ELT Rap : How to use rap music to create lyrics for English language education

1. ELT Rap: How to use rap music to create lyrics for English language education Speaker: Dr. Angel Lin Faculty of Education Chinese University of Hong Kong Date: 30 Nov 2006

2. What do you expect from the workshop? • Get some basic concepts about hip hop music and rap genres? • Get some ideas on how to use rap music and create rap lyrics to teach English? • Get some ideas on how to get students to create rap lyrics based on their familiar experience or topics?

3. What do you expect from the workshop? • Get some understanding of hip hop culture and youth resistant genres? • More than just teaching English: understanding youth culture and youth identities… and how to capitalize on youth cultural resources in our teaching… in helping students to build positive English speaker and English learner identities

4. Why Music? • “The beauty of the universe lay not in the stars figured into it but in the music generated by human minds, human voices, human hands.” – Philip K. Dick, “Chains of Air, Web of Aether” (1980) • “Music, the greatest good that mortals know…” – Joseph Addison (1672-1719)

5. Why Music in Second Language Education and Multicultural Education? • The famous American progressive educator, John Dewey, advocated the teaching of bilingual songs and folk dancing from the students’ own immigrant cultures to create mutual respect for different cultures in the public schools. • Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1999) has musical intelligence as one of the seven main intelligences that need to be encouraged and developed in the public school system.

6. Why Music in Second Language Education and Multicultural Education? • The influential Second Language Acquisition researcher, Steven Krashen (1983), defines the din in the head phenomenon as the use of music, especially vocal songs, to induce the automatic, subconscious acquisition of language • Using music to teach the second language also has social and emotional benefits, as students are gaining confidence in speaking and using the second language through music, and do not face the same kind of performance pressure found in formal language learning. (Hadi-Tabassum, 2006)

7. Why Music in Second Language Education and Multicultural Education? • The function of the mental rehearsal of spoken language through music is analogous to that of audiation—hearing music in one’s mind, not only for the cognitive rehearsal of musical text, but also for the ontogenetic development of the second language (Murphey, 1992) • When a song is running through the head, the language student will automatically rehearse the speech in that song, even if exposure to the song has been short-lived. Thus the inclusion of music and songs in bilingual and ESL classrooms is a progressive step towards achieving a multi-sensory approach to second language learning settings. (Hadi-Tabassum, 2006)

8. What is ELT Rap? • ELT Rap, as the name implies, is rap adapted or written for English language teaching (ELT) purposes • It is an innovative way of drawing on youth popular cultural resources for English language education that is being developed here by a team of ELT educator-researchers at the Faculty of Education, Chinese University of Hong Kong, in collaboration with leading hip hop rap artists in Hong Kong

9. Features of Rap Lyrics The linguist Geneva Smitherman has highlighted eight features of signification (i.e., ways of communicating meaning) in rap lyrics: • Indirection, circumlocution • Metaphorical-imagistic • Humorous, ironic • Rhythmic fluence and sound • Teachy but not preachy • Directed at person or persons usually present in the situational context • Punning, play on words • Introduction of the semantically or logically unexpected (cited in Perry, 2004, p. 62)

10. Features of Rap Lyrics • A glance at the list will show that when adapted, rap has great potential in English language teaching • The rhythmic nature of rap lyrics facilitates the acquisition of the stress-timed rhythm of English • This has special significance in Hong Kong, where the majority of learners speak Cantonese, a syllable-timed language, as their mother-tongue… more on this later… • And the play on words brings fun to students when they repeat raps for practice. The rhyming nature of rap lyrics will also heighten students’ phonetic skills and phonological awareness

11. Why is ELT Rap Appealing to Young People? • In English language education, jazz chants (Carolyn Graham) have been around for improving learners’ pronunciation, especially in terms of rhythm and intonation • ELT rap could be even more appealing than jazz chants in one major respect: hip hop music might have a stronger, “hip” (trendy) appeal to young people; the rhythm is provided by hip-hop music in the background • This popular, musical, dimension will make ELT rap especially appealing to teenage students, especially those who are otherwise not interested in using English in their daily lives…

12. Why is ELT Rap Appealing to Young People? • Apart from the fun element, what attracts teenage students to ELT rap can also be its content • Rap is a channel for (young) people to speak out, to unload their personal worries and frustrations, and to scenarios of social injustice • In Hong Kong, students from working class families, who are often disadvantaged under the present competitive education system, will find ELT rap an opportunity to reconcile their mixed feelings about English: • On the one hand they understand the importance of English to their future; on the other hand they resent the sense of failure brought about by their inability to master a foreign language

13. Why Hip Hop Rap Music? Hip Hop Rap Music as a Powerful Voice of Urban Youth: • The Verbal Art of Old School Hip Hop—Has its origins in the African American Church: One important source of this rich tradition of verbal art is from the way that ministers preach and teach: forming one of the inspirations and origins of the Old School Hip Hop rapping style • There are recent hip hop songs which still follow the Old School Hip Hop Style and contribute to building a positive identity for young people • e.g., the song “I Know I can” by American hip hop artist, Nas

14. “I Know I Can”, by Nas [Kids] I know I can (I know I can) Be what I wanna be (be what I wanna be) If I work hard at it (If I work hard it) I'll be where I wanna be (I'll be where I wanna be) [Nas] Be, B-Boys and girls, listen up You can be anything in the world, in God we trust An architect, doctor, maybe an actress But nothing comes easy it takes much practice Like, I met a woman who's becoming a star She was very beautiful, leaving people in awe Singing songs, Lena Horne, but the younger version Hung with the wrong person Got her strung off the heroin

