![\"Jason](\"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/JASONRLevine-150x150.jpg\")
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\u201cYou\u2019ll learn without looking when you stop feeling bored and stressed. Having fun when you learn is when you learn the best.\u201d -Fluency MC<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
My daughter, Lola, just turned seven. English is her native language, yet last week she \u2018hurted\u2019 her finger and yesterday she \u2018writed\u2019 a letter to Dominic (the \u2018love of her life\u2019). \u201cOh, that\u2019s right; you hurt your finger,\u201d I say. And, \u201cOh, you wrote a letter to Dominic?\u201d She responds: \u201cI hurt my finger; I hurt it really bad.\u201d \u201cI wrote him a letter. I wrote it on a card I made.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is no need to correct Lola\u2019s mistakes; she simply needs to hear irregular verb forms more often. With enough input, she\u2019ll acquire them for life. She repeats the correct forms, instinctively, without being prompted: more input, plus practice. In countless stories, songs, movies, and conversations, she will hear (and read) them as they occur naturally in collocations.<\/p>\n
Of course, learners of English as a second or foreign language rarely get this sort of input and practice. \u201cStudying like crazy\u201d (e.g., reading and copying irregular verbs) might get them closer, but typically they\u2019re bored or stressed out or both-not a great recipe for acquiring vocabulary or keeping motivation high. And in most cases-such as with an alphabetized list of verbs-the input isn\u2019t contextualized. This makes it even harder to store the words in long-term memory.<\/p>\n
The key to using a language accurately and fluently is to follow the 3Rs. No, not \u201cReading, \u2018Riting, \u2018Rithmetic\u201d (for those of you who grew up in the U.S) but rather, \u201cRelax, Repeat, Remember.\u201d This is how we learn our native language; and it\u2019s what children and adults learning second and foreign languages ought to be doing, too.<\/p>\n
That woman you know who didn\u2019t speak a word of Thai but lived with an awesome family in Thailand for a year and \u201cpicked up\u201d the language? She followed the 3Rs. Your cousin\u2019s friend from Colombia who has never set foot in an English speaking country but speaks with high accuracy and fluency from watching so much television? He followed the 3Rs.<\/p>\n
Kids come hard-wired to repeat new language without feeling anxious or self-conscious. In fact, they enjoy it; they\u2019re hungry for repetitive input. They\u2019ll ask you to read the same book to them nine times in a row or play the same song again (and again and again). We adults, on the other hand, have developed higher order cognitive skills. We read a story; we understand it; we\u2019re done. We check a word in a dictionary; it makes sense to us; we\u2019re on to the next word. Without enough repeated exposure to vocabulary in context, it is hardly surprising that most of us language learners are not as accurate nor as fluent as we\u2019d like to be.<\/p>\n
But wait a minute. Are children the only ones who want to hear songs again and again?<\/p>\n
If we\u2019re talking about your typical \u2018pop\u2019 song compilation for four-year olds, featuring gems such as \u201cBingo\u201d and \u201cRow, Row, Row Your Boat,\u201d then the answer could quite possibly be yes (especially if you\u2019ve got that #@$% CD in the car). On the other hand, you might play a new release by your favorite artist dozens of times. Ditto for a song from high school, in spite of the fact that you\u2019ve heard it at least 200 times.<\/p>\n
Have you ever read the same book 200 times? The same newspaper article? Is it fun to listen to your Uncle Freddie tell the same story about his trip to Las Vegas?<\/p>\n
There\u2019s something different, something special about rhythm and rhyme.<\/p>\n
Our brain likes patterns. Patterns, by definition, repeat. (Contrast this with reference lists arranged alphabetically). \u00a0Rhythm and rhyme are such powerful patterns they get \u201cstuck in your head\u201d more easily than others do. When was the last time you couldn\u2019t take your mind off of a series of shapes you saw in a magazine ad?<\/p>\n
And for human beings, music is as fundamental for nourishment as food. But as with food, there are different tastes.<\/p>\n
With these ideas in mind, I wrote a song in 2010 to learn and practice irregular verbs. I grouped them according to sound and spelling patterns and wrote lyrics that I thought would appeal to my students, who were young adults from various countries around the world. I grew up listening to and djing hip hop music, so the song, \u201cStick, Stuck Stuck\u201d, is a rap song with a simple, \u2018old school\u2019 beat.<\/p>\n
It begins this way:<\/p>\n
The microphone I take (took, taken). You shake (shook, shaken). Wake (woke, woken) to the style I\u2019m creating. Think (thought, thought). Seek (sought, sought). Listen to the lesson that I teach (taught, taught).<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I hoped my students would like the song enough to repeat it and get the multiple exposures they needed. True, native speakers don\u2019t learn irregular verbs this way. But walk up to one of them and say, \u201ctake, took taken\u201d and then \u201cbring, ______, _______\u201d and they\u2019ll fill in the blanks. Our brains store the verb forms this way once we\u2019ve heard and seen them enough.<\/p>\n
This is what I wanted for my students: to be able to access and use irregular verb forms naturally-with fluency and accuracy-in conversations, in job interviews, while writing essays, wherever and whenever they needed to.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, they liked the song and one student shot a video<\/a> of me performing it. The students performed the song afterwards, though this isn\u2019t included in this particular video. I\u2019ve written many songs since, some of which you can see in videos on my YouTube Channel<\/a>. I\u2019ve just finished a new one entitled \u201cFresh (fresher, freshest)\u201d. Can you guess what the language focus is? \ud83d\ude00 I\u2019ll be performing it during my session at the \u00a0iTDi Summer School MOOC<\/a>. I hope to see you there!<\/p>\n
Rhythm and Rhyme: Follow the 3Rs with these 2Rs and watch<\/i> (and hear<\/i>) your vocabulary grow. \u201cYou\u2019ll learn without looking when you stop feeling bored and stressed. Having fun when you learn is when you learn the best.\u201d -Fluency MC<\/p>\n
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Join Jase and more than 30 other iTDi presenters for the iTDi Summer School MOOC<\/a> live from July 20th to August 17th 2014.<\/b><\/p>\n
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Connect with authors, iTDi Associates, Mentors, and Faculty by joining iTDi Community. Sign Up For A Free iTDi Account<\/a> to create your profile and get immediate access to our social forums and trial lessons from our English For Teachers<\/a> and Teacher Development<\/a> courses.<\/p>\n
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\nYour support makes a difference.<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresh (fresher, freshest): Building Vocabulary through Rhythm and Rhyme – Jason R. Levine \u201cYou\u2019ll learn without looking when you stop feeling bored and stressed. Having fun when you learn is when you learn the best.\u201d -Fluency MC My daughter, Lola, just turned seven. English is her native language, yet last week she \u2018hurted\u2019 her … Continue reading Movement, Rhyme and Rhythm in ELT – Jase<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":4626,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movement-rhyme-rhythm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}