One thing that we do daily with our students is sing a pop song. That’s only just a bit difficult for me as I really don’t like any of the current pop music out there. I’m a country girl through and through. Yes, it comes from living in Austin for graduate school. But I digress. Last week I finally managed to put together a mix CD from the music I own. There are some pop-ish country songs out there that I put on the CD. I do have some older pop music that I put on there. And I also put on some oldies from the 50s, 60s and 70s.
The one that I’m doing with all of my preschoolers right now is “Rock Around the Clock” (the history of the song is actually quite interesting). I’m also doing it with A4 and B4 because it’s a pretty easy song. It’s also a good song for the kids. Koreans who are learning English tend to have lots of trouble with the R sound. So it’s a great song for reinforcing correct pronunciation.
We’re also supposed to have the kids try to read the lyrics. Inevitably, kids lose the papers you give them. And I wanted to make this as “fun” as possible. So I printed up some lyric sheets that include images relating to the song and laminated them. I then keep them and hand them out to each class. No more “Teacher! I don’t have my paper!” for me. Click the picture for a nearly full size image. And click for a downloadable copy in Open Document format, or Microsoft Office format.
No comments
Comment by efl boy on November 8, 2007 at 8:16 am
You said:
“Koreans who are learning English tend to have lots of trouble with the R sound. So it’s a great song for reinforcing correct pronunciation.”
Could you elaborate a bit more on it? Is it rhotic R? I heard that the Japanese have trouble distinguishing /l/ and /r/. Is it the same with Koreans?
ps. Forgive my ignorance ;)
Comment by katiesue on November 8, 2007 at 8:48 am
I have no idea what a rhotic R is and a quick Google search didn’t answer my question. Linguistics isn’t my thing :)
But initial Rs are hard for Koreans to produce. As I understand it (and I could very well be wrong) it’s the same issue the Japanese have.
At my last school, I taught “The Gingerbread Man” to two different classes. The first class didn’t learn phonics from me. They would read “Run, run, you can run” as “Lun, lun, you can lun”. The second class did learn phonics from me and we worked really really hard on making good R and L sounds (mostly because by the time I got those kids, I knew that Rs and Ls were an issue). They had little problem reading the passage as “Run, run, you can run”.
R blends don’t seem to be as big as an issue as initial Rs. And Rs at the end of words don’t seem to be a very big issue at all.
Comment by M on November 10, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Rhotic and non-rhotic describe a big distinction between two varieties of English accents. Every dialect is in one group or the other. The rhotic variety is where the r is pronounced wherever it occurs in spelling (most US speakers use this variety). The non-rhotic variety is where r is pronounced at the beginning of words and between vowels but not before a consonant or at the end of words unless the following word starts with a vowel. Most people in England are non-rhotic.
Within each of the categories r can be pronounced in several ways depending on the local accent.
Chinese EFL learners usually turn out to be non-rhotic, whether they develop an acceptable pronunciation of r or not.
I’m currently having a lot of difficulty understanding a person originally from the Philippines who as well as not pronouncing r recognisably for English speakers also eliminates lots of final consonants. For example ‘that’ becomes ‘tha’. Rather than non-rhotic, I’d describe her accent as hyporhotic. This person ought to be getting intensive one-to-one or small group tuition in pronunciation but as far as I know isn’t getting any.
If a lot of your pupils turn out to be non-rhotic it won’t matter at all because native English speakers wherever they come from understand both rhotic and non-rhotic accents without difficulty.
You’re doing very well to home in on the typical difficulties and spend plenty of time helping your pupils develop an acceptable pronunciation of r. Otherwise this can be a real barrier to easy comprehension.
You’re also making it fun. I loved your Rock around the Clock song-sheet.
When English speakers try their hand (or tongue!) at Chinese or Korean, their pronunciation problems must be just as great, only in reverse.