Assignment 3 Language Skills Related Tasks Part 1: Justification of material choice For this skills-related task my choice of authentic

material is the song What a wonderful World by Louis Armstrong. Music is appropriate for all learning styles. Most of the students in the elementary group are kinaesthetic and music will help them to learn better. Music is the universal language of mankind Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Nowadays it is not easy to escape music and songs, as it is everywhere in shopping malls, offices, restaurants, and in cars. And for those who tune in to an iPod or i-Phone, music and song is literally everywhere. I decided to use this song as I think it is appropriate for English Language learners at the Elementary level and also because I feel that they will be able to relate to it. There is strong practical evidence supporting the use of music in the English language classroom; there is also a growing body of research confirming that songs are a useful tool in language acquisition. In fact musical and language processing occur in the same area of the brain (Medine, 1993). According to Tim Murphey (1996) we use songs or texts about songs to practice selective listening comprehension. In light of this a song may be very helpful in teaching a foreign language. It will help the students to improve their oral production. Millie Grenough (1994) says that students who are learning English may hear little spoken English outside their classroom, but that all of them are exposed to American and English songs on radio, TV, and in movies. This can explain the fact that students find songs easy to relate to, because music and song, as a whole, is part of their real world. This particular song doesnt have any slang or poor grammar. It is sang at a slow pace and conveys a good message about the world and how beautiful it really is if one opens his or her eyes to it. Playing a song in the classroom will cause some excitement in the classroom but in a positive way. It helps break the usual routine of either reading or listening to pre-recorded materials. It increases their motivation and gives them intensive practice in selected patterns

without boredom.

REFERENCES Hubbard P., Jones H., Thornton B., Wheeler R.(1991) A Training Course for TFL . Oxford University Press. Murphy T. (1996) Music and Song Oxford University Press Grenough M. (1994) Sing it! McGraw-Hill

Part 2: Receptive Skills task design I have chosen to focus on helping the students develop their listening skills. The two sub-skills for listening skills lesson are listening for gist and intensive listening. I am going to use the top-down approach to teach the listening skills. Lead in (5 mins): I think a good starting point for the lesson would be talking to the students about the kind of songs and music that I like to listen to. I will tell them that I listen to music everyday in the morning and while driving to and from work. I will ask students if they like to listen to songs and what kind of songs they like to listen to? Then I will write on the board the world is... I will ask students to complete the sentence. I will write their responses on the board. If they elicit wonderful, then I will complete the title as world is wonderful. I will tell students that they are going to listen a song by a famous singer Louis Armstrong who sang it in 1968 . Pre-teach blocking words (3 mins): Bloom, blessed, sacred. Will try to elicit the meaning from students with the aid of a picture for the word bloom. For the words blessed and scared I will use them in a sentence and try and elicit from students. Listening for gist( 10 mins): Tell Ss to listen to the song and think about what the singer thinks about the world. Play the song and ask students to discuss in pairs what the singer thinks about the world. Do class feedback.