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Most important situations in life are concerned with music: birthdays, Christmas or other important festivities and occasions with their specific songs, when family and friends gather and sing together. The most important incidents in life are accompanied by music and song: falling in love (Don't you have specific pieces of music which remind you of someone?), marriages, funerals – basically, being extremely happy or indescribably sad. These emotions are linked to certain rhythms, melodies and sometimes whole songs; there seems to be a soundtrack of our lives.
But it works the other way around, too: while watching a movie what makes us sad are the pictures, sure, but what really makes us bawl like a baby is the music, isn’t it? The violins kick in and suddenly we cannot help ourselves but are simply flooded by feelings - no matter if we are actually able to relate to the displayed feelings or not, the soundtrack kills us. The same is true for sport events, concerts, but also for your everyday life: getting up with your favourite song sets another mood for the day than Looking for Freedom by David Hasselhoff as the song you are waking up to (random example).
Music cannot only put you in a certain mood, it also provides a rich environment of teaching and learning opportunities. Within language classrooms, music encourages applications for a majority of the competences we want to foster within our classrooms - according to the CEFR and also the Lehrplan NRW it is important to learn not only a language, but also to understand the culture(s) it derives from. This seminar is going to involve you and will give you the opportunity to observe theory turning into practice. |
