Music From Argentina and Uruguay

A Spanish teacher friend recently asked me about music from Argentina and Uruguay that I use in my class. Then someone else commented on a blog post asking more about the music I use in my classroom, so I thought I’d share here what I shared with my friend:

I focus on music from Argentina and Uruguay because that’s what I listen to and it’s what I’m passionate about. I mix in other artists all the time, but the majority of the music that my students hear will be from these two countries.

As for pop music, I don’t think you can beat Axel. I used his song “Verte reír” last year and it was my first this year, and the kids love it. Cheezy pop at its best:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs9JJs1kmko

For some even cheesier pop, Valeria Gastaldi. I’m currently teaching her song “Inventario”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPlM95ouEeY

Next, I’ll mention Los Enanitos Verdes. I think the best way to describe them is like Argentina’s Maná– but don’t tell them I said that. I’m thinking about doing this song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvwh_nq9pHY

For something with a little more chill, there’s Jorge Drexler from Uruguay (my all time favorite Spanish speaking musician). You should listen to everything he has written. Last year I did “Todo se transforma” and the kids liked it a lot, but the verses are tough. I did “Volando voy” this year and it hasn’t been as much of a hit. I might recommend “Inoportuna”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGFqd_-tq5Q

In the same vein, Kevin Johansen was born in the US, but his mom is Argentine and he moved there in his early teens (or pre-teen years). I took a risk and did “En mi cabeza” last year and the kids seemed to like it, and I somehow avoided issues with his referring to a girl as, “Mi negrita.” I just told them he was in love with a black girl and they seemed to accept it. I think this year I’m going to do “Ni idea.” If you did this song it would give you a cool opportunity to teach them about the “vos” form as the line “no tenés ni idea” is quite prominent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_Ii8OxDzMM

Now, I absolutely must include los Fabulosos Cadillacs. They are super famous but their loud and fast latin rock/reggae usually serves better for music to play in between classes, as opposed to when the students are doing work. I’ve thought about teaching the following song, “Vos sabés”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pXsFQ_y4QE

I also recommend Bajofondo. It’s like techno meets tango, with musicians from Argentina and Uruguay. It’s great for some background music during bell work or any writing or reading that you assign. It’s fun instrumental, and when they team up with Mala Rodríguez or Julieta Venegas it’s really great pop:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKG9v7W08uA

Some of the most popular artists that must be included in anything about Argentine music are Andrés Calamaro, Soda Stereo, Charly García, and Fito Paez. But I don’t have any particular songs that I’ve focused on from them because I don’t know that there is anything particularly suited for the classroom. I play their stuff sometimes during bell work. I’ve thought about doing Calamaro’s song “Todo lo demás también” mostly because I like Xoel López’s version. Here’s the Calamaro version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNW7e98OCa8&feature=related

A great background music guy is Astor Piazzola, found where Jazz and Classical meets Tango.

Another good artist for background stuff is Lisandro Aristimuño. Think Radiohead meets Sufjan Stevens. Not necessarily catchy or sing-a-long worthy. The lyrics are poetry and difficult to really get. But I love this guy, and I’ve been listening for years, even before I went to Argentina. His website is lisandro.biz and if I am going to recommend just one song… “Me hice cargo de tu luz” :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cGT5OQ6Pfk&feature=related

Recently, I’ve been playing some Xoel López (aka Deluxe). He’s a Spaniard but lives in Buenos Aires and his music definitely reveals the influence of Argentine National Rock. I love his music. I’m thinking about doing his song, “Tendremos que esperar”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGuY6gpUNrU

Lastly, I give them some Carlos Gardel, the most famous tango artist of all time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJjiFp2Vv4M

Well, that’s all for now. Should be enough to keep anyone occupied for at least a little while. Let me know if you want more!

Homeschool vs. Homework

In response to something Thomas Young posted on his blog about homework, I referred to my experience as a homeschooling student:

“I really have trouble giving homework because of my own experience. I homeschooled in 7th and 8th and spent MAYBE 4 hours on school a day (which I did while eating breakfast in bed after waking up at 10am). When I went to a private school in 9th grade I felt like my life had been stripped away from me. I quit every group and club that I was in. I loathed school because after spending about 9 hours on school (ride included) a day and then at least an hour on homework every night, I was exhausted.

