Names: Gabriela Montoya Muñoz

Tania Falla Pastor

Job Center: Universidad César Vallejo

Region: Lambayeque

Submission date: 17th July

 Email: darklittlefaerie@gmail.com

Telephone number: 979350600

MUSIC MOVES THE WORLD

INTRODUCTION

A genius man, once said: “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative

expression and knowledge”; obviously, if that genius man was Albert Einstein, and he

was talking about the teaching learning process and knowledge, we educators, must

pay attention carefully.

It is our duty, indeed, to inspire our students in order to help them get the best of

themselves, not with boring and repetitive lessons, which will deprive them of their

great imagination and creativity, which will shorten their wings, and thus disconnect

them from their learning process with lack of motivation.

When I was a student, I remember a teacher of mine said that we (teachers) must be

artist, performers, actors and actresses; whatever it takes, in order to call our students

attention, motivate them, surprise them and always keep them interested in our

classes, so they would always wonder in expectation, “what will our class be about

today?”, always looking forward to attend.

It is a well known fact that if a student does not feel motivated, he or she will not

learn, at least not as well as he or she could, because is not committed with his or her

learning process; we have to face it because within our daily praxis, we learnt it is

true.

Having all these ideas in mind is that we came up with this project, entitled “Music

moves the world”. With this activity, we were looking for something that could catch

our students interest, and what better than music, which makes the whole world

move? Even Plato recognizes it by saying: “Music gives wings to the mind, flight to the

imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” So we thought this

activity would engage our students deeply in our class, thus creating the perfect

environment to ignite and boost their significant learning.

 DEVELOPMENT

Setting of the problem addressed

We performed this activity with two different groups of students; nevertheless they

had similar features as they all were teenage university students (both: male and

female) coursing the first cycles of their careers; their English level was B1 according to

the European common framework.

The reality we saw is that both groups were struggling with classes. They found hard to

focus because classes were too “serious” and boring for them, so they hardly paid

attention and also they were not committed with their learning process, as it can be

easily deduced.

Teachers were just stuck to the book as we were told to do, but the activities proposed

on them (the books) were not meaningful to the students and were mostly about

drilling and grammar exercises, not enhancing or even permitting to develop their own

ideas and creativity.

As an obvious result, students did not give themselves to the fullest, had difficulties in

learning language in general, so evidently they could not produce neither written nor

spoken English. Teachers felt frustrated with the students’ outcome and behaviour.

To sum up, due to lack of engaging activities during classes, students were not

developing their language skills and level properly.

Purpose

“Music moves the world” is a project thought to engage students with their classes, to

help them to commit with their learning, through meaningful activities, related to a

topic which is both pleasant and interesting to them: MUSIC.

People in general, and teenagers in specific, love music, they all have a favourite band,

singer and song. They usually admire a music star and feel identified with their music,

lyrics, etc. It is not a strange topic for them; it is part of their life on a daily basis and

they love it!

Music in our opinion has the power to touch and move people. That is the reason why

we chose music as the key factor to develop this project, and the result of the

application of it was a success.

Features of the project

Time

This project will take a few hours, that is why it was not intended as a simple “class

session”, but as a project, which can be developed through two or more days of class,

depending on how many hours you have per class. In our case, we had 5 hours per

class, so it took us the whole session.

Material
In order to develop the project, you have to talk to your students the previous class,

and ask them to bring some material which is actually not hard to get, and is quite

cheap as well:

 1 cardboard or A0 paper

 Markers

 Glue

 Old magazines

 Scissors

 Anything they want to use to decorate (e.g. colourful papers, colours, stickers,

etc.)

Explanation of the project

Students, in groups, had to create an imaginary music band, give the band a name,

elaborate a CD cover, write a bio for each band member, including how was the band

formed, they had to design and elaborate an ad for their concert, create the title of

their first hit song and explain what it is about; and finally, to write up and perform an

interview between the band members and an interviewer from a famous music

channel.

Description

In order to create a good environment it is suitable that the teacher begins by talking

about music, favourite bands and type of music. Students rapidly feel interested and it

works wonderfully as an icebreaker.

Then the teacher can start with the project.

FIRST: To develop this project, students first have to gather in groups of four (three

members of the band and one interviewer) and talk to decide what is going to be the

name of the band and what type of music they are going to sing.

As you can see, we start softly, and this activity will arouse students’ interest, will help

them activate their creativity and at the same time, it will encourage them to produce

spoken English.

SECOND: The following part is to elaborate a CD cover. This part is specially designed

for kinaesthetic learners, since they have to cut, paste, draw, etc. in that way, they will

not disconnect from the project because they will be busy actually DOING things.

