Ivmusictherapyjan2013

Music Therapy

Case Studies IV Students’ Teaching Songs Case Studies from “The Importance of Music and Song” Sogo III Class Plus reviews of Three Volumes of Previous Case Studies!

KUIS

Jan. 2013

Slightly Edited by Tim Murphey This booklet belongs to:___________________________

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Music Therapy Case Studies IV / KUIS / January 2013

INTRODUCTION This volume was put together by the amazing Fall Sogo III class entitled, The Importance of Music and Song (see participants photo on the back cover). This volume includes 18 individual musical therapy case studies followed by 3 group reviews of previous booklets. These are followed by the references used throughout and then a short Musical Glossary. Any words preceded by an *asterisk is in the Musical Glossary at the end of the booklet. (For example, *SSIMHP.) We tried to keep the definitions simple and give examples. Appendix 1 has a list of the songs used and where you can listen to them. Enjoy and relax! It is an understatement to say this was a super fun class! I will miss them all!

Table of Contents

Tim Murphey

Start Page

1. Yuka Honjo: Dare to show your love!

2. Ayaka Tonouchi: How wonderful the power of music!

3. Eri Yamashita: Group singing helps language learning!

4. Saki Kubota: Make Men E Miss Takes and …

5. Rika Kawai: Skype Singing!

6. Monique Yonaha: Doi Ta Ga In! 7. Erika Omori: Super happy optimistic joyful and prodigious 8. Yurika Takagi: Songs deepen people’s relationships 9. Hitomi Sohzu: Singing Together Enhances Relationships 10. Arisa Sato: Singing While We Work!

11. Manami Ito: The joy of laughing and singing!

12. Shoko Suzuki: Cram School Buddies 13. Natsumi Akimoto: Spreading the Five Ways to Happiness 14. Miki Kurosawa: Mom’s Good Experience 15. Konatsu Yasui: My Mom Can’t Get Enough!

16. Mariko Sasamori: A Happy Story 17. Natsumi Okada: Today while the blossoms…

18. Manami Murakami: My Genius Brother!

Group Report 2010 (Okada, Kawai, Satou, Akimoto, Tonouchi, & Kubota) Group Report 2011 (Yasui, Sohzu, Takagi, Yamashita, Kurosawa, & Ito) Group Report 2012 (Murakami, Honjo, Omori, Suzuki, Yonaha, & Sasamori) References Musical Glossary Appendix 1: Songs used…

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1. Yuka Honjo: Dare to show your love!

I chose my friend, Hazuki to teach a song to because she is a KUIS student, so she is used to English very much. I thought it would be easier to teach to person who likes English. I taught her the song, ‘five ways to happiness’ (Murphey, 2005).

The reason I chose this song was that it has gestures. I have found, it is easier to memorize things with gestures. In addition I like this song because it makes people positive. Actually, she is really a positive and cheerful person, but sometimes she becomes negative. Therefore, I wanted her to know this song and I hoped it would help her to get rid of negative feelings (Anchor, 2010).

On November 15th, I met her to teach the song. At first, I sang the song with gestures in front of her. When I sang the song, she looked interested. I was relieved that she looked like she was having fun. Then we sang the song together. The first time, she didn’t memorize the whole song of course, but she did her best to sing. She understood the meaning of the lyrics but she mistook words or skipped them, for example she often skipped ‘from’ at the phrase ‘smile from ear to ear’. In addition, ‘dare’ was an unfamiliar word for her. Therefore she often forgot the word, ‘dare’ or mistook as ‘dear’. I corrected whenever she made a mistake. We then sang it several times, and I thought she memorized the song. Therefore I asked her to sing by herself.

She tried to sing, but sometimes she forgot the lyrics. Then I didn’t tell lyrics, but I showed her gestures (*TPR, Asher, 1977). When she saw the gestures, she recalled the lyrics.

The following day, I asked her, “What are the five ways to happiness?” I was surprised that she could sing the song with gestures! Of course she had a few mistakes, but she could sing almost perfectly. She told me that the gestures helped her to memorize the song. She also told me that when she sings this song, she becomes happy and cheerful. I was very glad to hear that.

I learned from this research that songs have strong power. In this case, the song makes her happy. When I taught the song to her, she was always smiling and she looked like she was having fun. I realized that even when I looked at Hazuki singing the song, I, too, smiled and felt more positive. Smiling and happiness is contagious (Hatfield et al 1994). I noticed this song makes people happy! I would like her to recall this song whenever she wants to be happy.