And I’m someone who loves learning, and I always have. I went back to home schooling after that and taught myself, and ended up graduating early and being admitted to a university as an early admittance student.”

Thomas asked me to expound on my homeschooling experience a bit, so I thought I would do so a post on my own blog….

“Studying” for Language Acquisition

I often find myself giving advice to people (friends and students alike) about how to “study” if they really want to learn a language. I usually give some of the following advice for them to find comprehensible input:

Find input that is interesting and comprehensible!

I encourage language learners to find input that is interesting and comprehensible. If the input does not meet these requirements, I tell them it will not be as effective for language acquisition.

Watch television and movies!

     In Argentina, English television shows were very easily accessible on  regular  cable. I encouraged my friends and students to watch sitcoms because a lot of times it was easy to figure out what was being said by the actions of the actors. Also, sitcoms have a lot of common and cliché themes that are easy to catch on to. Whenever I received a new student, it was very easy to identify the ones who spent a good bit of time watching television. One of the favorite shows was “The Simpsons.”

     Movies can be good too, but it is often a little more difficult to derive meaning from the images. When watching movies I often recommend using subtitles in the native language, while listening to enhance comprehensibility. Some learners prefer to use subtitles in the target language. I often recommend watching Engllish language films that can be watched with dubbing in the target language but with English subtitles.   

Read!

For more advanced learners, I recommended reading. I tend to recommend this to Spanish learners a bit earlier than I do English learners because Spanish is written very phonetically.

When students or friends ask what books they should read, I tell them to find the easiest book they can find that will keep their interest. I also tell them not to use dictionaries when they read, that if they need a dictionary to be able to understand the story it means that it is too hard. For native speakers of English learning second languages, I have found that literature young people that has been translated into the target language can be  great.  I’ve actually read all the Harry Potters and the first two Wimpy Kid books in Spanish, and never in English.

Find a conversation partner!

Talking with a native speaker who is willing to be patient and help you learn can be very beneficial. In college, I started really learning when I began to attend the language lab and just chat with the Spanish tutors on a regular basis. Sometimes it’s possible to find a native speaker of your target language who wants to learn your native language. Get together with that person and let them talk to you in their native language while you talk to them in yours. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you need to speak your target language in order to practice. You need input a whole lot more than you need practice. When your friend talks to you in his native language and you understand, you will be learning from the things that he or she says. And he or she will learn from you when you speak in your native language.

Listen to music!

Music can be a convenient and fun way to get language input. Lots of common phrases and colloquialisms will appear regularly in music. Make sure to learn what the lyrics mean though, because input is most beneficial when it is meaningful.

Surf the net!

The internet has tons and tons of resources that can be used to find great language input.

Videos in the target language can be found on YouTube and other sites. Video blogs on YouTube can be a great place to find every day speech in small video segments. I like to go to www.encuentro.gov.ar to find lots of videos from Argentine public television. 

For those who use Facebook, it’s possible to set your account to other languages. There’s actually a whole lot of language used in the Facebook interface, and it’s quite easy to make it into a learning experience. My Facebook is currently set to français.

The internet is also a great place to find the music mentioned above. I often set my Pandora station to a Spanish language artist that I like, and then listen to the other artists that it plays for me.

I am involved in www.couchsurfing.com and think it can be a good place to meet people to talk with in other languages, particularly for those who want to learn English and do not live in an English speaking country. Most CouchSurfers do speak English and they are people who are accostomed to hanging out with new people from other cultures and  helping them out. If you live in a big city there are probably CouchSurfers passing through your city or living in your city who speak your target language and would be willing to meet up for a coffee.

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If you have any other ideas for how language learners can find good input, or a personal experience of how these things have worked for you, please leave a comment!

Love and Logic #1

my potential classroom management revolution

So, this post is not World Language Ed specific, but I think it’s life changing for me, so I am sharing. This may be old news for more experienced teachers, but if you are new to the game I’d suggest checking out the website for Love and Logic even if you don’t read this whole blog entry on the subject.

http://www.loveandlogic.com/

If you haven’t picked this up from my blog, classroom management has been — difficult — for me this year. I looked for advice all over the place. I took in everything I heard from colleagues, parents, students, websites and books. Nothing seemed to work. After almost an entire year of write-ups, detentions, Saturday schools, parent phone calls, parent conferences, behavior improvement plans, suspensions in and out of school, and even some expulsions, I found that behavior in my classroom kept on going just about the same. Oh, and I did try positive reinforcement, too, from time to time.

