I was listening to KRS-One’s classic “Sound of Da Police”, and I thought the lyrics would be perfect for sound discrimination, which is an activity to help students differentiate two or more consonant and vowel sounds. In this song, students can listen for and differentiate the voiced and unvoiced labiodental fricatives — that’s /f/ and /v/ in IPA. Many languages do not have an equivalent to /f/ and /v/, and you probably have students who struggle to pronounce them correctly. This list is not comprehensive, but here are some L1 groups who might benefit from /f/ and /v/ sound discrimination activities:

• The German and Dutch languages do not have /v/ at the end of words.
  
• Spanish speakers sometimes mix up /b/ and /v/.
• Arabic speakers usually pronounce /v/ like /f/.
• Turkish speakers tend to confuse /w/ and /v/. 
• Korean, Malay/Indonesian and Thai do not have /f/. It is usually substituted with /p/.
• Korean, Malay/Indonesian, Thai, Japanese and most Chinese dialects do not have /v/. 

Using Sound Discrimination

• Level: All Levels
  
• Time: 15-20 minutes
• Activity: Listening
• Activity Aim: 
  • differentiating between /f/ and /v/
• Materials:
  • Music video for “Sound of Da Police”
  • Gap Fill Worksheet

Procedures

1. Write police on the board, and ask students to think of as many collocations in pairs. Some possibilities include police car, police station, traffic police, police officer. Check work as a whole class and write ideas on the board.
2. Drill the pronunciation of officer several times and ask students how many syllables it has. Three syllables. 
3. Write the word overseer on the board ask ask students how many syllables it has. Four syllables. Drill the pronunciation of this word several times. Show the mechanics of the mouth by pointing to yourself. Exaggerate the movements and show them how to tuck their lips behind the front teeth to produce /f/ and /v/ sounds.
4. This stage is optional and you may decide to skip over it, but perhaps you might want explain that an overseer is a person who makes sure that people work. Explain that this word is old-fashioned and usually refers to American slave owners.
5. Tell students that they will listen to the song twice. For the first listening, student simply have to write the number of times they heard officer and overseer. Have them check their answers in small groups and then report back as a whole class.
6. Give students gap fill worksheet. They will listen to the song a second time and write either officer or overseer in the blanks. Have them check work in pairs and perhaps play the song again if time permits.

Discussion Questions

What vowel and consonant sounds are difficult for your students? Have you ever tried minimal pair or sound discrimination tasks in your lessons? What are some possible follow ups to an activity such as this one? Please write your comments below!

The post Teacher Resource: Sound Discrimination with KRS-One appeared first on ESL Hip Hop.

Do you consider yourself an ambassador of hip-hop?

I’ve certainly never thought of myself as being one, though I like the idea of growing into that role with more time and experience under my belt.

How did you get into teaching ESL in the first place?

I was in a PhD program in psychology where my focus was on identity development and learning in adolescence.  I dropped out to give the music business a try but soon discovered that I wanted to get back into education. I taught a bunch of young Central and South American immigrants in Brooklyn and then did the CELTA. I was hooked and went on to do an MA in TESOL.

Do you think hip-hop can be used to teach other subjects?

If you mean subjects like math and geography, I’ve written a number of tunes for both. A lot of people have given it a shot; most of it is mediocre at best. The bar is pretty low. Genius from Wu-Tang has something coming out for teaching history, space science, and other subjects to high school students. That will no doubt blow all the other ‘edutainment’ rap out of the water.

Your first YouTube video recently hit 1.25 million views. Have you ever expected it to become so popular?

Absolutely not, but I’m ecstatic that it has!

When you create music, do you make the beats first and then write the lyrics?

I’m always working on both and on many songs at once. In general, though, it’s lyrics first and beats second.

Finally, can you give us some tips on choosing a good rap name?

As corny as it sounds, imagine the super-hero you’d most like to be. It’s all about finding your identity.

You can follow Fluency MC at WizIQ where he is Ambassador and Knowledge Entertainer. Also, follow him on Facebook and check out his website. WizIQ | Facebook | Website | YouTube | Twitter | LinkedIn

Discussion Questions

Do you have any follow up questions for Fluency MC? Please ask him in the comments below!