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2. Ayaka Tonouchi: How wonderful the power of music!

I have had a special song since Tim taught the song to us. The song is “5 ways to happiness”. The reason why this song is special for me is that this song encouraged me when I listened to it for the first time. Then I decided to use this song for my case study.

Momoko is one of my friends in KUIS, and we have worked in the same workplace for 3 years. She is one year older than I, but last year she went to Canada for studying abroad, and now she is a junior student. In addition, she is going to go to Korea to study from next February. I think Momoko is an earnest person, so I want to give this song to her, and I want her to do her best with this song in Korea even if studying English there is hard for her.

November 25, I taught the song to her at the cafeteria from around 4 p.m. with coffee after a meeting at our work place. I wanted her to feel relaxed So, I thought, we need to have a coffee. First, I sang the song to her with melody. However, she could not catch the lyrics. She was confused that I taught the lyrics and music at the same time. So I taught just the 5 ways to happiness without the melody. After that she could understand the lyrics. Next I taught her the gestures of the 5 ways because I thought these gestures would help her to memorize the song more easy. Actually, she could sing the song more easily with the gestures (*TPR, Asher, ). Then, we started to sing it with the melody. It was a little bit difficult for her the first time, but gradually she improved. In addition, I taught the reason why those 5 ways make us happy, then she had more interest in this song and she tried to sing it again and again. Suddenly, I asked her “what is the 5 ways to happiness?” Then she sang the song naturally with a big smile. Finally, she became to be able to sing the song with the melody completely.

I learned many things through this case study, for example how using gestures is useful for teaching. Teaching something is difficult, but teaching music is more difficult because it has melody line. However, I had the strategy for teaching, for instance using gestures. It helped her and also me. Finally I asked her about this case study and she said, “When I heard the song the first time, I thought it would be hard to remember. However, I noticed that there are same phrases repeating, and what all I have to remember is just the first phrase, 5 ways and the order of those phrases.

Remembering the order was difficult but the gestures helped me to remember easily.”

After I heard this comment, I noticed that music has a big power certainly. Also I hope she will make use of this experience and this music for her study.

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3. Eri Yamashita: Group singing helps language learning!

I chose ‘What’s a Happy Person?’ song to teach. I simply like the message and I wanted to share it. Also, this song has a good rhythm and it helps us enjoy singing. My father, Hiromu, and my little sister, Hiromi, came to mind immediately because my father doesn’t speak English at all and my little sister speaks snippets of English. I thought they would be good comparisons for this study. Both of them like singing so I supposed they would be willing to do it.

I first sang the song to them on Saturday, after dinner. At first I just sang without explanation. After singing, I told them about my homework assignment. Then, I gave them a paper with the lyrics and asked them to join me. As I sang, they joined me first by tapping the rhythm on a table and we sang together. Since this song is not long and the words are not that difficult, my sister learnt it in no time and enjoyed singing. I asked her if she had memorized the song completely, and she said yes.

She sang it perfectly and said that this song is really catchy and fun to sing. While she was singing, she was grinning all the time and seemed happy. On the other hand, my father of course didn’t understand the exact meanings of the words so I told him what this song meant and how those words are pronounced correctly. He said ‘I couldn’t agree more to the lyrics’. I was glad that he liked the song. And after practicing twice, he sang it well.

Two days later, also after dinnertime, I asked them to sing the song. My father said ‘Okay, I have no idea how it goes.’ My sister remembered the whole lyrics but couldn’t recall the melody so I gave her the melody then she started singing. She sang it without any mistakes as I expected. Then I intentionally didn’t ask my father to sing alone. I think singing together with someone else feels better and makes long verses easier to remember. So when she finished singing, I asked my father if he is ready to join her. He took his paper out and they sang together. They sounded fine to me but my father said some words are still complicated to pronounce for him so I sang very slowly again and we all sang together. He didn’t expect he is going to be able to memorize the whole lyrics but he said somehow he enjoyed singing with us. It clearly changed the atmosphere (cf: group dynamics, Dornyei & Murphey, 2003) we were a little happier. Afterwards, my father told me that he repeated this song even at his work and my sister said the same.

