Music and Song

Music and Song Tim Murphey Resource Books for Teachers Shows how any piece of music – from folk and classical to jazz, rock, and pop – can be exploited in an immense variety of ways in the language classroom. Tim Murphey Music and Song Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam OXFORD and OXFORD ENGLISH are registered trade marks of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 1992 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 1992 2015 2014 2013 2012 20 19 18 17 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press (with the sole exception of photocopying carried out under the conditions stated in the paragraph headed ‘Photocopying’), or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the ELT Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Photocopying The Publisher grants permission for the photocopying of those pages marked ‘photocopiable’ according to the following conditions. Individual purchasers may make copies for their own use or for use by classes that they teach. School purchasers may make copies for use by staff and students, but this permission does not extend to additional schools or branches Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale Any websites referred to in this publication are in the public domain and their addresses are provided by Oxford University Press for information only. Oxford University Press disclaims any responsibility for the content ISBN-13: 978 0 19 437055 4 Typeset by Pentacor PLC, High Wycombe, Bucks Printed in China Acknowledgements This book began when my two elder sisters encouraged me to sing (not always in tune!) with them as a young child, and I got hooked on music. They taught me that joy was more important than perfect pitch. For the academic background, I was helped greatly to understand the power of the medium by Jean-Paul Bronckart, Bernard Py, and Georges Denis Zimmermann, who guided my PhD research on the use of music and song in language learning. Many other kind musical souls read and commented on previous drafts of this book, providing valuable input and encouragement. Thea Bredie, from Holland, stimulated me greatly with her initial questions and valuable comments. Rod and Sonja Nash, teaching in Germany, have corresponded with me for several years on the topic. I found Dennis Davy and his dissertation on the subject (unfortunately after I had finished my PhD on the same) and discovered a soulmate in his ideas and experience from teaching in Japan and the Arab world. Readers in Japan, teaching a variety of languages at different levels, have helped me shape the book further: Lila Madge, Felicia Rey, Gary Beaubouef, Raoul Holland, Tadashi Sakamoto, and Gabriel Yardley. Two anonymous OUP readers also gave valuable feedback. Finally, Alan Maley’s engaging advice and personal interest greatly influenced the book’s final form. Several schools allowed me to experiment extensively with music and song in my classes. The Universit? Populaire in Neuch?tel, and the Commercial School in Biel, Switzerland were brave enough to allow me to teach ‘English through music’ classes. For fifteen summers at International Summer Camp, Montana, Director Rudy Studer provided me with an international mixture of children from six to eighteen years of age in our French, German, and English language courses. During the writing I have also been fortunate to work in two extremely supportive and stimulating academic environments, at the Universit? de Neuch?tel in Switzerland and Nanzan University in Japan, where fellow teachers and staff have encouraged and added to the music. I would like also to thank the many individual students who taught me how to appreciate the beats of their different drums. This book is about using music and song, and music and song were much used in its late night writing. So thanks to the music … Tim Murphey Nanzan University The publisher and author would like to thank the following for their kind permission to use articles, extracts or adaptations from copyright material. There are instances where we have been unable to trace or contact the copyright holder before our printing deadline. We apologize for this apparent negligence. If notified the publisher will be pleased to rectify any errors or omissions at the earliest opportunity. Music & Media for the ‘European Airplay Top 40’ USA Today for the article ‘Voices: What do you think about the music kids are listening to today?’ Et Cetera for the article ‘Pop Lyrics: A mirror and a molder of society’ by Sheila Davis Pan Books for the excerpt from The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sachs. The author and series editor Tim Murphey (BA in French and German, MA in TEFL) wrote his PhD thesis in Applied Linguistics on Songs and music in language learning: an analysis of pop song lyrics and the use of song and music in teaching English as a foreign language (1989). He is also the author of Teaching One to One (1991). He taught for seven years at the English Language Institute (University of Florida); for seven years at the Universit? de Neuch?tel in Switzerland; and has spent sixteen summers teaching and playing with an international array of children at International Summer Camp, Montana, Switzerland, where he co-ordinated the French, German, and English language courses. From 1990 to 2001 he was teaching, writing, and learning at Nanzan University in Japan. He is currently Professor of Foreign Languages and Applied Linguistics at Yuan Ze University, Taiwan. Alan Maley worked for The British Council from 1962 to 1988, serving as English Language Officer in Yugoslavia, Ghana, Italy, France, and China, and as Regional Representative for The British Council in South India (Madras). From 1988 to 1993 he was Director-General of the Bell Educational Trust, Cambridge. From 1993 to 1998 he was Senior Fellow in the Department of English Language and Literature of the National University of Singapore. From 1998 to 2002 he was Director of the Graduate Programme at Assumption University, Bangkok. He is currently a freelance consultant. Among his publications are Literature (with Alan Duff, OUP 1990, in this series); Beyond Words, Sounds Interesting, Sounds Intriguing, Words, Variations on a Theme, and Drama Techniques in Language Learning (all with Alan Duff), The Mind’s Eye (with Fran?oise Grellet and Alan Duff), Learning to Listen and Poem into Poem (with Sandra Moulding), Short and Sweet, and The English Teacher’s Voice. Foreword There is no human society without its poetry. There is no human society without its music. When put together, they constitute a powerful force for both cultural cohesion and identity and for individual fulfilment. In relation