English for Global Musicians

Abstract

Alternative schools in South Korea accommodate various groups of youth by providing a nontraditional curriculum and methods. In line with the growing popularity of K-Pop across the globe, alternative music high schools have gained prominence amongst musically inclined teenagers. Some of these schools, along with intensive music training, nowadays offer English as the core curriculum in response to globalization within the music industry since English proficiency can exponentially improve chances for success in students’ career overseas, as in the case of Psy whose music video Gangnam Style went viral on YouTube with view counts at a record high. It is evident that Psy’s communicative competence in English has played a significant role in maintaining his international success—he has made appearances on numerous TV shows worldwide and in prominent international events, and has successfully answered interview questions in English without the help of a translator. English is inarguably a necessity for Korean musicians who hope to reach a wider audience, to succeed in the global market, or even just to collaborate with non-Korean speaking musicians, but there are virtually no English language textbooks available in the market that target pre-session professional musicians. Thus, this portfolio aims to serve this particular teaching context. The target audience is a mixed-gender group of fourteen third grade music high school students in Korea. Due to their musical competitiveness, most students have not been able to dedicate much time and attention to the English language, and their communicative competence is quite low, ranging from Intermediate Low to Intermediate Mid on the ACTFL scale—they can complete uncomplicated communicative tasks in straightforward social situations, but their responses are often filled with hesitations and inaccuracies as they search for appropriate forms and vocabulary. They were placed in level Two out of four based on the result of a placement test and self-assessment they took at the end of the previous year. Each lesson is a two-hour block and takes place twice a week. Due to their lack of knowledge of the English language, students learned high frequency grammar structures (present tense, past tense, present perfect, passive, modal verbs, and there is/are) through explicit grammar instruction and did a significant amount of written exercises and controlled productive practice in the previous year. They cannot, however, automatically synthesize their knowledge of grammar, possibly due to lack of exposure and opportunities to use the language communicatively in real life-situations. Surveys and interviews conducted in the previous year reveal that students’ interests vary widely depending on their instruments from improving their diction to comprehending and writing lyrics in English. Their mutual interest, however, is to develop oral communicative competence to successfully interact with non-Korean speaking musicians. The students will use English in and outside of Korea to interact with musicians of diverse backgrounds, including native and non-native English speakers, professors and peers for various career-related purposes, such as jam sessions, collaborations, rehearsals, negotiating, signing contracts, interviews, taking/giving lessons album promotions, or simply for social networking. The students do not need to prepare for any standardized tests since most of the music institutes of their first choice do not require, or place a high value on standardized test scores other than high school GPA. With these factors taken into account, it is in the best interest of the students to develop general oral fluency with a focus on carrying out career-related functions and writing for occupational purposes. This textbook adopts Task-Supported Teaching and Nation’s (2001) Four Strands and provides opportunities to practice meaningful and productive communicative practice between teacher-students and students-students, such as information gap, group tasks, individual tasks, role-play, and discussion on music-related topics. High frequency spoken English phrases and vocabulary, and music related jargon and expressions are presented in various forms, such as YouTube videos and modified articles, in the order of functional needs. Conversation strategies for each function are presented deductively, followed by consciousness-raising controlled practice. Each chapter ends with an unfocused task, which is evaluated on task completion (Baleghiadeh, 2008). This portfolio adapts most of its material resources from the Internet, such as YouTube, Wikipedia, Google Search, pop song lyrics, movies TV shows and various music-related websites. Most materials are modified for classroom use.