Hi Whizzes!
THE HILLS ARE ALIIIIIIIVE, WITH THE SOUND OF MUUUUUUUSIC.
WITH SONGS THEY HAVE SUUUUUNG, FOR A THOUSAND YEAAAAAARS.
Ok…they’re not, but they SHOULD BE.
Today I’d like to touch upon the importance of making music with lyrics a central part of your language acquisition life regardless of who you are. Doing so will transform your life faster than you can say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.🥳
Ok…it took some of you so long to say that…😒
Why Julie Andrews? I mean you can substitute with whomever you like—Beyoncé, Shakira, Audrey Hepburn, Montserrat Caballé—but in my sad orphaned childhood it was Julie who brought in the light AND helped me improve my English, just like she did for all those sad orphaned children in The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins. Which children?, you ask. Well, every so often I make a point of seeing if I still remember all their names, so here we go (Constanza rubs her hands enthusiastically):
🌈Liesl
🌈Friedrich
🌈Louisa
🌈Kurt
🌈Brigitta
🌈Marta
🌈Gretl
I DID NOT GOOGLE THAT, FYI.
And 🌙Jane and 🌔Michael, of course. ( I did Google that. Sorry, kiddos, you're just not as memorable as the Von Trapps 😥 😓 🫣)
You see, music and singing enact their magic powers on completely different areas of the brain/being🧠 than “prose”, as I like to think of non-musical speech. So, what are some pointers for consciously nurturing this practice in your language acquisition life? Here we go:
🔶EDUCATORS
Warm-Up Circles. Acquiring a language is closer to learning a sport than history class. For reals. So…lead your students through warm-ups, REGARDLESS of how old they are. Fun and culture are for everyone. If you don’t believe me watch the I Love To Laugh scene from Mary Poppins. Actually, watch it even if you do believe me. You can thank me later.
I adopted Warm-Up Circles when I worked at a Waldorf School in Brooklyn and encountered my friend and mentor Yolanda Navarro.
Yes…ALMOST all World Language Educators include music, somehow, in their curriculum, thank the goddess, BUT...
Warm-Up Circles are a whole different ballgame. 🎾 🏐 🏉 We’re talking…like a choreographed concert composed of poetry, tongue-twisters, songs, perhaps Verb Lists with specific motions attached to them (that the facilitator then uses whenever they are communicating with that verb in class), jokes. It’s EPIC. I went into this practice knowing around three songs/ETC and then went down the nerve-splitting path of learning…A LOT of the above stated phenomena, so that of course now it seems natural to me…but goodness it was not. (I was teaching eight different grades at once, if you want to know why precisely it was nerve-splitting). 😵
You teach it in increments, never tiring them, adding one more element of it each class or every two classes, and always making sure they are comprehending. Eventually you give them a written copy with translations for them to keep, but this is just for their out-of-class reference. The Warm-Up Circle is an oral and physical transference. At the end of each quarter, once they’ve mastered it, I ask for volunteers to lead different parts of it, and then for a couple of weeks I stand at the back of the room just doing the motions as different students lead the Warm-Up Circle. It’s delightful⭐️ 🌟 ✨. Once the quarter is over, I switch Warm-Up Circles. It’s taken me years to curate these, but it’s been so worth it.
Now I’m the Latin American Fraulein Maria. Certified.📜 📃 📄
🔶INDEPENDENT LEARNERS
Learn songs in your chosen Target Language. Print them out! 🖨 Make sure you have the translation and know what you are learning💡. HAVE FUN🎊🎊🎊. I’ve been doing this since I was a wee-lass🧸. It makes me SO HAPPY. It’s a double whammy. You strengthen your mental representation of the language while becoming slightly more “of that culture”, as music is one of the MAJOR KEYS to that unpinnable thang called culture. You won’t believe how much this will help with your acquisition of the ACCENT part of language acquisition as well. Like a jolly holiday. Like chim chim cher-ee. Like a spoonful of sugar.
Here are some of the songs I’ve done it with throughout my life:
⚛Italian
⚛Quechua
⚛Portuguese
🔶PARENTS
Streamline your key daily routines through song.
I see this over and over and over again. Y’all talk too much to your children🔊🔊🔊. The prose kind of talk. 👂👂👂Language processing is tiresome for the brain/being. Super tiresome. Y’all also ask too many questions of your children. ❓❓❓This is distressing to them. You are the captain. Like the Pied Piper, lead them with songs in the Target Language of choice.
Can I guarantee results? Yes. Eventually, apart from language acquisition, this is what you will see:
✅A smoothing out in your routines
✅A lightening of the mood in the household
✅A lot less fatigue both on your end and on your childrens’ end
For incredible Spanish songs, check out the talented Yola Polastri, from my fatherland, Peru.
How? Have specific songs that you sing around certain routines (brushing teeth🦷 , waking up⏰, going to bed🛏, coming down for dinner🍝). The lyrics can be related to the routine, or not. What matters is the resonance that you feel with the song. Your child will learn the song just by hearing you sing it. They may join, or not, and this is irrelevant, but they WILL learn it. My mom used to sing us bedtime songs when I was a girl. My sister and I almost never sang along, but now…I sing those songs all the time. I learned them. I loved and love them.❤️
So, aspire, like yours truly, to become your own epic Fraulein Maria. All the way.
Constanza Ontaneda
your own personal Language Acquisition Witch