The post Hip-Hop Spotlight: Fluency MC appeared first on ESL Hip Hop.

15 Activities with Hip-Hop

Dictogloss – Explain to your students that you will dictate some of the lyrics and they will listen without taking any notes. Put students in pairs or small groups and have them reconstruct the text to the best of their ability and emphasize that collaboration is more important than being perfect. At the end of the activity, show students the original text so that they can compare their work. If you are using the Test-Teach-Test model of instruction, running a dictogloss in the beginning might be an easy way to diagnose how much of the lesson’s target language your students already understand. 

Running Dictation – Print the chorus or a short selection from a verse on paper and put it up on the walls around your room. Have students form pairs. One student will run up to the wall, read the text and run back to dictate it. The other partner must listen and write. This activity is great for morning classes because the physical activity makes people more alert.

Screaming Dictation – Very similar to a running dictation. Students form pairs and stand on opposite ends of the room. One partner has the text on a piece of paper and must scream across the room. The other partner must listen very carefully and write on a piece of paper. This activity will certainly get very noisy, but it’s the good kind of noise. The screaming students must carefully articulate and pronounce words, and the receiving partner gets useful listening practice. In the event there’s a breakdown in communication, students will have to use language of clarification to continue the dictation. Excuse me, say that again please. What did you say? 

Predicting Gaps – Filling-in-the-blanks is one of the most common and overused music activities, but I like using this variation. Before students listen to the music, have them predict the words in the gapped lyrics. This could be a useful diagnostic tool to identify vocabulary and grammar your students may already know. You can check work by showing them the lyrics or by listening to the song a couple of times.

Found Poetry – Use rap album covers or lyrics to help students write found poetry. At the end of the activity, students can share their poems by reading them aloud or by publishing them on a class website. A complete lesson plan is available at ESLhiphop.

Arranging Lyrics – Take some lines from the verse or chorus and rearrange them so that they are out of order. Have students work in pairs or small groups to predict the right sequence and then listen to the song to check. Completing this activity is not a reliable indication that your students actually comprehend the song, but it will give them useful practice for distinguishing sounds. For this reason, it puts less pressure on your students to understand everything, making it useful as a warm-up.

Using Instrumentals – Who says hip-hop and rap music is only for listening? Why not give your students the opportunity to bust rhymes as well?! Many hip-hop songs also have instrumental versions available on YouTube. Students can write their own songs and poems and recite them over the instrumentals, or you can set up a class karaoke lesson and practice the songs previously learned.

Video Info Gap – What’s hip-hop music without music videos? Students pair up and sit face-to-face. One student is looking at the video and the other partner has her back to the screen. Play the video without any music or sound. One partner must describe what is happening in the video while the other listens on. Pause the video in the middle and have partners switch. Conduct a whole-class summary of what they have just seen and watch the video with music in its entirety. 

Comparing Video to Lyrics – Have students compare the lyrics to the images and actions found in a song’s music video. This task has a number of possible objectives, but it is particularly useful for examining and discussing literal and figurative language.

Chain Discussions – Group discussions are always good for pre-listening and post-listening activities, but they have a tendency to fall flat and fizzle out rather quickly. Using a chain drill will ensure that discussions do not fall flat, making it valuable fluency practice. To set up the activity, take half of your students and make them stand in a circle, facing outwards. Have the rest of the students stand in front of one other person, so that there is an inner and outer circle. Start the discussion and every 90-120 seconds yell, ‘Switch!’ Students in the outside circle must take a step to the left, and the process is repeated for as long as you like. 

Listening for Rhythm – Music of any genre is a great tool for listening to and imitating English rhythm and stress patterns. A complete lesson plan for practicing rhythm is available here.

Rewriting Lyrics – Hip-hop music uses not only a lot of figurative and idiomatic language, but also AAVE which is a non-standard variety of English. Having the students rewrite metaphorical language in plain English will invoke critical thinking skills. Rewriting the ‘rap dialect’ into prescriptive English will also heighten awareness of language forms while giving students a chance to appreciate a variety of English not used by society’s status quo. 

Reading Lesson, Listen at End – Use the lyrics as the primary material for a reading lesson, and then listen to the song at the end of class as a reward!

