Seminar Report

Liceo Cultural Britanico Cynthia Randerath

Seminar: “Light, Sound and Music in the ELT classroom” This seminar took place on 11th October in “Los Dos Chinos Hotel”. Although it was a whole day seminar, I will focus on the first presentation that was called “Hidden messages in Pop songs and video clips”. The idea of this presentation was to analyze songs in an attractive way by taking into account that songs can not only be listened to but also be seen. In short, we can see music and that is why it was suggested that we do not need to rely only on lyrics but we can also work without them. So some songs which were only percussion songs were used to show this purpose. The presenter worked mainly with feelings and emotions which are two factors that can generate many interesting things in the classroom. After that, the presenter added that we see music and also colours and proposed to work with “Colours of the wind” (Pocahontas). In this case, he focused more on the “hidden message” that this song implies and suggested working on current topics like discrimination, differences between people and respect to others. Some songs were shown in video clips to work on pollution, poverty, corruption and war. They were really interesting and they presented a different way to work with videos in the classroom. Images were also proposed as a way of presenting a topic in the classroom. The presenter asked us to listen to a song and draw whatever came to our minds. The song was “From a distance” and then we compared our drawings with our partners. In this case, our images were similar and we draw more or less the same thing. Finally, different ways of working with vocabulary by using songs were presented. For instance, for days of the week he proposed a matching exercise with the song “Friday’s I’m in love” by the cure. To work on parts of the body he played “Hello!” by Lionel Ritchie; he showed pictures and we had to complete the lyrics with them. These were just some examples of the way in which vocabulary could be taught by using songs. I think that it was really very useful for us. All in all, this presentation really broadened my mind as regards the use of songs and videos in the classroom. I have never thought of images or making my students draw something by means of what a song may suggest to them. However, I did think about using videos to present a topic and to do further debate on it but I did not know how to go about it. This seminar gave me different ideas of how to work on

this matter and that is why I found it very enriching and useful in my profession.