SINGIN’ TO ENGLISH
a teacher’s guide by
Jesse CRAIGNOU
The guide to a whole new wealth of learning material to teach and learn English with fun when you sing into English !
Sing your way into English !
‘Music was my first love… and it will be my last.
Music of the future and music of the past…’ John Miles.
CONTENT
Intro
English
Learning
Teaching
Teaching kids and young learners
Music
Music and me
Music and you - Benefits of music and songs and singing
Selecting your songs
Using your songs
Workshops
Greatest Hits !
Words and music
Music for music’s sake
Outro
Thank You
Training and Coaching
Intro
Teaching has been one of the most discussed and debated topic since education saw the light of day… and it still hot on the grill…
Likewise teaching approaches and material receive support as much as criticism. Many have been looking and many more are still searching…
All sorts of things have been said and more sorts of things will be said.
My approach has been experimental at times… but has always been hands-on and results oriented… and focussed.
Every month I start a course or a class where I meet people who have been through countless years and countless courses face with countless approaches and support materials all to no avail…
Statistics on teaching are more than enough to leave anyone speechless…
Today it is simply shocking to realise that:
Most teaching is not teaching
Most teachers are not teachers
Most teaching is irrelevant
Most teachers don’t motivate
Most teaching doesn’t last
Most teaching is incoherent
Most teachers don’t enjoy teaching
Most learners don’t enjoy learning
Most teachers blame the students
Most learners have grown to blame themselves…
yet some of them even become… teachers !
More than anything teaching and teachers miss the whole point…
Most of them are begging for something new but they turn down any new offer… resist change and praise the value of time-honoured material… which they admit to being inefficient… whilst they blame learners for poor results.
Trouble is neither teachers nor learners have come together to get the show on the road…
We must make teaching enjoyable, efficient and fun !
Boring drills and worn out exercises still rule the roost but at the end of the day the results of painstaking endeavours melt like ice in the rising sun…
When we think that everyone all over the world learns to speak with songs and nursery rhymes that all cultures are first and foremost oral some of them haven’t been written to date… when we think that speaking is most a matter of rhythm and rhyme… and songs and music are simply blatantly left out of all language courses… leaving small room for one or two occasionally at best…
Not to mention that people living in underdeveloped countries speak two or three or more languages and have never been to school… most of them can’t read nor write…
In fact learning languages orally or parrot fashion would cut short all accent and reading inducted issues…
We are offering you all here a resourceful book for teachers, trainers and coaches right across the board !
English
English is a language to be reckoned with in today’s -and tomorrow’s- business world.
English is THE language of international communication.
Whether for business or pleasure you’ll need English one day and sooner than later…
The market of English is beyond a writer’s wildest dreams !
English teaching material and course books come by the score and yet are just missing that point that teaching material cannot reach…
Something had to be done about it and here is a successful way to take the pain out of the gain.
Millions of people all over the world learn English every year.
Books and teaching material abound and most of them are good too yet they miss the element of pleasure essential to any learning… Every week I meet people who arrive beaten and leave with a smile on their face… There is a capital niche that no one has ever tackled seriously !
English is the key to a better job… a better salary… a better life !
English is not -contrarily to common belief- a hard language to master only the training process must follow certain rules and good practices as we will see further.
And strangely enough, English is probably, in a sense more than Italian, the language of music !
As a language teacher, communication trainer and coach, I get to meet dozens of people who need to either learn or brush up and further their command of English every month.
Sadly to date most teachers, trainers and coaches do not have the necessary experience and training to ensure that you can meet objectives and repeat good business.
Most learners are put off by their lack of progress, lack of confidence, lack of command and give up and / or change training centres… until some of them even find their way to me and… break out into a ‘With YOU I can !’
I have to tell them that they always could only they had not met the right person to help them get there…
Learners come to me year after year and recommend my courses. Do yours ?
They come to me with the objective of better performance and leave with a better grasp and command of English and so much more…
In this book we will look at what learning and teaching comprises involves and entails and what further means we can implement in our approach to help our learners and trainees improve their learning skills as well as their results.
This book should rule the roost of your course !
Learning
Learning is a natural process to man yet most people could learn more, better as well as faster and more durably.
Anybody can learn anything at anytime of his or her life ! That is your brain for you !
It does not get any better than that !
To learn we need to involve a few key elements and every teacher, trainer and coach should be in complete control of those strings.
More than anything learners need to :
Attend and focus on the topic of the lesson or session. Regular attendance and involvement are crucial to good learning and progress.
Enjoy learning. Appeal to the learner and the brain. Pleasure in learning will help people join in and attend and participate again and again. The original contract of learning does not guarantee attendance or results.
Repeat the learning over and over. To embed the learning the brain needs repetition. Repetition hypnotises the brain and engraves it deeper still in the conscious and the subconscious brain in a reassuring way.
Learning really involves five brains all in one !
The left and right brains as well as the triune brain…
Teachers, trainers and coaches need to involve the whole brain as much as the participants in the training process.
The more integral the teaching approach the easier and the better the learning.
Music and singing can do that for you and your leaners !
Music associates all the parts of the brain as well as relaxes the learner. Singing is repeating and memorising language and phonetics.
Music offers you a wonderful opportunity to ring the changes with pleasurable material.
Alzheimer’s disease patients remember songs they learnt in their childhood !
When I was fifteen a Swedish friend of mine offered me an album I played and sang along to non stop, from dawn to dusk.
Thirty-five years later the album is remastered and reissued on CD and upon receiving it I immediately played it and sang all along the album ! Every single song ! From the first to the last track ! Yes siree ! It was there all the time… in my memory.
More often than not I get the odd person telling me it’s not true and it does not work.
So I choose a couple of words and phrases from various exotic languages I know and ask them to play the game. We ‘gospel sing’ or drill it and in a couple of trials they get it more that just well. Well beyond their own expectations !
They sing their way to perfection.
Teaching
Teaching is giving learners means to achieve higher skills and more autonomy… Supplying them with the appropriate tools and knowledge…
The truth of the pudding is in the eating…
Teaching cannot and must not be improvised and neither can the teacher but sadly too often the case… I have seen too many despaired learners and teachers faced with the hard reality of the arena as I like to call it…
Being a native speaker does not make one a teacher… far from it ! Otherwise we would all be teachers and god knows we are not… suffice it to look at the challenge with educating our own children…
Worse still you could be a native with little or no education.
Knowing and mastering never makes one a teacher…
A teacher to my mind should be at least bilingual… so as to know what learning means… then the teacher needs to have followed a course in teaching and tutoring or coaching… and taught some classes under supervision…
Teaching requires many various skills and tools, which need to be blended so as to ensure the best delivery possible. Naturally books videos DVDs and audio materials are a bare necessity but still they have to be carefully chosen and blended to match needs and meet expectations…
Triune brain, left brain, right brain are called upon and naturally music needs to be brought in to the matter !
Teaching well supposes learning well and the teacher, monitor or coach should keep an open eye and mind on everything all the time… New teaching material appears all the time everywhere and anywhere under the most unexpected forms sometimes…
You can even create or design your own…
Teachers, trainers and coaches need to :
Audit learners and assess their starting level. You need to know their exact start level and what bases they will need to cover before and / or together with new acquisitions are proffered.