Distinguishing Minimal Pairs – Rappers have an excellent command of the language, and they cleverly play with words and use minimal pairs in their rhymes. One great example is KRS-One’s “Sound of da Police”  which interchanges the words ‘officer’ and ‘overseer.’ While they’re technically not true minimal pairs, they are similar enough making this track perfect for sound discrimination and pronunciation practice. Start the video at 1:36 to see what I mean:

Call to Action

So there you have it! 15 ideas so that you can finally start using hip-hop. For this post, there will be no discussion questions, but a call to action instead. Do you want to accept the challenge and try something new? Do you want to bring a new edge to your lessons? Do you just want to be different and get out of the comfort of your routine? Try one of these activities and share your experiences in the comments below!

The post 15 Quick Ideas for Using Hip-Hop in Class appeared first on ESL Hip Hop.

Using poems in class is something that I do not try often enough, but I was inspired to create a found poetry lesson by The Teacher James. The premise of this activity is simple enough: use album titles to make a short, simple poem. You may use any genre of music, but of course, this post will focus exclusively on some of my favorite hip-hop records. There are a number of ways teachers can use this in class. Found poetry can be a great stand-alone activity, especially for warm ups or time fillers, but they can also be the main task of a lesson.

• Level: High Beginning to Upper Intermediate (A2-B2)
  
• Time: 30-50 minutes
• Activity: Reading, Writing, Speaking
• Language Aims: Use your album selection to practice a number of target language items. Some possibilities include:
  • grammatical patterns
  • word order
  • vocabulary
  • confidence-building for speaking
• Materials:
  • Hip-Hop Albums. You may:
    • bring in your own collection, if you have a sizable vinyl or CD collection
    • a list of albums printed on a piece of paper
    • a Pinterest page such as this one, computers or mobile devices needed
  • 5 printed album covers with the artists and titles cut or blacked out
  • Index cards
  • Tape

Procedures:

Before the lesson starts, print out five album covers (preferably color) and cut or black out the artist and title. Then tape them to the walls of the classroom. You may use any albums for this stage of the lesson, but I recommend selecting ones where the cover art and titles are not a very obvious match. 

1. Give students slips of paper with the artists and albums, or dictate them. Tell students that they must walk around the room and match the artist/album with the cover art. Run the activity, and perhaps play a track from one of the selected albums.
2. Have students compare the matches with a partner and then check as a whole class. Have students explain why they matched a title with a particular cover. After facilitating a short discussion, reveal the correct matches. For the above albums:
   
   1. The Roots, Do You Want More?!!!??!
   2. Ice-T, Power
   3. The Notorious B.I.G., Ready to Die
   4. Gang Starr, Hard to Earn
   5. Scarface, The Diary
3. Elicit the word poetry by asking several CCQs, such as:
   1. What did Shakespeare write?
   2. What rhymes?
   3. What doesn’t always follow the standard rules of grammar?
4. Tell students that they will create found poetry, which is a type of poetry created by taking words and phrases from other sources (Wikipedia). They will use only the album titles to write their poems. Demonstrate by creating a poem using the example covers in the first activity:
   Do you want more
   Power?!!!??!
   Hard to earn.
   
5. Explain that they must use the album titles exactly as they appear (or close to it), that poems may only be 3-5 lines long, and that perfect grammar is not important. It’s crucial to emphasize this last point because the poems will inevitably lack articles, prepositions or other words needed to make grammatically correct sentences. Give students a list of albums, bring your own music collection to class and have them sort through it, or create a Pinterest page with 20-50 album covers. Here is my example.
6. Have students write the found poems on index cards and tape them to the walls when they are finished. Run this stage for as long as you would like, or until most students have written 2 or 3 poems.
7. Have students walk around the room and read poems by classmates. Follow up with a discussion and/or survey about their favorites, and ask a few students to volunteer and explain the meaning behind their poems.
8. Form small groups of 3 or 4 students and have them rewrite poems in standard English. A couple of notes regarding the follow up and review:
   1. If you want to practice a specific grammar point, you may need to spend some extra time selecting albums that will lend itself to your lesson’s specific target language item.
   2. Unless you have a specific target language item in mind, be prepared to discuss incidental questions of grammar. Critics of Dogme and TBL point out that many teachers are uncomfortable or not confident enough to discuss grammar points with little or no preparation.