15. “I Know I Can”, Nas Cocaine, sniffin up drugs, all in her nose Coulda died, so young, now looks ugly and old No fun ’cause now when she reaches for hugs people hold their breath Cause she smells of corrosion and death Watch the company you keep and the crowd you bring Cause they came to do drugs and you came to sing So if you gonna be the best, I'ma tell you how Put your hands in the air, and take the vow [Chorus 2X: Nas] + (Kids) I know I can (I know I can) Be what I wanna be (be what I wanna be) If I work hard at it (If I work hard it) I'll be where I wanna be (I'll be where I wanna be)

16. “I Know I Can”, Nas [Nas] Be, b-boys and girls, listen again This is for grown-looking girls who's only ten The ones who watch videos and do what they see As cute as can be, up in the club with fake ID Careful, 'fore you meet a man with HIV You can host the TV like Oprah Winfrey Whatever you decide, be careful, some men be Rapists, so act your age, don't pretend to be Older than you are, give yourself time to grow You thinking he can give you wealth, but so Young boys, you can use a lot of help, you know You thinkin life's all about smokin weed and ice You don't wanna be my age and can't read and write Begging different women for a place to sleep at night

17. “I Know I Can”, Nas Smart boys turn to men and do whatever they wish If you believe you can achieve, then say it like this [Chorus] Save the music y'all, save the music y'all Save the music y'all, save the music y'all Save the music [Nas] Be, be, 'fore we came to this country We were kings and queens, never porch monkeys There was empires in Africa called Kush Timbuktu, where every race came to get books To learn from black teachers who taught Greeks and Romans Asian Arabs and gave them gold when Gold was converted to money it all changed Money then became empowerment for Europeans

18. “I Know I Can”, Nas The Persian military invaded They heard about the gold, the teachings and everything sacred Africa was almost robbed naked Slavery was money, so they began making slave ships Egypt was the place that Alexander the Great went He was so shocked at the mountains with black faces Shot up they nose to impose what basically Still goes on today, you see? If the truth is told, the youth can grow They learn to survive until they gain control Nobody says you have to be gangstas, hoes Read more learn more, change the globe Ghetto children, do your thing Hold your head up, little man, you're a king Young Princess when you get your wedding ring Your man is saying "She's my Queen“ [Chorus]

19. Urban poets such as Saul Williams, write and perform poems in the ‘open mic’ poetry gatherings in America Slam Poetry is a kind of urban poetry that expresses the voices of urban youth (see his 2006 collection of poetry: The Dead’s Emcee’s Scrolls) Recent development of the ‘Slam Poetry’ Movement in the United States

20. Lines from Saul Williams’ poem, Untimely Meditations happiness is a mediocre standard for a middle class existence i see through smiles and smell truth in the distance beyond one dimensional smiles and laughter lies the hereafter: where tears echo laughter (you would have to do math to…) divide a smile by a tear times fear …. i lack the attention span to meditate my attention spans galaxies here and now are immense seconds are secular moments are mine self is illusion music’s divine…

21. Local Efforts in Developing Hip Hop Rap as a Positive Voice for Hong Kong Youth

22. Works by MC Yan and his fellow artists in the late 1990s in HK …. Don’t let people see you as a useless kid, be yourself and try your best; but even if you don’t succeed, don’t go slit your wrists, or jump off a building, or drink Dettol… (English translation of some of the lines of the song, Take Care Tonight, by LMF)

23. Culturally Compatible/Responsive Curriculum • American educationists, Roland Tharp, Kathryn Hu-Pei Au, Cathie Jordan, and their colleagues (1983) have in the past two decades developed an approach to teaching second language students (e.g., Native Hawaiian students learning Standard English in public schools) through a “Culturally Compatible/Responsive Curriculum” • A culturally compatible/responsive curriculum draws on the home, community and popular cultural resources that students bring to the classroom

24. Culturally Compatible/Responsive Curriculum • Under this approach, teachers and curriculum planners design lesson tasks and teaching approaches that will arouse students’ interest in school learning through capitalizing on students’ familiar everyday cultural resources (e.g., youth popular culture) as bridges • to bridge the students’ world outside the classroom and the world of school learning inside the classroom

25. Literature Needs to be Democratized • Connecting English literature to young people’s culture • Using youth popular culture as a way to induce students to appreciate English language arts

26. Literature Needs to be Democratized • The Professor of English for Speakers of Other Languages at the University of London Institute of Education, Henry Widdowson, wrote (1992): “Literature needs to be democratized, but this is not achieved by deprivation. To deny children access to great literature is to keep it within the preserve of an elite. What needs to be done is to make it more readily accessible. So it is not a matter of replacing the prestigious with the popular but of developing an awareness of how they are related, how they share the total literary glory which everybody is entitled to experience. The task of education is to reveal their common kinship. (H. G. Widdowson, 1992, p. 7; italics in the original)

27. ELT Rap represents our efforts in relating popular verbal art and youth popular culture to great literature of the world … We also draw on a holistic, positive, youth identity building approach: Inducing students into the empowered identities of English-rapping EMCEES emcee’ or ‘master of ceremony’ is the name for vocalists in hip hop rap music) In our teaching materials, e.g., we have used the theme of adventure and treasure-hunting; the final treasure to be discovered by the student is the beautiful world of language arts and powerful music… Transforming students’ identities: from the usual self-image of ‘a poor English learner’ to ‘a proud EMCEE’ in English and bilingual raps Building Positive Youth Identities& Building English Speaker Identities