Vanessa Armand & Kevin Garvey Materials and Curriculum Development in TESOL Professor Xiang 4/17/12

Peer Presentation #2 - Short Lesson Idea Our quick lesson does its best to integrate productive and receptive skills, pique students’ interest in the larger lesson and encourage Intercultural Competence (Kramsch, 2011) that will encourage our students’ learning beyond the classroom. In asking our students to read the lyrics and listen to narrative and/or interpretive English-language songs, our aim is to encourage the class to use English creatively to express their emotions and describe in their own words the stories or perspectives behind the songs they hear. This lesson could be useful as either a warm-up or a wrap-up / review of a lesson’s key vocabulary and grammar points. We believe it would work best as a recurrent exercise that could be scaffolded from simple, straightforward pop music to more interpretive and metaphorical songwriting. An additional component of online student blogs creates the possibility for homework and student-directed research. References Kramsch, C. (2011). The symbolic dimensions of the intercultural. Language Teaching 44(03): 354-367. Lesson Plan Ts select an American song with lyrics that either tell a story or can be interpreted

differently Ts hand out the song lyrics and (if needed) an accompanying glossary Ts do one read-through of the lyrics with the class Ts play the song (how much is played depends on the time allotted) Ss read along as they listen; asked to highlight points of interest Ts stop the song and ask Ss to free-write on one of three topics: Write the backstory of this song Write the “response” of the person being sung to (the “addressee”) Write about how you think the singer was feeling Teaching Tools Employed 1. Multimedia in the classroom 2. COCA text-analysis tool (http://www.wordandphrase.info/) 3. Student blogs and commentaries to continue interaction outside of class Post-Lesson

1. Connect the song exercise to the lesson (either as preview or review) 2. Possible homework: find more songs sharing the same genre or themes and

explain how they relate or contrast 3. “Find another song in this genre / of this theme that you like. Listen, interpret and

comment on the song. Comment on at least two other students’ entries.”---- ----Speaking / Listening 1st → Writing / Reading 2nd → Reflection / Presentation 3rd

4. Discuss style / genre of music, what it evokes and what themes each touch on

Peer Comments ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ Thank you!