to language learning, the use of music and song offers two major advantages: 1 Music is highly memorable. Whether this is because it creates a state of relaxed receptivity, or because its rhythms correspond in some way with basic body rhythms, or because its messages touch deep-seated emotional or aesthetic chords, or because its repetitive patterning reinforces learning without loss of motivation – whatever the reason, songs and music ‘stick’ in the head. 2 It is highly motivating, especially for children, adolescents, and young adult learners. Popular music in its many forms constitutes a powerful subculture with its own mythology, its own rituals, and its own priesthood. As such it is a part of students’ lives in a way that so much else we use is not. If we can tap into it, we release unsuspected positive energy. But the appeal of music and song is not confined to the young, or to popular music alone. Folk music, opera, classical music, ethnic music – all have their devotees. The motivational appeal is present to many different types of learners. Clearly, it would be unwise to ignore this flexible and attractive resource. Indeed, language learning has always made good use of it. This rich vein has never been quite so fully worked as in this book, however. The author sets out to prove his contention that ‘anything you can do with a text you can do with a song’. But he goes beyond this to call upon the unique properties of music and song also. The result is a fascinating and varied array of material and ideas in a form highly accessible to teachers at all levels. Alan Maley Introduction Once upon a time, while doing a survey in a secondary school in a remote area of Switzerland, I showed my questionnaire to the teacher before a class. One part of it had a list of the artists from the current Top 40, and she tried to identify them. Failing to recognize all but a few, she told me that her students surely would not do much better. In class, she was astonished when the students eagerly started writing song titles beside the names of nearly all the artists. As I walked around the class, I asked her to join me. On the cover of nearly every notebook and book-bag were the names and logos of the pop groups that were on the questionnaire. She had never seen them before (or had not realized what they were!). A lively discussion followed the completion of the questionnaire and the teacher was amazed at how well her students voluntarily expressed themselves in English about my research and their musical tastes and habits. From what I could see, she was a very good teacher, who had established good rapport with her students, but she had never suspected her students’ intense interest in and knowledge of pop music. A few months later, I received a letter thanking me for showing her how to tune in to her students’ interests, saying she had never seen them more motivated than since she had started asking them to teach her about their music and how they perceived it. Of course, that had not been my goal at all – I was simply collecting data for my research. Her gratitude did, however, reinforce my belief that highly motivated language learning starts with the students and what they are interested in. ‘As language teachers we are the most fortunate of teachers – all subjects are ours. Whatever (the students) want to communicate about, whatever they want to read about, is our subject matter.’ (Rivers 1976:96) Why this book? Music is everywhere and all students have musical tastes. This book is intended as a tool for tapping into this resource. I also hope it will show teachers how stimulating it is to tune in to the wealth of information, reactions, and feelings already there in our students. The advantage of musical materials is that they are so readily available to the teacher, and so immediately motivational to most students. Songs alone, however, will not teach anyone how to use language – no matter how great their memorability, how much fun it is to sing and listen to them, or how ‘energizing’ the change of pace might be. Just listening to and singing songs will not make students able to communicate in another language. For three years I was in a choir. We learnt songs by heart in about a dozen languages that we did not speak. However, we were incapable of using the language in the songs for communication. This does not mean that we did not learn something of the sound system which might have helped us later had we studied the languages. But what we learnt in the choir could not be transferred, as it was, to natural language use. In other words, of themselves, songs can be immensely valuable for developing certain capacities, but they can be many times more valuable if we exploit them creatively to bridge the gap between the pleasurable experience of listening/singing and the communicative use of language. That is the major goal of this book: to show how to use songs and music as enhancers, reinforcers, or as centre-pieces for communicating in the classroom. Thus, this book provides some basic starting points from which the teacher and class can diverge or progress creatively to a variety of individually adapted activities. Finally, I hope this book will be used as a means for teachers to increase rapport with their students. Music and song is a communal activity in which, for a while, the world becomes one. Everything we see, everything we do is associated with the sound we are hearing (and which is echoing in our minds). The use of music and song in the classroom can stimulate very positive associations to the study of a language, which otherwise may only be seen as a laborious task, entailing exams, frustration, and corrections. The importance of music and song in language learning Many of us have experienced with amazement how quick students are at learning songs. It is also a common experience to forget nearly everything we learn in another language except the few songs that we learnt. For a variety of reasons, songs stick in our minds and become part of us, and lend themselves easily to exploitation in the classroom. 1 Although modern technology has universalized access to song, it could be that song actually preceded and aided the development of speech in homo sapiens (Livingstone 1973). If we think about it for a second, it is easier to put intonation on ‘lalalalala’ than it is to make the finer distinctions required by language, i.e. to sing with vocalizations is significantly easier than speech. But what is even more amazing is that is also seems easier to sing language than to speak it. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/tim-murphey/music-and-song/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.