How to Create ELT Rap Lyrics?

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How to Create ELT Rap Lyrics?

• Sampling from Great Literature
• e.g., Listen to Song 6 in the CD Rapping
  Shakespeare, Rapping Love a witty quotation
  about love from Shakespeares play, Romeo and
  Juliet, is used as the hook (i.e.,
  chorus/refrain) of the song,
• Hook Love is a madness most discreet, a
  choking gall, (and) a preserving sweet.
• And other lines of the song are created through
  variations on a line from the same play of
  Shakespeare
• Heaven is here, where Juliet lives

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How to Create ELT Rap Lyrics?

• Our Lyrics
• Song 6. Rapping Shakespeare, Rapping Love
• Hook
• Love is a madness most discreet,
• a choking gall, a preserving sweet! x 2 (From
  Shakespeare, Romeo Juliet)
• Heaven is here, where Juliet lives (From
  Shakespeare, Romeo Juliet)
• Love is here, where Romeo lives
• Humour is here, where Shakespeare lives
• Wisdom is here, where poets live
• Faith is here, where writers live
• Truth is here, where rappers live
• Joy is here, where music lives
• Peace is here, where you and I live!

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Repetition and Variation

• e.g., Listen to Song 8 in the CD I Have
  Promises to Keep
• The first line was sampled from Robert Frosts
  poem and the line was changed slightly to create
  an entirely different song. See Robert Frosts
  original poem on the right

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Repetition and Variation

• Now, look at the lyrics of this song (8) in your
  lyrics book and listen to this song and see how
  we have created this song based on sampling (some
  lines from some famous English poetry), as well
  as repetition and variation.
• a good technique to build in lots of language
  practice into the song as students rap it.

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Our LyricsSong 8 I Have Promises to Keep

• The woods are lonely, dark and deep
• But I have to go on
• I have promises to keep
• The journey is bumpy, long and bleak
• But I will go on
• I have promises to keep
• The mountains are scary, dangerous and steep
• But I am carrying on
• I have promises to keep
• Life is a heap
• of desires and challenges

• But I have decided to carry on
• I have promises to keep
• I have miles to go
• I have miles to go
• I have decided to go on
• I have promises to keep
• I have promises to keep
• Yes, I have promises to keep
• Dont you see
• No matter how hard life is
• I am determined to carry on
• For I have promises to keep!

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Our Teaching Resources Package

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How to Use the Poetic Collocation Dictionary in
Your Teaching?

• Collocation refers to the natural phenomenon
  that certain words always go together in peoples
  idiomatic usage of a language
• For instance, we tend to say to ride a bicycle
  but not to take a bicycle
• One important task in English language teaching
  is to help students become aware of the
  relationships of words
• For instance, to know which adjectives are
  usually used to describe which nouns, or which
  verbs can be used with which nouns to form verb
  phrases

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Poets and Lyrics Writers

• Poets and lyrics writers can be said to be
  creative specialists in the practice of
  collocation. They usually stretch the limits of
  language to create interesting, unexpected
  collocations of words which are, however, still
  permissible in the idiomatic usage of the
  language
• If poets just stick to common collocations of
  their language, their poems and lyrics will
  become a bit too boring and expected, bordering
  on the cliché
• Poets and lyrics writers can thus be said to be
  creative innovators of language conventions they
  renew our language practices to give us beautiful
  surprises, which are yet still within the
  permissible boundaries of our language
  conventions

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Simple Class Activity

• Teachers can conduct a simple classroom
  activity on what words or adjectives usually go
  with the word smiles, using the following
  teaching steps
• Write the word smile on the blackboard and ask
  students to think of different adjectives that
  can go with the word smile. You can give one
  or two examples first e.g., sunny smiles,
  happy smile
• Elicit more examples from the students and put
  their examples in a table on the blackboard

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Simple Class Activity

• Then ask students to read or listen to the
  excerpts of poem/lyrics lines that you can find
  in this poetic Collocation Dictionary (e.g.,
  under the key word smile) and ask them to
  underline (or note down) all the adjectives (or
  combinations of words) that they think the poets
  have used to describe smiles in their poems or
  lyrics

