Singing the Language: A Multimedia Approach to Language Acquisition
Kenyon College
I. Introduction
My objective today is to offer a personal perspective on the advantages that the use of music can create to promote language acquisition, and to present some examples of the unique ways in which multimedia technology can contribute to accelerate this process.
II. Background
I would like to begin by providing some background on the origin of the multimedia program that I will briefly demonstrate. The main objective of the program is to accelerate language acquisition in Spanish through the utilization of music as an engaging vehicle to introduce students to key cultural values embedded in linguistic and extra-linguistic codes. It was developed by Profs. Metzler, Piano, Núñez and myself (all Kenyon Spanish Faculty) in collaboration with three students, Jeb King, Allison Riley, Ana Ramírez, and the OHIO5 Language Technology Specialist, Sheryl Coleman,. The project was funded in the Spring of 1997, by the OHIO5 Language & Technology group, a consortium supported by the Mellon foundation to strengthen the teaching of foreign languages through the use of information technology and collaboration among the participating institutions (The College of Wooster, Denison University, Kenyon College, Oberlin College and Ohio Wesleyan).
III. Framework
To begin, let me provide a framework to define the potential inherent to the relationship of music and language. Three basic questions will help us explore this potential. First, why do we use music in the language classroom?; second, how do we generally use it?; and third, can music truly help language learners?
A. Why do we use music in the language classroom?
From the stand point of the language instructor, I believe, music offers several advantages:
1. the motivational factor:
Most language teachers, I believe, have witnessed the fact that students become quickly engaged when invited to participate in an activity involving music. Music, then, renders itself a captivating tool to get and retain students' attention. The second advantage, as I see it is:
2. flexibility:
The short, rhythmic text of a song lends itself quite well to assist in the teaching of all the language skills. Thus, we may use a song to target listening skills, to promote memorization of grammatical patterns and vocabulary, or to generate oral and written discussions. The third advantage as I see it is what can be called:
3. subliminal learning:
I personally believe that the melody of a song mediates language learning at a subliminal level. In other words, I propose that students remember the language better, when it is sustained by a melody. Indeed, the original idea of developing a language program with music at its core, was suggested to me by the casual observation at home that, in the process of trying to promote bilingualism in my children, the use of songs seemed to provide an effective vehicle for them to register and acquire Spanish grammatical structures. Prompted by this observation, I devoted some efforts to investigate and design ways in which we can effectively incorporate music into our language curriculum. But before moving to specific examples, let me provide some perspective on how is music generally used in the language classroom.
B. How do we generally use music in the language classroom?
- fill-in-the blank exercise
Typically, music has been introduced to test phonological, lexical and grammatical features of the language using a fill-in-the blank exercise. This model, inherently analytical, linear and lacking a context, reduces the students' ability to appreciate the linguistic, musical, and cultural idiosyncracies of the song, and, ultimately, to sing along the language. Therefore, the song is quickly forgotten, serving mainly as a tool for changing the pace of the daily learning routine.
C. Singing the Language: A Practice-Based Strategy for Language Acquisition
By contrast, the model that I am currently implementing seeks to instill in students the value of singing in the target language. To do so, I have designed practice-based strategies which derive from the main principles orienting communicative approaches to language learning; that is to say:
- the active use of the spoken language
- the teaching of contextualized grammar
- providing an overall linguistic and cultural context for the language
Our Hispanic music program, Ingenio, seeks to fulfill this criteria by:
-Contextualizing the songs through an in depth exploration of the historical and cultural contexts from which the music emerges
-Providing Intensive Listening Practice through CD Dictation and Short Quizzes
-Promoting Singing in the Target Language
These strategies rely heavily on the utilization of multimedia technology, because this technology has allowed us to build into the quite successful model provided by communicative approaches, even greater student participation, by creating challenging opportunities for self teaching outside of the instructor led classroom. Having said this, let me show you now a couple of examples that illustrate some ways in which I have implemented our program.