Possible Variations

• Use the student poems on the wall as part of a running dictation. One student runs to the wall, reads a poem and runs back to dictate the poem to his/her partner, who in turn listens and writes it down. 
• Read the students’ poems yourself and have students guess who the author is. Great for practicing language of guessing and the passive voice: I think it is… It might be… It was written by…
• Instead of having students write their poems on index cards, have them submit their poems to a class website, Facebook page, Twitter feed or Pinterest board. Students can comment on and share each other’s work with virtually any social networking site.

Discussion Questions

How have you used poetry in your class? Instead of using album titles, could you create a found poetry lesson around another text? Would you be uncomfortable dealing with incidental grammar questions? Please write your comments below!

The post Found Poetry with Rap Albums appeared first on ESL Hip Hop.

Complete Lesson Plan with The Pharcyde’s “Passin’ Me By”

By the end of this lesson, students will have: discussed stories of unrequited love, listened for and identified word stress and rhythm in sentences, read and transcribed lyrics into simple English, and shared their interpretation of lyrics in a jigsaw activity.

• Level: Intermediate to Advanced (B1 – C1)
• Time: 50-75 minutes with homework and followup
• Activity: Reading; Listening; Speaking
• Topic: Broken hearts; unrequited love
• Language Aims: 
  • Word stress and rhythm (primary aim)
  • keeps on + gerund (secondary aim)
• Materials: 
  • Music Video for The Pharcydes “Passin’ Me By” http://youtu.be/QjsPG0Kspxo
  • Instrumetals Only http://youtu.be/v8UH1kuZ57s
  • Lesson Plan and Workseets – PDF
  • mobile devices optional

Procedures:

1. Write the following sentence on the board: She keeps on ____________. Elicit the meaning of keeps on. (It is a inseparable phrasal verb which means to continue.) Have students complete the sentence in pairs, writing as many different examples as possible.
2. Ask for volunteers to share their ideas and write them on the board. As your write down ideas, disregard any errors at this point. Explicit correction might interrupt the flow of this warm-up, but a less intrusive form of corrective feedback is recast, which means to repeat your student’s utterance without the error. For example:
   1. Student, “She keeps on to study English.” Teacher, “Good idea! She keeps on studying English. Next idea please?”
   2. The advantage of recast is that it doesn’t disrupt the lesson very much, and it is less teacher-centered than explicit correction. However, students usually do not notice the corrected language in recast, so it may not be a reliable form of error correction
3. Tell Ss that the chorus (often called ‘the hook’ in hip-hop) is She keeps on passing me by. Have students discuss these questions in small groups and then conduct whole class feedback:
   1. What verb comes after ‘keeps on’ ? A gerund always follows the phrasal verb ‘keep on.’ I will keep on studying. I kept studying. He keeps studying every day. etc
   2. This is a love a song. The singer says, “She keeps on passing me by.” Is it a happy or sad love song?
4. At this point, your students will probably have decided that it is a sad love song. Tell a personal anecdote of an unrequited love from your youth (or just invent one, or tell a story about your “friend”). For example:
   1. In high school, I had a very big crush on a girl who was two years older than me. I really wanted to hold her hand and give her a hug. She broke my heart one day when she told me she didn’t love me… 
   2. Have one or two students share similar stories to the class and write down any incidental vocabulary on the board. Drill and follow-up new vocabulary with personalized questions. In my experience, students usually giggle when revealing old childhood romances, but there’s always a few students who don’t mind sharing. Creating a very positive rapport and atmosphere of trust is essential for a topic of this kind!
5. Setting up and running the jigsaw:
   1. Form 3 groups, each with 3-5 students. Ideally, your class size is a multiple of 3, but you may have to adjust the group size depending on the number of learners in class.
   2. Give each member in a group one of the worksheets (attached as a PDF) and have them discuss the lyrics together. Have them discuss the gist meaning of their excerpt by writing a short 1 or 2 sentence summary in plain English. They may use dictionaries or access the web on mobile devices, but be available to assist students with any problematic language. Run this discussion for about 5 minutes.
   3. Take one student from each group and have them form a new group. Students will present their summaries and interpretation from the previous discussion to the new group for another 5-10 minutes.
   4. Conduct whole class feedback and have groups share their summaries and interpretations.
6. Language Presentation: Rhythm
   1. Write this sentence on the board, and have all students read it aloud, very slowly, one word at a time: Some of the rappers should’ve made the tracks. Ask students to make a judgement: did their slow reading sound like natural speech? Why not? Try to elicit the word rhythm. 
      
