FLE teaching, language learning, song, dance, cognitive skills, motivation, cultural understanding, neuroscience, foreign language education, French as a Foreign Language
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Abstract
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Abstract
Discover how song and dance enhance French as a Foreign Language learning by improving cognitive skills, motivation, and cultural understanding.
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[...] In addition, the processing of music [ . ] presents close functional links with other non-musical skills. [ . ] Given that there is no specific brain center dedicated to the processing of music, it stimulates and modifies many cortical and subcortical regions in both cerebral hemispheres15. Music is therefore a stimulator that can awaken the entire set of skills - and notably linguistic skills - of an individual. Regarding the learning of FLE, the pedagogical use of song will therefore facilitate the stimulation of the brain areas dedicated to this learning. [...]
[...] I - 4 What happens in the brain: song and neuroscience If humans are therefore capable of showing such abilities in learning a foreign language through song, it is interesting to wonder what happens inside the brain. It is well known for a long time the extraordinary powers that music has on the human brain. Many studies have highlighted the fact that man has what could be called a "biological pre-equipment" for musical perception and cognition."12. Thus, A. Moussard, F. Rochette and E. Bigand even evoke the fact that music "would have preceded the emergence of sophisticated cognitive functions such as articulated language"13. [...]
[...] It is also undeniable that the more the song studied is anchored in a recent past, the more it will have utility and the chance to captivate the learner concerned with discovering and understanding, not only the language, but also the society - the current events, the cultural and social codes - of a country that, even if it may have similarities with its own, will necessarily also have differences. The example of a very recent song, such as The Oubliés of Gauvain Sers (2019), for example, will allow the teacher (in addition to the study of the language, vocabulary or ellipses used by the singer) to illustrate the current social context and the cleavage between urban and rural areas in the French landscape today17. I - 6 How to put the use of song into practice in the pedagogical framework? [...]
[...] We can indeed, thanks to the learning of a song, avoid the bad pronunciations that often occur in beginner learners when they do not recognize what they read. Thus, very common words like "monsieur" or "femme", which do not pronounce as they are written, will remain more easily anchored with the correct pronunciation in the learner's memory if he discovers them first through a song that he has had pleasure in hearing and re-hearing until the correct pronunciation becomes an automatism when he will have to move on to the "oral expression" phase." Because it is indeed important to hear and re-hear, then to repeat and repeat again, in the process of learning a language. [...]
[...] We re-listen to create5. A study conducted by Flora Luciano-Bret has made it possible to establish the following finding: "We retain 20% of what we hear of what we see of what we hear and see of what we say of what we say and do6. This study effectively confirms that listening and repeating allows for better memorization. But again, if it's a matter of listening to and repeating words, phrases or dialogues that don't "speak" to the learner, or in which they don't recognize themselves, the memory work will be, at best, effective in the short term, at worst totally ineffective. [...]
