even order a glass of water in a restaurant, as no-one understood his pronunciation. And I was convinced that I was the victim of a fatal misunderstanding when I first listened to Germans speaking to each other in Germany; I thought I had got off the train in the wrong place and had landed in Holland or Denmark. I was overcome by this shocking experience and it took me 3 to 4 months to understand the locals reasonably and to make myself understood in this language which I had been learning and reading for years. Let’s now take a closer look at why we may experience this kind of thing.

When we use a textbook for language learning - and in schools teachers rely mostly on them - even if we do pronunciation exercises we'll react when reading using our native articulatory basis, or at least with an articulatory basis very close to it. The same happens with Kato Lomb’s method (mentioned in the previous article about Autorhythmy) as well, when reading a novel. In fact we develop what scholars call an interlanguage.

Another reason is that the texts for most pronunciation exercises don’t seem to be based on natural speech or environment. You’ll listen to invented scenes being recorded in studios with very accurate speakers who may even speak a bit slower then usually people do. In real life you’ll face phone calls, or people speaking using different accents or at different paces. I am just describing things as they are and not making a criticism, because even with the best will in the world no-one can record real life containing all possible happenings, accents etc. and supply language learners with them on a tape or CD.

So these are some of the reasons why we don't understand the spoken language in real situations. Another reason I touched upon before – where, in my experience, the solution is to be found - is when we listen to a foreign speaker, we aren't present in the text being told, as we usually try to decode and identify the words and phrases with the memories of formally read texts from course books and we are lost with them while the flux of the spoken text goes on. Thus we miss the gist. We can’t understand a text globally.

So that’s why it is important to get used to being present in a text. Following the rhythm and melody will help you to do this. So at the first stage following the rhythm of a text will help you to be in the moment and in the text. (See the exercise in the last article!) I experienced with my students, that practising the rhythm and melody of a text (clapping or stamping the rhythm of an audio text or following the melody of it), they’ll be able in a few weeks to make out the auditory form of the spoken words, even if their pronunciation is far from being perfect or they haven’t heard or seen the written texts before. As a rule we don't follow the written text when listening to audio texts, otherwise we wouldn't practice being present in the spoken language but decoding it and linking it to a written and read text.

After practising for a few weeks like this students are very happy about being able to distinguish words where they had thought there was only a jumble of incomprehensible roars. (English is for Hungarians very difficult, as the articulatory basis, the rhythm and melody of it, is very different from their native language. But I am sure you'll be familiar with this as well in the case of your own native language when compared to other languages taught in your country.)

Another important question is, after or while having trained your mind to make out the auditory shapes of words and phrases, how you can understand a text without a dictionary.

There are some ways to get to the meaning of a phrase or word. By the way, I think beside the rhythm and melody exercises, these are the most important techniques that students should be familiar with when absolving school wherever they go, because these may help to get on with the language even if they don’t understand everything.

1. Use your inner pictures with the words you understand from a text, and let your inner pictures and sub-conscious mind do their work for the rest of the text.
2. Use cognitive ways to get closer to the meaning of a word or sentence. We call this in Autorhythmy word-investigation.
3. Look it up in the dictionary or word list - one of the most boring ways if not the most one – we usually don’t practice this in Autorhythmy. Of course we don't ban dictionaries, but to put it simply in our practices the immediate use of a bilingual dictionary would rather hinder the evolution of the skills that we are aiming to develop. But It should be also mentioned that there is a very creative exercise we use to learn words or phrases from a dictionary/word lists.

Part 3: How to understand a text in a foreign language without a dictionary

After or while having trained your mind to make out the auditory shapes of words and phrases another important question is how you can understand a text without a dictionary. I think these techniques are important to pass on to the students for their long term development in the target language.

1. Use your inner pictures with the words you understand from a text, and let your inner pictures and sub-conscious mind do their work for the rest of the text.
2. Use cognitive ways to get closer to the meaning of a word or sentence. We call this in autorhythmy word-investigation.
3. Look it up in the dictionary or word list - one of the most boring ways if not the most one – we usually don’t practice this in autorhythmy. Of course we don't ban dictionaries, but to put it simply in our practices the immediate use of a bilingual dictionary would rather hinder the evolution of the skills that we are aiming to develop. But It should be also mentioned that there is a very creative exercise we use to learn words or phrases from a dictionary/word lists.

