Learning Spanish through songs: Lyrics training

Teenagers love music. Teachers love learning. Make a cocktail and you obtain Lyrics training.

You can use your Facebook account to sing up and get a free account in this site.

Once you have made your students sign up they will have to choose their level:

- beginner
- intermediate
- advanced 
- expert

and two modes:

- write: they will be typing the words [this can be interesting to set up a Spanish keyboard in your computer and get some practice]
- choice: they'll get to choose from one out of four options. 

Apart from this, the site offers two more activities to do along with the song:
- karaoke
- new exercise [just for teachers] what you can basically do is just change the words and select write or choice mode.

So far, I have been using it with my students for out-of-class practice. If they like Enrique Iglesias they can spend a full evening listening to the song in Spanish.

If your students like music, this is a great way to go, they will improve their listening/comprehension skills, pronunciation, memorize phrases...

A short selection of similar sites to learn languages with music:
- http://www.lyrics.com/
- http://tubeoke.com/

Interested in music for a language class?
Check this out!

If you want to get laid, go to college.
If you want an education, go to the library.

Frank Zappa

Lunaprofe 10/01/2015  No comment

Learning Spanish through music: using Youtube

Music is a powerful tool of expression. Language is too. 
We can get to know more about a culture through their music, rhythm...
We can use music to improve on our listening skills, gain vocabulary... 
Many interesting angles can be discussed about the benefits of using music to learn a language, activities...
To start the ball rolling you can do a simple activity: just listen to the music, enjoy the melodies, without doing anything else. Yes, nothing else needs to be done in this first step. Do not stress out, no rush, just listen the music through the playlist.
If you want to go a bit further you can listen songs and read the subtitles.
You can also write down the title and the author's song and do research on them. Then, do a mini-presentation to your class or friends.

If you like it, subscribe to my channel

Sequence:

1. Listen to the song

2. Read the subtitles while listening to the song

3. Do research on the song, author and music style.

4. Compare styles, music and author's from your country with these ones. You can use the Venn Diagram for this.

5. Present to your class/friends your findings.

Remember: Music positively affects language accent, memory and grammar as well as mood, enjoyment and motivation.

Lunaprofe 4/27/2014  No comment

Learning Spanish through music

One day I was talking with a friend and I mentioned I play the guitar. She saw it, she made the connection: 
- why don't you play the guitar in your classes? your students will love it. 
- Ummm... I've never thought about it.
One month later I was playing the guitar, my students were singing in Spanish and the result was amazingly unexpected for me. They got it fast. Way faster than me (it usually happens ;)
Their intonation, pronunciation and fluency were improved magically and we were having fun during classes. Whoa! I had to start doing some research on it right away! 

Here they are some of my findings:
It's so true that language acquisition depends on interaction [more when we are not in an immersion context]. And in my case the main source of interaction my students have available is their teacher. Also, even if we haven't noticed, there is a melody in our speech when we are teaching. We use so many different features like repetition, expansions, preference for simplified vocabulary, change in voice volume and modification of intonational contours.  These melodies become a scaffold for language learning. 
Exaggerated melodic contours found in adult-directed-to-infant-speech are considered to be parental intuitive behavior to guide their babies musical beginnings [Papousek 1996], but they are also seen as a species-specific learning guidance towards language [Feu and Piñero 1996, Wemke and Mende 2009]. 
An example of this is in the movie My Fair Lady when Professor Higgins distorts the rhythmic articulation of the following utterance: "The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain", and it is just at this precise moment when his student, Eliza Doolittle, starts reproducing language properly.

The same idea applies for our students singing and listening songs in Spanish acquiring authentic phonics through real native speakers.

On top of that I would add the contribution we are making to our students happiness and motivation.

But also remember that carrots & sticks are so last century. Let your students participate in class choices. You'll see the difference!

Further reading:

• Music & Language are processed by the same brain systems [Sciende Daily]
• Speaking in tones: Music & Language partner in the brain [Scientific American]
• Fonseca-Mora, M.C.; Toscano-Fuentes, C. and Wermke, K. (2011). Melodies that help: TheRelation between Language Aptitude and Musical Intelligence. [Anglistik International Journal of English Studies]
• Picture's source: http://www.melthodhaye.com

Lunaprofe 4/14/2014  No comment