Bridget's Bunia Blog 44

From my desk at the window of the library I could hear someone singing "She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother". How gratifying. The lyrics and melody had been absorbed and reproduced. Success. It was the latest song in the Tuesday morning folk singing repertoire.

Every Tuesday morning the resident native speaker-singer tootles on her recorder to teach folk songs to the student teachers in the hope that they in their turn will teach them to their secondary school pupils.

Much has been written in EFL literature about the value of using songs to teach English as a foreign language. Some teachers still think it's a waste of time, too difficult or inappropriate - particularly in a western classroom. But it finds a natural setting in a Congolese classroom where everyone sings unashamedly and many compose songs weekly.

So the Congolese were learning about Billy Boy seeking a wife in the pioneer days of the USA. Appropriate? I had originally used it to accompany a text on marriage when teaching the 6th year class at Institut Luru at Rethy. We had extended it to express the cultural values when wife-spotting in Congo, arriving at two verses that have survived the loss of my pre-war teaching materials:

Can she receive guests?
Yes, she can receive guests. It's the thing she does the best.

Can she dig a field?
Yes, she can dig a field and she always gets good yields.

OK, it's rather sexist to teach such a song but with a 90% male student body we survive the political incorrectness.

The 'Pioneer Unit' includes 'When I First Came to this Land' - great for rhymes and idioms; 'She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain' - for concord of tenses to express future action; 'Home on the Range' to accompany a 4th year text 'The Elephant Hunt' (Now, that's political incorrectness!).

Ideas for additions to the repertoire come from various sources. A mobile phone rings in class. Annoying. But the ring tone is one that can be exploited: 'Oh, my darling, Clementine'. A Bible Interpretation class studying the vision of Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones brings 'Dem bones, dem bones,' tapping to my toes. Great for body parts vocabulary along with 'Head and Shoulders' and 'If you're Happy and You Know It'.

The canon 'I Hear Thunder' accompanies Lesson 14 'A Storm in the Country'. The spirituals 'Standing in the Need of Prayer' and 'He's Got the Whole World in his Hands' are useful for the names of family members. Wanting to teach the names of animals? 'Old MacDonald had a Farm' and 'I Know an Old Lady' are good fun.

So I introduce songs as vehicles for teaching vocabulary, phonetics, grammar, rhymes, idioms, natural language, subject matter that relates to the lesson content, and culture of English-speaking societies. It doesn't necessarily hasten to school my 5-voice quorum, but even if we start late, the students enjoy the musical hall experience. It does stretch my theology a little when the students thank the Lord for the nice experience of learning folk songs and the opportunity to praise him!

But by far the best experience was teaching a spiritual to close a 3-hour Bible class on the Pentateuch on a Friday afternoon. 'Go Down, Moses' became a slow, plaintive, black male-voice choir in 4-part harmony. It could have been the genuine article. The tune still haunts us.

"Are any among you in trouble? They should pray. Are any among you happy? They should sing praises." James 5:13

Blessings,
Bridget