1. Use your inner pictures
   1. Listen to a text without stopping it or looking simultaneously at the written text.
   2. While listening imagine the meaning of the words you just understand in inner pictures. you may close your eyes. If you hear ‘house’ imagine a house. Then as the flux of the text goes on imagine another word you understand and let your earlier inner picture pass. Don’t worry about the meaning of words you don’t understand nor the words that you miss because of the speed of the speaker. Catch what you can and be happy with what you have!!
   3. At the end think of the global meaning of the text. What might the whole text be about?
   Of course, this works with students who have some basics in a foreign language. But even if someone won’t get to a global meaning, this exercise helps them realize that inner pictures may be there when speaking and that making them conscious can help understanding and, especially in the way described before, this may help as well to be in the moment of the text, just like following the rhythm. As this exercise goes on for the next two days as well you may experience the emerging meaning. That is another important moment in language acquisition.
   Some of the students in the following days will understand the text globally. There will be a few words that don’t reveal their meaning by this exercise. For those use the practice I mentioned in the first part of this article when telling about Kato Lomb’s practice of reading novels without using a dictionary. The cognitive method looks as follows and I call it a word investigation exercise.
2. Think about the meaning of a word by using the word inspection exercise. This is a very important cognitive technique that or its variations I think should be taught in every type of language education. Its bases are in the book-reading method of Kato Lomb. You may use this practice even without doing the imaging exercise described before or when reading a text. In my practice the word investigation exercise looks like this (this may vary on an individual and time basis). A, B, C and D follow each other.
   1. I taste the word. This means that I pronounce the word inwardly and I feel it in my mouth, I fell the movements of my speech organs so that I need to pronounce it! Then I ask it "what may you mean?" or just simply "what does it mean?" What could it mean taking in account the context? (this is an attentative gesture, I am waiting for the meaning!)
   2. Of what other word or words does it remind me? After putting this question I also may say the word aloud. Have I ever met this word before? Where or under what circumstances or context? It doesn't matter if no word in the foreign language occurs to me. It is also good, if I get an associated word in my native language, but first strive to find something similar in the foreign language.
   3. If the meaning doesn't occur to me, I give it two probable meanings: "You may mean (this)......, or (that)....." Or something totally different!
   4. I pronounce the word three times aloud (if it is possible in variable forms, first slowly, almost tasting it, for the second time louder and at a natural pace, for the third time angrily, or sadly, or happily, or afraid… - but other orders are also possible.
3. Look it up in the dictionary or word list! I wont describe how to look up a word in a dictionary as this is a well-known process, and in our practice our aim is to develop special cognitive faculties to find out the meaning. Of course it can be used when needed, but keep in mind that first of all you should acquire some cognitive abilities to get to the meaning. Most polyglots confess that they use dictionaries only as a last resort - and even then a monolingual dictionary. But apart from getting useful information about a word in a sentence that you don't understand you may use the dictionary in a creative way. There is the possibility to gather vocabulary from dictionaries and this is an important way to do it. A simple learning word by word method is not effective, although for some people it may be of use.

A creative practice to pick up and maintain words from dictionaries looks like this: open a dictionary (it doesn’t matter whether it is mono- or bi-lingual). Read some words from a page (say 3-6, with their meanings) choose those you like or that are for some reason important for you. Then personalize each of them. It is important to find a personal situation you may fit in the word or phrase. Then build your personal sentence, e.g. I stumbled upon the phrase "flipping the bird" in a dictionary. I began to think how could I personalize it. While thinking I remembered a situation when stopping my car at some traffic lights. A car driver next to me hooted his horn and a pedestrian flipped the bird to this driver while crossing, The situation in fact made me smile. Then I made the sentence: "The man was flipping the bird to the driver." - a quite simple sentence, imaging the very situation that I saw.

Thank you for following these articles about Authorhythmy, I hope you have tried or you’ll try some of the exercises described before. If you don’t mind please let me know about your experiences.

Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.