• Table 1 Table for brainstorming with students
  What adjectives usually go with the noun smile

Adjective Noun
sunny smile
happy smile
big smile
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Simple Class Activity

• Table 2 Table for students to note down poetic
  collocations from the poem/lyrics lines

• Ask students to use these examples to complete
  and expand the table that they have started with
  in their brainstorming session. Ask them to
  choose those lines (or combination of words) that
  they like the best and discuss (in pairs or
  groups) why they like them (e.g., non-cliché,
  unexpected combination of words, beautiful
  imagery, etc. teachers can lead the discussion
  by giving some examples first).

Adjective/ Other words Noun Other Combinations of words
Heavens blue smile
moony smile
friendships smile as pure as honey
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Simple Class Activity

1. For extended, free practice, students can be
   asked (e.g., as take-home activities) to
   construct some simple sentences (e.g., lyrical
   lines) about smiles using the new words in the
   table (individually, in pairs or in groups).

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Simple Class Activity

• Teachers can then encourage students to use these
  newly-learnt phrases in their future writing
  (e.g., simple song lyrics, poems, or prose)
• You can extend this classroom activity into a
  long-term, self-learning activity by having a
  class competition on writing the best collocation
  dictionaries
• Students can be asked to collate their own
  partial collocation dictionaries on selected key
  words (e.g., love, dream, rain, angel) over a
  period of time

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Simple Class Activity

• The best entries (in the format of tables or
  entries like those you can find in this
  Collocation Dictionary) will be selected as
  winners in the competition
• In this way students are encouraged to be
  autonomous learners and gradually increase their
  awareness of collocation between different words
• They can also gradually develop a sense of
  ownership of the English language and take pride
  in their own self-learning activities

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Simple Class Activity

• The above suggested activity is just an example
  to show how the present poetic Collocation
  Dictionary can serve both as teaching resources
  and as a model for students to create their own
  small-scale, partial Collocation Dictionaries
• Teachers are encouraged to modify the above
  teaching procedures and adapt and transform the
  above activity into different variant activities
  to suit the particular needs, interests and
  proficiency levels of their own classes of
  students

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Our LyricsSong 8 I Have Promises to Keep

• The woods are lonely, dark and deep
• But I have to go on
• I have promises to keep
• The journey is bumpy, long and bleak
• But I will go on
• I have promises to keep
• The mountains are scary, dangerous and steep
• But I am carrying on
• I have promises to keep
• Life is a heap
• of desires and challenges

• But I have decided to carry on
• I have promises to keep
• I have miles to go
• I have miles to go
• I have decided to go on
• I have promises to keep
• I have promises to keep
• Yes, I have promises to keep
• Dont you see
• No matter how hard life is
• I am determined to carry on
• For I have promises to keep!

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Useful Online Resources

• To learn more about collocation and related
  dictionaries, you can visit the following link
  hosted by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University
  http//elc.polyu.edu.hk/advdicts/collocation.htm

• There are many other useful resources available
  on the Internet. The last section of our poetic
  Collocation Dictionary shows some useful web
  links that you can visit to access the rich
  corpora of poems, lyrics and quotes by poets and
  lyrics writers in the world

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How to Use the Rhyming Dictionary in Your
Teaching

• Rhyming is perhaps the most ancient and universal
  poetic and musical technique found in many
  cultures and literary traditions
• Rhyming has many functions
• For instance, it helps the audience to easily
  pick up the structure of the poem, lyrics or
  everyday idioms.
• Our students will quickly remember a witty saying
  or idiom with elements that rhyme, such as
• An apple a day
• keeps the doctor away.

