|
How
does Rock Talk work?
Rock Talk
uses pop music because the songs are structurally ideal for
the repetition of relevant material while still being able
to hold the student’s attention. To put it differently,
it’s the “drill” without the “kill.”
Each lesson is structured with an icebreaker (to warm students
up), followed by a medley of two or three top pop hits which
contain the relevant vowel sound
or consonant blend. The medley is also built around a “theme” for
the chapter and forms the chapter’s content. These medleys are not sound-a-likes.
Arrangements are carefully constructed to a beat from Gary Glitter’s song, “Rock ‘N
Roll,” in such a way that students can’t escape from the “groove.” The
singing involves unusually long phrasing. In this way, if students breathe when
the singer breathes, they learn to rest on the vowel when they speak English.
In other words, students are “tricked into” fluency painlessly
and easily.
Also included in each chapter are grammar exercises based on the embedded
grammar structures found in the songs, as well as appropriate vocabulary
and cloze exercises.
Each chapter ends with a discussion of the chapter’s theme (which facilitates
the acculturation process), followed by role play exercises based on the plots
of the songs, and culminating in a writing assignment. Each exercise is keyed
as to level so that Rock Talk can be used as a supplemental tool in a multi-level
setting.
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
How
did Rock Talk evolve?
Jenny
Redding, creator
of Rock Talk, began using music in her own second language acquisition
process with Spanish. It therefore came naturally to her to use this approach
with her ESL students when she began teaching in 1982. Then, while taking
TESOL courses at UCLA to earn her TESOL Certificate, her classmates kept
requesting her musical lesson plans. It was at that moment that Rock Talk
was born.
Jenny honed the technique, field-testing a variety of lessons from 1994 to 1997
on hundreds of ESL students from all over the world. Jenny was a “freeway
flyer” at the time, and taught at Glendale Community College, where the
ESL demographic is mostly Middle Eastern students, as well as teaching at Pasadena
Community College, where the demographic is primarily Asian, and finally teaching
at Oxnard College, where the demographic is primarily Latino.
|
|
|
What
has happened since 1998, when Rock Talk was first published?
Now, over 50,000 students
and 1,500 school districts across the nation are using Rock Talk, from
middle schools, high schools, intensive foreign language programs, to colleges,
including Yale University, UC Davis, Cal State L.A., and the L.A. Unified
School District,
to name a few.
Back to top
|
|
 |
|
|
