I have loved using music to bring languages to life in my language
classroom. Music videos are a great way to introduce students to the
culture of French-speaking countries and develop speaking/writing
projects. For this particular project, I used French rap and encouraged
groups of students to write about chosen common themes. We used mind maps to explore the links between ideas and the sounds of the key words, such as the 'tion' 'isme' words.
Students used online rhyming dictionaries and wrote their rap around the main rhymes with the support of a dictionary and a sound file with a beat.
The text was then uploaded to a text-to-speech software
http://text-to-speech.imtranslator.net/ to allow students to practise
their pronunciation independently.
Some students needed more support and I recorded myself saying their text using Audacity
for them to practise listening, reading and saying the text on their
own. They could then try to say the text, record themselves and decide
if they were ready to perform it.
The performance was recorded
into a PowerPoint presentation with pictures and the words in French and
English. It was shared with the staff and other classes and it is still
used in school to promote languages.
