Is hip-hop deteriorating to the fact it is all about image, glamour, bling and hot girls in videos. Real authentic hip-hop emerged from the streets, mainly from black neighborhoods and was aimed towards street audiences. We get a misconception that hip hop will live on if rappers think less about the money and more about their art. Look how the beats have evolved over the years from the drums and scratching to hip-hop nowadays. What am I hearing now? There are some good producers out their like e.g. premier who keeps it to his natural style and there are some who just produce McDonald beats. By this I mean the fast ready made beats which are pushed out to make money. To me some of the beats are rushed causing it to have no backbone and making it a waste of beat. On my last note I feel hip-hop needs to go back to its original style.
Authentic English Language Text In English as a foreign or second language teaching (EFL, ESL), if you ever need to come up with an authentic English text of any kind, i.e., newspaper, magazine, movie clip, etc. that you need to present to the class and you’ve been powerfully influenced by music your whole life you might chose to take the song approach. You'll be okay using a popular song as authentic language text - which it certainly is. I'd go with popular songs, like "Imagine" by John Lennon, which have more appeal. You can get some additional mileage out of the song by listening to it. Re-Ordering Sequences Play the song again afterwards to have learners check their re-ordered sequence. lyrics Try to have a picture or drawing that represents each of your chosen lexis for you to use to help elicit the key lexis from the learners before they hear the song. For a REAL test of this system (which I regularly use, by the way) is to find and use a song that you think the learners don't know! You'll get kudos for this one for sure. It’s especially effective when the class is multi-cultural; that is, composed of learners from different countries and diverse language backgrounds.
(Russia, Iran, South Korea, Mexico, and so on) Using a snappy but “unknown” song will help to ensure a ample amount of “learning” on the part of your students, in more ways than one. Finding Unique Songs So how would you find such songs – easy; just check out songs from other genres, songs sung in other varieties of English and popular songs from past eras aka “oldies but goodies”. Some suggestions you might consider include: • country and western • oldies from the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s • jazz vocals • soul or rhythm and blues songs (especially from previous eras) • comedy songs • Bluegrass songs • Folk songs • Ballads Process Need Not Be Difficult If you don’t have the time or inclination to do the extra preparation you can just go with the activities I've mentioned for your presentation. The process needn’t be overly difficult at all. Let me know if you need any further guidance or some actual exercise examples. I’ll be happy to send you some. Good luck..