   2. Explain that English has rhythm, just like music. In order to maintain the rhythm, the stressed words in a sentence occur in regular intervals, or beats. Illustrate this point by snapping your fingers and repeating these sentences. Do it slowly at first so that students notice that your snapping is synced to the stressed words. Repeat the drill again and have students repeat after you.
      1. Rappers make tracks.
      2. The rappers make tracks. 
      3. The rappers make the tracks.
      4. Some of the rappers make the tracks.
      5. Some of the rappers should‘ve made the tracks.
   3. Ask students to determine what words are stressed based on the snapping drill, in small groups. Conduct whole class feedback.
   4. Explain or help students discover that the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs usually take the stress in a sentence. Prepositions, articles and auxiliary verbs are usually unstressed and become reduced in order to maintain the rhythm.
7. Language Practice: In groups, have students identify the stressed words from the excerpts in the jigsaw activity. Once groups decide which words are stressed, listen to the song as a whole class and have students listen for the rhythm. I usually encourage snapping or tapping at this point because it makes learners more aware of the measurement of time.

Variation with Social Media

Instead of listening to the song as a whole class, have students use mobile devices (e.g. smartphones and tablets) to access a class website with “Passing Me By”. I recommend setting up a Facebook group page for your class because it’s easy to share YouTube videos.  Have students leave comments in response to the song. You can set any number of comprehension questions or tasks for your students to complete on Facebook, Twitter or other social media sites.

Possible Followup 

For homework, have your students practice reading their excerpts aloud to the beat of the instrumentals. There are instrumental versions of most hip-hop songs on YouTube. When students return to class, you can have students read aloud the excerpts in groups to the music.

The post Intermediate Multiskilled Lesson Plan, Options for Social Media and Mobile Tools appeared first on ESL Hip Hop.

The short answer to that question:

Hip-hop music is one of the most linguistically-rich sources of content that teachers can make available to their students.

I absolutely believe that statement to be true…. You just need to look in the right places. The key for hip-hop success in ESL/EFL contexts is hinged on your selection of music. The appropriate selection of songs is absolutely vital for initiating thoughtful discussions and for presenting language models for students to imitate and reproduce in oral and written discourse. Of course, not every hip-hop song will be appropriate to use in the classroom, but that does not mean TESOL professionals should disregard an entire literary genre and culture based on the poor examples of the highly-commercialized and violent songs that often come under public scrutiny.

One of my favorite artists right now is Aesop Rock. Unraveling the mystery behind his cryptic lyricism  is always an enjoyable challenge, and many of his songs discuss important and relevant themes. But what I’m particularly impresses with is his mastery of the language. This passage from “9-5ers Anthem” contains a lot of complex clauses, which would be an appropriate model for an advanced ESL or EAP class:

We the American working population hate the the fact that eight hours a day is wasted on chasing the dream of someone that isn’t us. And we may not hate our jobs, but we hate jobs in general that don’t have to do with fighting our own causes. We the American working population hate the nine to five day-in and day-out, but we’d rather be supporting ourselves by being paid to perfect the pastimes that we have harbored based solely on the fact that it makes us smile if it sounds dope.

While ESLhiphop.com is mainly a community for English learners, I also want teachers to be involved. There will be daily lessons for students, but look out for full-length lesson plans as well as motivational posts for teachers who want to take the plunge and use hip-hop. Have you used hip-hop in your ESL class? Do you have suggestions for students or teachers who want to use hip-hop? Please write your comments and concerns below to join the discussion!

The post 1 (of many) Reasons Why ESL Teachers Should Use Hip-Hop appeared first on ESL Hip Hop.