I think teaching things is similar to sharing ideas. Making things enjoyable is a good way to teach and learn. Actually there were almost no problems to teach the song to my little sister so probably this is not a significant case for this study. However, my father’s case is exactly what I expected. Singing together definitely helped the song to get stuck in his head (SSIMHP) and provided a better atmosphere. Group singing helps with language learning!

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4. Saki Kubota: Make Men E Miss Takes and …

I sing many songs in our class and the lyrics of these songs encourage me very much. When I attend this class, I can be happy with a smile and our songs even if I’m not feeling good. Especially, the song “How do you succeed?” encouraged me the most so I chose this song for my Case Study. Another reason is that it is easy for my mother to remember and understand. My mother wants to speak English more.

That’s why I chose my mother as my student.

We did this case study from November 23rd Friday to November 25th Saturday. We did this at home every time, because my mother works at home. First, I sang the song “How do you succeed?” for her Friday’s morning at home. However, she couldn’t understand meaning of “doi ta ga in” so I taught the meaning and words by writing. When my mother saw the sentence “Do it again”, she could understand first. Next, I sang again because I want her to remember the rhythm. This time, she understood the rhythm easily because she already knew the original song’s melody (Santa Claus is Coming to Town). And we sang together five times.

In the evening, I asked her to sing the song. First, she didn’t remember the whole song so I hummed the song as a hint. After that, she remembered only the final part. She couldn’t remember the first part “do it again” so I sang with her. Next day in the morning, I asked her to sing the song. She could sing it perfectly almost. I felt happy. Because this meant if I am not good at singing, I can teach the song. However, when I asked her to sing a song again at night, she couldn’t remember first part “do it again” again so I sang with her five times. In the next morning, I asked her to sing the song. Then she could sing whole song. I was really happy. My mother could remember the whole song in the end. She said I like this song and I think the same as the lyrics.

Through this research, I could learn three things. First, there are many ways to teach songs (Murphey, 1992). If I only sing, the learner has to remember both rhythm and lyric at the same time. This may be hard for a beginner of English.

However, if I separate lyric and rhythm, they can understand each. Second, when we teach something to somebody, we both teacher and learner never give up. Finally, when we teach something, teacher should be kind to the learner. If the teacher is kind to the learner, the learner can be relaxed. I work at a cram school so I want to use these lessons.

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5. Rika Kawai: Skype Singing!

I chose my brother, Masaki who is 24 years old. He goes to Tokyo University now. He studied English for six years in compulsory education, and his major is not English, but he has to speak in English with foreigners in his laboratory, so I thought he would like this activity, to sing a song in English.

In this study, I taught him the song “The 5 ways to happiness.” I chose this song because I watched Tim’s study of this song on video for my presentation, so I know how to teach it and the deep meaning of it. Also for me, this song is really easy to remember and I liked the melody, so I started to teach him on November 14th at 10 p.m. for about 30 minutes. We contacted each other for the next four days on Skype to sing the song.

On the first day, first I taught him the five gestures, the same as in Tim’s video (Murphey, NFLRC-UH, 2005)). Before I told him the meaning of all the words in the affirmation song, I wanted him to be interested in this activity. He remembered the five gestures at once. Then I sang the song to him. He did not remember all of the words, nor the five gestures, because I taught him the whole song. He said to me “I do not think I can remember this whole song and I do not have a time to do this activity with you” It seemed that it was too troublesome for him to do this activity at that time. I thought I had to tell him why I wanted him to do this activity and what would be the effect of this affirmation song after we sang it.

I did not want him to give up doing this activity, so I told him that singing the affirmation song would make him happy, and when he was not feeling good, if he sang the affirmation song, it would give him some power to live life positively. Then, he understood me, and tried to do this activity again. The next day, I asked him, “What are the five ways to happiness?”

At first, he seemed not to understand what I asked him, but very soon, he started to remember the song and gestures, and he sang it on Skype. I was really surprised, because he remembered the whole song and gestures. Before we hung up the phone, he said to me “I’m sorry for yesterday what I said to you, now I really like this song. I can understand what you said to me now. It means some power comes to me when I sing a song. Really thank you.” I did not expect that he would really like this song like this, so I was glad. We kept contacting each other to do this activity for 4 days. November 17, he could remember and sing the whole song perfectly.

In conclusion, I’m glad to have a chance to teach this affirmation song. This research was really a valuable experience for me. We can see from this activity that singing affirmation songs make us happy, and make us think positively. I can say this research shows a clear result of the effect of affirmation songs. When I go back to my hometown, I will teach my parents next.

