My favorite part of the reading for today was the section in Kanel's article about the "Din in the head". I tend to have a Din in my head quite frequently regarding material I am working on in school, more than just with language learning. I was amused to find a term for it.
I think music to teach language just makes sense. Most languages have a natural rhythm to them, and music could just reinforce this idea. Dr. Seuss is used to help children learn to read, it could definitely be adapted to teach language. Nursery rhymes could serve the same purpose as well as add some cultural info. My 3 year old has recently become a fan of "Fe, fi, fo, fum. I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he live or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread." I'm not sure about songs created specifically to teach language, but the alphabet song seems to work to teach the alphabet, so who knows?
Just last week I taught a lesson for my Composition class that used both a YouTube video of spoken word and recording of a song. Reading Kanel and Oishi's articles really made me feel like I did something right. Even though I did run in to some of the problems they discussed such as clarity of lyrics (I had them go to a lyrics web site so they could read along) and appropriate content (I clicked on the wrong video at first and it was one someone had doctored to be unbecoming of Hillary Clinton). Overall I guess I am excited to have literature to back up my decision to use music and videos in my teaching if ever the practice were to be questioned.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I am glad that things worked out for you for your Comp. class. Technology integration! And I think you're blogging about CALL in your Methods blog! :)
In my opinion music is all about emotions and emotions are all about human-beings so off course it works in lnguage classes, too.
Post a Comment