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The Power of Rhyming

• Or A house is made of walls and beams
• A home is made of love and dreams.
• Or Shakespeares famous lines in his play,
• A Mid-Summer Nights Dream
• Love looks not with the eyes,
• but with the mind,
• and therefore is wingd Cupid
  painted blind.
• There are different terms used to analyse the
  prosodic techniques that contribute to the
  euphony (i.e., sweet, musical harmony eu means
  sweet phony means voice or sound) of a
  poetic or lyrical piece

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Commonly Mentioned Terms

• Assonance repetition of vowels without
  repetition of consonants as in stony and holy,
  a technique used as an alternative to rhyme
• Rhyme repetition of sounds at the end of the
  rhyming words (as in the examples given earlier)
• Consonance repetition of consonant sounds in a
  short sequence of words, for example, the t
  sound in Is it blunt and flat?
• Alliteration a prosodic technique in which
  successive words (more strictly, stressed
  syllables) begin with the same consonant sound
  (e.g., safe and sound, cheap and cheerful,
  without rhyme or reason)

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Strategy of Phonetic Parallelism

• In Rap lyrics, as in other forms of spoken and
  written poetry, many of the above prosodic
  techniques are used to create a harmonious,
  musical effect
• In the initial stage of teaching students
  prosodic techniques the teacher might not want to
  burden their students with all these different
  terms
• One simple strategy to teach these techniques is
  to group them under the umbrella term
  parallelism, and in this case the prosodic
  techniques can all be called examples of phonetic
  parallelism (teachers can use the simpler term,
  repetition of sounds, when they teach beginning
  students)

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Phonograms

• The examples collected in the present Rhyming
  Dictionary are called phonograms
• They are exact rhymes. That means the ends of
  the words sound exactly the same, and as
  phonograms, the ending parts of the rhyming words
  are also spelt in the same way e.g., mind, blind
• However, teachers can also introduce half-rhymes
  or near-rhymes (similar to examples of assonance
  discussed above) to broaden the pool of rhyming
  words that students can use when writing lyrics
• e.g., home, alone

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Phonograms

• The examples of phonograms and suffixes (which
  form a subcategory of phonograms) included in the
  present Rhyming Dictionary are by no means
  exhaustive, and the teacher is encouraged to
  expand and enrich the present dictionary in a
  collaborative project with their students
• For instance, the teacher can organize a class
  competition on compiling rhyming dictionaries.
  Students can be asked to compile (individually,
  in pairs or in groups) their own partial rhyming
  dictionaries on selected key endings of words
  (e.g., -ind mind, kind, find, blind)

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Class Competition on Compiling Rhyming
Dictionaries

• The teacher can follow the following simple
  teaching steps to get students started
• Select a song that contains rhyming words that
  will be easy for your students (e.g., Song 8 I
  Have Promises to Keep)
• Let students listen to the song and enjoy the
  melody of the song first. Then on a second
  listening you can provide the students with the
  lyrics
• For higher proficiency students, you can prepare
  a listening cloze, leaving out the key rhyming
  words in the lyrics and getting students to fill
  in the blanks e.g., keep, deep, bleak, steep,
  heap
• For less proficient students, you can provide the
  words as options for students to select for each
  blank or you can ask students to underline words
  that sound similar/that rhyme.

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Class Competition on Compiling Rhyming
Dictionaries

• Then you can get students to fill in a table with
  the rhyming words
• Table Finding the Rhyming
• Words in the Song
• I Have Promises to Keep

• Under the teachers guidance, the table can then
  be further expanded and enriched by students
  themselves (using words that they have found from
  other songs or sources) to form the starting
  entry of their own rhyming dictionary

keep deep bleak steep heap



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Class Competition on Compiling Rhyming
Dictionaries

• Table Expanding the Table of Rhyming Words to
  Make an Entry in their Own Rhyming Dictionary
  (Teacher can consult the present Rhyming
  Dictionary to provide students with some
  examples)

Phonograms deep keep peep beep weep sleep sheep sweep
Half Rhymes bleak heap seek fleet heel feel see me




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Uses of the Rhyming Dictionary