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6. Monique Yonaha: Doi Ta Ga In! I asked my little brother, Kenji, to carry out the case study. He is in the first grade of junior high school, and he just started to learn English as a new subject. I chose the “How do you succeed?” song because I thought it would help him to get rid off his fear of making mistakes. He wasn’t interested at first, but he accepted to help me in the end, when I said that he could learn some English words after completing all of the exercises. We don’t see each other so much because he is usually already asleep when I get home, so I started to teach the song on holidays.

On the first day, I started teaching by singing the song to make him remember the melody. He suddenly noticed that it was a Christmas tune. It was probably helpful for him to remember the song. After that, I told him to write down the lyrics, and then I explained the meaning of each word. In the end, I made him to sing along with me. He could sing while he was looking at the paper. However, he could not pronounce words well, so I “chunked” and repeated singing slowly to make him get familiar with the song. I wanted him to say the phrase “Do it again” fluently.

On the next day, I asked my brother to sing alone without looking at the paper.

It seemed that he couldn’t remember it right away, but when I started humming, he was able to recall it. We practiced the pronunciation again and again. His performance was getting better little by little.

On the next day, I tried to ask him “How do you succeed?” randomly. When I asked him while we were having lunch at home, he just reacted “Huh?” and got puzzled, so I asked him the same question again and sang. I repeated it all day whenever I saw him. He looked annoyed, but when he noticed that he could answer my question naturally, he seemed to enjoy singing.

It took 3 days to teach him completely, and we did it in the living room most of the time. After doing the entire task, I asked him how he felt after he sings the song.

He said “I feel happy when I sing it because it reminds me of Christmas.” Actually, my brother’s birthday is just before Christmas, and he seemed to be motivated when he thinks of those fun holidays. I noticed that personal experience is also related to your motivation of learning something (Dornyei, 2009) . It was my first time to teach English to somebody, and I found it challenging. However, watching someone’s skill improve was very exciting. What I learned is that you have to contrive ways to keep your student’s motivated, for example, giving a fun task.

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7. Erika Omori: “Super happy optimistic joyful and prodigious” I chose my mother to teach. I chose her because she is interested in English recently, but there is no chance to learn English. Actually, when she was a student, her favorite subject was English, so she was good at English a little bit, so I thought, she could learn English smoothly by using affirmation songs. I taught “How are you?” to her. This is good for beginners, because it’s really short and easy. Moreover, my mother certainly learned the phrase “How are you?” when she studied English, so I think she is familiar with this phrase.

I first taught her this song on November 18th. At first, I sang it many times in front of her, and after that she repeated the song. Actually, she was already familiar with the original song from Mary Poppins. So she could remember the melody soon, but she could only catch the words “super” and “happy”. She could not say the more difficult words, so I wrote down the words on a paper and read them slowly with her.

After she could say “optimistic” and “prodigious”, I taught her their meanings. She understood the meanings and said, “it’s a nice song!” Then we sang the song slowly looking at the lyrics, singing it again and again. Finally, she could remember it and sing without my help.

The next morning, I asked her “how are you?” However, she forgot the words “optimistic” and “prodigious”. Then, I used the 5 strategies. First, I used chunking. We sang with pauses between words. She could sing by herself at last, so it did not take many times to acquire the song again. Gradually, she seemed to remember it.

Secondly, I used rhythm. We sang together with clapping our hands. When we did it this way, she looked like she was enjoying learning English. We sang again and again, many times. Finally she could completely remember the answer to “how are you?” That evening, I asked her, “How are you?” again. She could answer perfectly. It was useful for her to use the five strategies, especially rhythm (Murphey NFLRC, 2005).

In conclusion, I was surprised my mother could remember and sing the song when we only practiced a few minutes on the first day. I realized music really helps us hold on to new language. Moreover, even though she forgot it the second day, she remembered it completely by using the five strategies. It was probably because she already knew the original tune. So this melody was useful for her and easy to keep a beat with. I was glad to see her delighted face. She really seemed to enjoy learning English after a long time. The merit of acquiring English by using affirmation songs is that people can enjoy learning. If I have a chance to teach her again, I want to sing other songs that I learned in our class with my mother.

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8. Yurika Takagi: Songs deepen people’s relationships From a long long time ago, music has been strongly connected with people’s lives (Mithen, 2006). Songs heal our grieving and melodies cheer us up. Songs that I learnt in this class came to be a big encourager for me, so I decided to teach some of them to the others. I chose my mother and my brother to teach “Do you love me?” and “What is more beautiful?” songs.

