By Tamara Jones
ESL Instructor, SHAPE Language Center, Belgium
jonestamara@hotmail.com

Last week I talked about some ways I incorporate songs into my Conversation classes. I’ve also had great success with bringing music into my Pronunciation lessons. Singing and Pronunciation are just a perfect fit. At no time is my French /r/ sound more perfect than when I am singing along with my recording of Edith Pilaf’s “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.”

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By Tamara Jones
ESL Instructor, SHAPE Language Center, Belgium
jonestamara@hotmail.com

So, there I was, tearing through the streets of Brussels, chatting away with my taxi driver in my halting French. He was telling me (if I understood correctly) that he had family in Quebec, and I wanted to tell him that even though I am from Canada, I have never been to Quebec. As I was trying to cobble together a grammatically correct negative, the lyrics from a French song suddenly popped into my head. Non, je ne regrette rien. Thanks to French songstress Edith Pilaf, I got my negative right! Je n’ai jamais visite Quebec. As a teacher, I have been using music in my English classes for a while, but this was the first time I had a personal experience that backed up my hunch that singing is a great language learning tool.

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By Ela Newman
Instructor in Developmental Writing and in ESL
University of Texas at Brownsville
newjgea@aol.com

In an ironic sort of way, Monika stood out in that class I was teaching a few years ago.  Timid, often nervous, and generally unmotivated, she attracted my attention.  Monika put a lot of effort into hiding herself among her classmates rather than taking advantage of the frequent participation activities.  Still, I could see her there; she was silent and struggling.

Half way through the semester things changed, however.  Monika discovered something, something key to effective language learning, something characteristic of good language learners.  How did she discover it?  Well, that’s a little tale worth telling, in a moment….

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