• In this way students are encouraged to pay
  attention to word sounds, word endings and word
  spellings. Gradually they will increase their
  awareness of the different ways in which words
  can rhyme (or different kinds of repetition of
  sounds in words)
• They can also gradually develop a sense of
  ownership of the English language and take pride
  in their own self-learning activities e.g., they
  can feel proud about their own ability to create
  a rhyming dictionary for use by other students
  and teachers
• The present Rhyming Dictionary can thus serve as
  both a teaching resource (e.g., when helping
  students to rewrite or extend some song lyrics)
  and as a model to show students how they can
  create and compile their own rhyming dictionaries
  for use in their own future writing

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Useful Websites

• Websites where you can find more information
  about the above-mentioned prosodic techniques
  used in poetry and lyrics writing
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assonance
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyme
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonance
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliteration

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How to Use the Teaching Notes and Lesson Plans

• In this Teaching Notes booklet, teachers will
  find teaching ideas and a sample lesson plan for
  each of the songs in the Songs CD provided in the
  ELT Rap Teaching Resources Package
• However, these ideas and lesson plans are only
  there to stimulate teachers thinking about how
  they can use their songs most fruitfully for
  their students
• Teachers are encouraged to mix and match or adapt
  the ideas and teaching steps proposed in this
  booklet according to the particular needs,
  interests and proficiency levels of their own
  students

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Example Rap the Tenses

• We hope that teachers enjoy using ELT rap with
  the students, and bring the joy and fun of rap
  into the English lessons as well as the English
  extra-curricular activities
• For example, lets first listen to the song Rap
  the Tenses, and then see the teaching notes and
  sample lesson plan designed for the Song in the
  Teaching Notes Package
• Song 2. Rap the Tenses
• Teaching Notes
• There are some more stanzas that teachers can use
  with their students to extend this song

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Song 2. Rap the Tenses

• V
• Run ran run
• Run ran run
• Jump jumped jumped
• Jump jumped jumped
• Help helped helped
• Hahaha!
• From the Titanic,
• You jump, I jump!
• Everybody jumps!
• Tenses are easy
• Nobody panics!

• VI
• Sleep slept slept
• Sleep slept slept
• Lay laid laid
• Lay laid laid
• Its already late!
• Lets call it a day!

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Rap the Tenses

• Its a fun rap to practise the tenses, especially
  the tenses of common irregular verbs. Teachers
  can work with students to cover more verbs and to
  design fun, rhyming lines to end each stanza
• For example
• From the Titanic, You jump, I jump! ? From
  _________

The Bus Uncle, You have pressure, I have pressure. (have, had, had) A famous quote, Actions speak louder than words (speak, spoke, spoken)
A famous quote, Easy come, easy go (come, came, come) A famous quote, A task well begun is half done (do, did, done)
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Sample Lesson Plan

• Target Senior Primary / Junior Secondary
• Theme Tenses
• Duration 60-min
• Language Focus
• Spelling different tense forms of verbs
• Language Items
• Irregular verbs
• Rhyming words, i.e. Steal stole stolen. Oh, my
  head is so swollen!

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STEPS DURATION TEACHING AIDS
LEAD-IN LEAD-IN LEAD-IN
Give students a 3-minute quiz on irregular verbs. Review the correct answers by rapping the words. 5-min Quiz
LISTENING SPEAKING LISTENING SPEAKING LISTENING SPEAKING
Listen to the rap. 5-min CD
Practise rapping the lyrics together. 10-min Songsheet
Students take turns to rap other irregular verbs written down in the quiz (5 Students) _____ _____ _____ (each 2 times) (Whole Class) Rap the tenses clap your hands. Rap the tenses rap with friends. 20-min
WRITING WRITING WRITING
Option A Choose a verb and write rhyming lines, e.g. Begin began begun. Please dont run! Begin began begun. Everybody jumps! Begin began begun. We have so much fun! 20-min
Option B Choose a famous quote and list the tenses, e.g. From the Bus Uncle You have pressure, I have pressure. Have had had. Have had had. 20-min
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Irregular Verb Quiz

• Simple Present Simple Past Past Participle
• Do Did
  Donr
• Go
• Take
• Make
• Win
• Lie
• Steal
• Keep
• Sing
• Sink
• Write down as many other irregular verbs
• within the given time