MFL

Music calms the troubled b(r)east?

Have you ever been to a bullfight? I haven't either, but I came fairly close yesterday at 11am. I'm currently accompanying our French Exchange to Provence and yesterday we found ourselves seated in the Arena in Arles listening to a guide telling us about the history and current uses of this ancient Roman monument.

It's had a fairly bloodthirsty past, although the wild animal hunts, gladiatorial fights and execution of criminals and Christians have now given way almost exclusively to rock concerts and bullfights apparently.

When one bright spark amongst my 34 pupils asked whether there were any connection, I was intrigued by the reply.

Of course they do not ask rockstars to perform at the same time as the bulls - so no there is no overt connection - but apparently the bulls are enticed into the ring, and hence to their deaths in the fight by playing them snatches of Bizet's Carmen! What's more, if the bull is sluggish or slow to get going and stuck into the fight, they continue to play Carmen until it gets on with it. Fascinating, the effects of carefully chosen recorded music don't you think?

The most cost-effective/clear/educationally useful way to go about using karaoke

This is definitely something we'll look at in my course. It will be particularly useful if you have access to a computer lab or MFL computer suite, since it seems that modern computers can do this so much better than those toy-like karaoke microphone-cum-speaker contraptions which seem very expensive and hard to buy anyway. When all your pupils have access to computers, they can all have a go and practise effectively (using headphones) before coming up to the front to perform. And the chance to record their performances for eventual uploading to a podcast or blog will enable us to mark their speaking/singing progress, too. Sourcing the songs is as straightforward as using Google effectively: then the students can play back the song and superimposed lyrics on their individual computers and sing along, practising first. Or they can work in groups on two or three songs. The possibilities for fun are endless, and they ought to learn how to pronounce the words as well as what they mean, if they repeat them enough times ....