IV. A Case Study
A. Example #1: "El Bolero Latinoamericano" in Third Year Spanish
This semester in my third year Spanish class, I introduced the bolero latinoamericano, which constitute one of the most influential cultural expressions of Latin America. This is the music of desire and seduction, of intimacy and absence, combining the themes of sublimated love and erotic passion (which naturally engaged students rather quickly). In four weeks students explore three main cultural contexts, which played a fundamental role in the development of the bolero:
1) the origins of the genre in Cuba, where the danzón (which derived from the Afrocuban "contradanza", that comes from the French and English "country dance" brought to the orient of Cuba in the late eighteen century by immigrants from the Dominican Republic) contributes the rhythm 2 by 4, and the dancing modality of the embracing couple;
2) the evolution of the genre in México, where the writer and interpreter Agustín Lara inscribes once again the concept of fatal love, or of a passion stronger than happiness, society and morality, following the tradition of courtly love as well as literary models such as Tristan and Isolda or Romeo and Juliet;
3) the descriptive-narrative bolero of Puerto Rico, which was produced mainly in New York by poets and writers who were singing for a public of immigrants, who have just began to settle down in the city, and therefore longed for the stories, the landscapes and values of their homeland.
B. Teaching Strategies
These cultural explorations provided me with the opportunity to develop and test outside of the classroom:
-reading comprehension
-vocabulary in context
-writing / analytical skills (through exercises build in our program)
Conversely, class-time has been devoted to:
- listening to short songs
-speaking about the connections between songs and cultural contexts
-providing a forum for students to express, in the target language, their reaction to the songs explored.
C. "Salsa," "Nueva Canción" and the Impact of Intensive Listening Practice
The second model that I want to show you, which I developed for a course that I am currently teaching on Literature and Popular Culture from Latin America, adds to the teaching strategies that I have just described, a period of intensive listening training.
The objective of this teaching strategy was to determine whether the introduction of cultural context, combined with an intensive listening practice, would have an impact on the students' listening and writing skills. I consulted with Professor Brad Hartlaub, a statistician from Kenyon, about the feasibility of responding to this inquiry and he helped me design an experiment to assess the method.
D. Experimental Design
The first problem that we had to resolve was to create a control group, against which we could measure the results. Since this was the first time I was using the program and I wanted to offer my students equal learning opportunities, we decided to design an experiment, using each student as his / her own control.
Briefly, the experiment consists of 12 songs (by two "salsa" and "nueva canción" song writers who are also interpreters) which were assigned randomly by Professor by Prof. Hartlaub to 12 time slots. During the first four periods of training students were given listening fill-in-the-blank quizzes followed by three comprehension questions. During the following four periods students were introduced to cultural contexts and received listening training using our CDdictation template. This was followed by an additional four testing periods. All the exams had the same format: 30 fill-in the blanks based on a song (10 verbs, 10 nouns 10 adjectives/adverbs) and three short answer questions) and were administered in the same way each time. By the end of the experimental period we should have a total of 440 scores (16 scores for each of the 25 students), which will allow us to determine whether students' language abilities indeed improved as a result of combining intensive listening practice with the introduction of cultural contexts.
E. Anecdotal Evidence
At this point I don't have more than anecdotal evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of this method. The following is a summary of students' comments during the training period:
-a student mentioned that she could hear in her head a particular song when reading the historical context of salsa and, as a result, could appreciate and assimilate much easier the cultural information provided;
-most of the students felt that their ability to listen to a song in the target language had very much improved after the intensive cd dictation training period;
-other students mentioned they found themselves humming or singing sections of the songs that they had listen to.
V. Future Directions
In terms of future directions, I believe that as faculty develop their own pedagogical insights about the potential inherent to educational technologies for language acquisition, we will see an increase in the experimentation and development of methods of assessment, as well as a gradual change in the ways we apply the criteria of communicative approaches to language acquisition. From my personal experience I can say that music has created unique opportunities to foster in my students not only language skills, but also an authentic appreciation of the cultural values that constitute the Hispanic ethos.
**Mellon Workshop, Kenyon College, December 5, 1998