But then… a month or so ago my school sent me to a Love and Logic seminar with Dr. Charles Fay. I was glad to just be out of the classroom and was slightly hopeful that I would find at least some idea that I could apply in my classroom. What I found was a paradigm shift, a philosophy and a very applicable set of approaches to classroom management. It sounded creative and fun. And it sounded like it might even be able to work with my kids. Actually, I thought it sounded like it was made just for my seventh graders. I am now in the middle of the Love and Logic book for teachers, and my school is now planning on adopting this approach to classroom management school wide.

The three basic of “rules” of Love and Logic (Fay & Funk, 1995, p.26) are:

• Use enforceable limits
• Provide choices within limits
• Apply consequences with empathy

It sounds simple, right? I think it’s a bit like the game Othello: “A minute to learn. A lifetime to master.”

With Love and Logic, when a student misbehaves, it is seen as a learning experience. And the teacher is there to guide them in learning from the mistake. The teacher does his or her best to allow the student to do most of the thinking, and facilitates the learning experience.

The approach relates to TPRS in a number of ways. One is the belief that students can learn what we want them to through experience without us needing to spell it all out to them. Another is that we can teach through questions. Another is that students learn better when they are allowed to contribute to the learning process.

Consequences are the natural way that we learn to adjust our behavior. Just as comprehensible input is the natural way that we learn languages. I don’t need to explain to my student why the subjunctive is used in a sentence. He will acquire that understanding with time after enough repetitions, as long as he understands the verb in context. In the same way, I don’t need to tell the student why the zero on his assignment should make him learn not to turn things in late. The consequence will do its job on it’s own a lot of the time, if we give it time. TPRS teachers don’t lecture about grammar. Love and Logic teachers don’t lecture about consequences and behavior change.

Questioning is key to TPRS. We don’t tell students about us, we ask them about them. We don’t tell stories, we ask them. That’s what PQA and circling is all about. Right? Well, with Love and Logic, we don’t tell students what to do, we ask them to figure it out for themselves. When I see a student writing a note to a boyfriend in my class instead of paying attention, I may wait until the end of class and say something like,

“Hey, just wondering what you were working on earlier in my class?”

“Uhm. Nothin’.”

“Hmm. Do you know what I think about writing notes in class?”

“Uhm. You don’t like it?”

“Yeah, and what do you think might happen to a student who keeps writing notes in my class?”

“You might take the note.”

“Maybe. What else might happen?”

“You might call my parents.”

“Possibly. What else might happen?”

“You might give me detention.”

“Yeah, I suppose any of those things could happen. And I’d hate for any of those things to happen to you. I don’t need to worry about that do I?”

“Nope.”

“Great. See you tomorrow!”

It might sound cheesy, but I swear I’ve had really good results with this kind of correction.

Lastly, with empathy and shared control, Love and Logic makes classroom discipline build the self concept of students, allows them to be creative, and treats them as individuals… again much like TPRS. I’ve been amazed by students’ solutions to their behavior problems, just like I can be amazed by students’ creative additions to our stories. I couldn’t have forced a student to come clean my room after school as a consequence for eating in my class. But when he came up with that consequence for himself when I asked for suggestions, I didn’t have to worry too much about him showing up.

http://www.loveandlogic.com/

[The thoughts expressed in this blog are based on my perspectives and experiences concerning Love and Logic and do not necessarily represent the approach exactly as created by the Love and Logic Institute, Inc.]

Sources:

Fay, J., & Funk D. (1995). Teaching With Love and Logic: Taking Control of the Classroom. Golden, CO: The Love and Logic Press.

Encuentro – Multimedia Resources

This site is really great for videos in Spanish that could be used with upper level or AP Spanish students. I actually watch the videos to help maintain and improve my own Spanish. There seem to be hundreds. There are programs that appeal to toddlers, teens, and adults. I used to watch this channel when I lived in Argentina but only just recently discovered that I could watch online:

http://descargas.encuentro.gov.ar

Check it out! It’s free if you make an account. You can even download the videos.