RockLinguist teaches languages through songs, with guitar players as teachers
StartupRealities No 22
RockLinguist Limited is a group of foreign-language teaching schools which use guitar players as language teachers and all language learning occurs through foreign language songs and lyrics.
SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATION
A series of research papers (the most recent from McGill University published on February 27, 2020) show that there is a connection between music and speech in the human brain. This explains why it is much easier to remember a sentence that has a tune attached to it: "I want to hold your hand" is easy-peasy when you sing it like the Beatles.
INTERVIEW WITH THE CEO
"When you sign up for a RockLinguist course in English, you are virtually joining a rock band. Seriously!" said company founder and CEO Rochelle Lingers.
"Our language teachers play the guitar to their students for half of the duration of the class. They all sit in a circle, teacher and students, and there is a lot of group singing and sometimes even dancing. We'll add more dancing when we start with Spanish language classes next month, as some flamenco would be essential to learning Spanish," Lingers added.
"But don't be misled: entertaining though our classes may be, the goal is not entertainment; the goal is accelerated learning. There is a fundamental underlying pedagogy of teaching language through singing and it is centred on memory formation. A tune provides a crutch to memory formation that is more powerful than any other association, visual or linguistic. And then, miraculously, this crutch turns into an artificial joint that locks in the association between melody and lyrics that lasts your entire lifetime," Lingers noted metaphorically.
"If you want a funny demonstration of the difference between learning a song in a foreign language and learning the language through songs, do watch the performance commonly known as Ken Lee (below). And remember: don't do this at home! Come to RockLinguist and learn with us, properly!" admonished Lingers.
RockLinguist Limited is a group of foreign-language teaching schools which use guitar players as language teachers and all language learning occurs through foreign language songs and lyrics.
SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATION
A series of research papers (the most recent from McGill University published on February 27, 2020) show that there is a connection between music and speech in the human brain. This explains why it is much easier to remember a sentence that has a tune attached to it: "I want to hold your hand" is easy-peasy when you sing it like the Beatles.
INTERVIEW WITH THE CEO
"When you sign up for a RockLinguist course in English, you are virtually joining a rock band. Seriously!" said company founder and CEO Rochelle Lingers.
"Our language teachers play the guitar to their students for half of the duration of the class. They all sit in a circle, teacher and students, and there is a lot of group singing and sometimes even dancing. We'll add more dancing when we start with Spanish language classes next month, as some flamenco would be essential to learning Spanish," Lingers added.
"But don't be misled: entertaining though our classes may be, the goal is not entertainment; the goal is accelerated learning. There is a fundamental underlying pedagogy of teaching language through singing and it is centred on memory formation. A tune provides a crutch to memory formation that is more powerful than any other association, visual or linguistic. And then, miraculously, this crutch turns into an artificial joint that locks in the association between melody and lyrics that lasts your entire lifetime," Lingers noted metaphorically.
"If you want a funny demonstration of the difference between learning a song in a foreign language and learning the language through songs, do watch the performance commonly known as Ken Lee (below). And remember: don't do this at home! Come to RockLinguist and learn with us, properly!" admonished Lingers.
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