For the cover of the CD, they have to consider the front and the back part of it.

In the front, there must be the name of the band, the title of the album and the picture

or drawing of the album cover.

In the back, there must be at least six song titles that fit the style of the band.

THIRD: The next part will help students to develop their writing skills; they will have to

use their creativity to write about each member of the band. They will have to make

up names and information, including where were each singer born, what was his or

her hometown, info about their family, what did they do before they were famous,

they also have to write information about their music background: if they play an

instrument or if they sing instead, if they compose the music they perform, and about

how they got started in the music business. They also have to write about the

biography of the band itself: How they got together, who discovered them, how long it
took them to get famous and about the plans or expectations they have for the future.

All this information will be the bases for their interview.

FOURTH: In this part students have to design a gig poster, in other words, a poster

which will advertise the band’s concert. The information they have to consider for this

activity is the name of the band, the location of the concert, the date and time the

band is going to perform, any highlights, for example who is supporting the concert,

what album is the band promoting, etc. and finally the price of the tickets.

For this activity students will have to use their hands again, in order to draw, cut and

paste, etc. It is not important if students are not good at drawing, what matters is their

creativity and the effort they make to accomplish the tasks proposed.

FIFTH: Students then will make up the title of their new hit song and explain a little bit

what it is about. The product of this activity is a writing, which will work as a base for

their final interview as well. Nevertheless they will have to speak during the process,

so they will develop speaking skills too.

As a matter of fact, all the activities students worked till this part, are thought in order

to help them to clarify and organize all the information so they will create and perform

the final interview way smoother, they will be more confident because they will know

what they are talking about, this will also help them to be more fluent.

SIXTH: The final part is the interview. In this activity students will produce oral English.

One student will act out as an interviewer of an important music or entertainment

channel (MTV, VH1 or E for example) and will ask questions to the members of the
band about their next concert, their newly released album and about the band in

general. As we explained before, students will use all the information developed in the

previous stages of the project to answer the questions in this interview. If the teacher

prefers, they may leave this activity for the next session (following day, etc.), in that

way students can dress up as real music stars; they will enjoy it a great deal.

Evaluation Criteria

This project is also an evaluating tool, and in the evaluation criteria we considered

points for each stage of the project, as it is shown in the following chart.

ACTIVITY CRITERIA POINTS

Creativity 1

CD COVER Design 1

Presentation 1

Creativity 1

GIG POSTER Design 1

Presentation 1

Creativity 1

Content 2
BIOGRAPHY
Spelling 2

Grammar Accuracy 2

Fluency 2

INTERVIEW Creativity 1

Pronunciation 2
 Content 2

TOTAL 20

CONCLUSION

As we said at the beginning, students did not use to pay attention to classes; they

hardly participated so they did not really learn. Nevertheless, during the whole project

they shown their disposition, their interest; they were really eager to talk and produce;

they participated actively in each stage.

Through the application and development of this project; since the very beginning,

passing through every stage to its end, both teachers and students enjoyed great fun

bonding moments by learning!

We saw that students were interested on the topic, so they were motivated to learn

more, constantly asking and looking for words to express what they wanted to say,

trying to put into practice the knowledge we gave them.

In our opinion, every student was involved in the project, because we tried to cover all

the learning styles, they had the opportunity to write, to speak, to cut, to draw, to

move, to act out. They did not have time to get bored because in every stage they had

to activate their creativity and they really enjoyed it. The class was stiff and repetitive,

it was not “just the teacher talking” and explaining. It was a positive change.

At the end of the project, you could look around and see nothing but happy faces; and

they ended up actually speaking in English! Students created bonds during project and

their disposition and attitude towards their classes changed positively. We saw the

results not only during that session, but in general during the rest of the cycle.
This project helped our students to engage with their English classes, and it helped us,

not only to students, but teachers as well, to realize that learning can be and must be

fun.

As a conclusion we can say, due to this project, students changed their attitude

towards English classes, the environment improved a great deal, they were more

committed with their learning, and this obviously had a huge impact in their English

level, so we can say the project was a success. We achieved our goal!

Word count: 2001

REFERENCES

COLEMAN, J. A. (1992). Project-based learning, transferable skills, information

technology and video. Language Learning Journal, 5, 35-37

HENRY, J. (1994). Projects for the EFL classroom: Resource material for teachers.

Walton-on-Thames. Surrey, UK: Nelson

ELLIS, Rod (2003). Task-based Language Learning and Teaching. London: Oxford

University Press.

PHILLIPS D, S Burwood & H Dunford (1999) Projects with Young Learners Oxford: OUP