29 May 2013 (Wednesday)

5 students joined me today.

I started class by asking if the students did anything interesting on the weekend. One student went to a Seattle Mariner's baseball game. At a bar after the game he heard the song "The Macarena" (video, song info).

It was a huge hit, back in the mid-1990's. It reminds me of the current one-hit-wonder "The Harlem Shake". We watched a video of UW students doing the Harlem Shake.

We talked for a long time about baseball in Japan. We watched a video clip of fans in the stands singing songs and drumming, but I can't find that clip anymore. It looked like a great atmosphere. I was also surprised to learn that each Japanese player has his own song!

I can't remember how we came to this, but someone asked to hear "99 Luftballons" (video) by Nena (info). This was a big hit in the early 1980's. I showed the English version of the song: "99 Red Balloon" (video, lyrics, song info) to show the difference between the German and English sounds of the lyrics.

Speaking of German bands one student said she really like the Scorpions (info). As an example of a song she likes we watched "Send Me An Angel" (video, lyrics, song info).  Their biggest hit was "Wind Of Change" (video, lyrics, song info).

Speaking of German bands and Germany, especially during the Cold War, I told about being a high school exchange student in Berlin in 1983/1984.

The most popular band from Germany today is Rammstein (info) so I played one of their most popular songs: "Du Hast" (video, song info). If you like that song, you'd probably like all their songs. I saw a concert of theirs in Spain and watching the crowd and the fireworks was really impressive. Very theatrical. Definitely worth seeing!

The next song chosen was "A Little Party Never Killed Nobody" (video with lyrics, song info) by Fergie (info).

Since the title of that song is totally incorrect English grammar (double negative), I told the class the story of how I came up with the concept for this English class based on talking about music. My original idea came from the Stevie Wonder (info) song "You Haven't Done Nothin'" (video, lyrics, song info), which has a double-negative and inspired me to think about songs as language learning tools.

With that our time was finished for the day. Only one more class left in the quarter! :-(