Week 5: Listening activity with Lyrics Training

This listening activity considers the second unit: Technology and its Effects for second grade of high school.

Objective: 

• Students will identify main ideas of the song in order to share it with the class
• Students will reflect on the use of technology in the music industry in order to exchange ideas.

Materials:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JkIs37a2JE
• https://es.lyricstraining.com/play/jamiroquai/virtual-insanity/Hg21St7Utg#b7w
• Projector

Activity:

Introduction:

• As brainstorming, the teacher will show a Picture of Jamiroquai and ask if they know something about this band who performed in the 2018 Festival de Viña del Mar. 

• The students will infer some characteristics of the band and make predictions about the topic and the vocabulary of the listening activity.

• The teacher will provide information about the band, for instance, Jamiroquai is a British funk and jazz band from London, formed in 1991. They debuted as an acid-jazz band and have since explored other musical directions such as pop, rock, disco, and electronica.

• The class will discuss in small groups the following questions: How technology has affected the music industry? What are the benefits or disadvantages of the use of technology in music (2 of each)?

Development: 

• Students will listen to the song “virtual insanity” by Jamiroquai once and write down as many ideas as they can (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JkIs37a2JE )
• Students will complete the gaps of the lyric in the Lyrics Training App. (https://es.lyricstraining.com/play/jamiroquai/virtual-insanity/Hg21St7Utg#b7w)
• The teacher will ask if their predictions were confirmed and what are the new thoughts on the band.
• The teacher will give them the lyrics of the song. Students will read it aloud as a class.

Closing:

• The teacher will ask about the meaning of the song, what is virtual insanity, what they felt when they listened to it and if they know any song with a similar meaning.

Reflect on your design using the questions found at the bottom of the same:

• Why did you choose the clip (interest? language?)

We chose this song due to we were looking for a song that was related to the Unit of technology. We also thought that Jamiroquai is a perfect option as they played in Viña del Mar’s song festival a few months ago. 

• What kinds of difficulties did you experience in listening to the video and understanding what was said? 

We think one of the problems with this activity might be the complex grammar structures and vocabulary, which can be difficult for the process of understanding. 

• What listening skills from Table 3.1 above did you feel you lacked? How did you try to overcome any difficulties in understanding? 

We think that we lacked the skill of “ Matching sounds to language items in an effort to move towards understanding meaning” as we privileged the meaning over the grammatical structures. 

• Did you use any of the strategies listed in Table 3.2 above? 

Inferring and predicting as the students should ask and made some questions about the topic. The OA4 of the unit 2 intends to improve the previous knowledge that they had and usage of the critical thinking.

• Why did you design those particular listening tasks? Did you copy the stages in which listening is often taught in class (getting the main idea, then details?) Or did you focus on ideas or language which you had found interesting? Was designing your own tasks better than doing ones set by other people? If so, why/why not? 

We design this activity because we would like to use it with the students of our internship. The unit is relating to technology and is a great topic for improving their skills and active their critical thinking. We also think that predicting is a good technique for making them to participate and expressing ideas.