Firstly, I taught my mother the “Do you love me?” song. The reason why I wanted to teach the song was because I’d talked about the book that uses the song to her. She had been moved by the story about the mother and her son and wanted to know the song. I first sang the song in English, and then told the meaning in Japanese. As it was written in easy English, she seemed to remember the lyrics. The next day, I asked her whether she remembered the song. She could hum the whole melody, but couldn’t sing some part of the lyrics. Then I chunked the song and asked her to sing after me. She could complete singing by herself after the activity. From the next day, I checked if my mother remembered the song on the phone because I had to go abroad. When I called her, she sang it very well. She said that the part “as long as I’m living” was quite difficult to remember, because she didn’t know the meaning of “as long as” until I told her, but she was content to know the song. Also, because she worried about how I was doing when I was abroad, it was good to call her. When I came back home, she was washing dishes and singing the song.

I also chose my brother, Ryunosuke, who is 16 years old to teach the song “a turtle trying to fly is more beautiful than a bird sitting in a tree.” I chose him because he has just finished his difficult age and I longed to communicate with him. In addition, this song’s grammar is quite fundamental for high school students, so I thought it would be a big help to remember and make use of “comparative.” When I began teaching the song to him, he was a little embarrassed to sing. However, after telling the melody and lyrics, I heard him singing it while taking a shower. As I wrote above, I had to go abroad. Therefore I checked whether he could sing on the phone as well as my mother. When I called him, he forgot the melody because it was a little hard to remember. However, when I hummed the first line without singing the lyrics, he could continue to sing. He seemed to be happy to know the song, as he might use this example for the next English exam.

By coincidence, I watched the popular American sitcom “Friends” on the airplane. I was surprised to see that the book “Love You Forever” appeared and was read by a character. He said the book was published in Mexico, and that was where I had just gone. Amazing!

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9. Hitomi Sohzu: Singing Together Enhances Relationships I taught my friend and my older sister. First, I taught my friend, Mizuho. She is a KUIS student and a really good English speaker. Also she likes singing very much. I taught her the song Are You Young. Mizuho often goes overseas and she always tells me about her trip. She looks very happy talking about her trips so I thought this song was suitable for her.

On November 15th, at lunchtime, I met her to teach at our university. At the beginning, I sang the whole song. After that I asked Hiromi “Do you like this song?”

She was smiling and said “Probably I like this song. Please teach me the lyrics.” So I taught her the lyrics. But I thought it was too easy for her to just read the lyrics so I dictated the song, like Tim does with us. Actually, she has great English skills so she could write all the lyrics easily. We sang this song around 5 times. She could remember the melody and sing while reading the lyrics.

The following week I met her again and asked to her to sing the song. She sang perfectly. I was surprised because I thought she would have forgotten it. I asked her “How did you remember this song” She answered “I like this song so I sang it almost every day”. Every day practice is important for success.

Then, I tried teaching my sister, Kumiko. She is a university student and studying education. She has a Russian boyfriend who speaks English fluently. She wants to speak English but she is not good at it yet. So I decided to teach an English song to her. I chose the Love You Forever song because if she can sing this song, she can convey her feelings to her boyfriend with affection.

On November 17th, I tried to teach but at first she refused because she was tired. Nevertheless, I continued. First, I sang and she just listened to it. Then I read the lyrics without the melody. I thought the lyrics were more important than the melody so I taught the lyrics first. But she didn’t seem to understand the meaning. It would have been easy to teach the meanings to her, but I thought thinking on her own would be better for her memory. So I tried to get her to think about the lyrics. And I also taught her about *ghost discourse. She was interested in this research and we had a lively conversation. After she understood the meaning of the lyrics, I taught her the melody and we sang this song about 10 times. Finally, she could sing the whole song. The next day I asked her the question “Do you love me” and she could sing it. I don’t know if my sister will sing this song for her boyfriend, but I was happy because she could remember it.

I found teaching songs are really interesting! I could communicate with my friend and sister and I could enjoy our time together. Music has the power to make people happy helps us learn languages. I want to keep studying English with music and teaching English songs to my friends and family.

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10. Arisa Sato: Singing While We Work!

I chose one of my friends from my part-time job who is the same age as me and studies economy as a major at her university. I will use the pseudonym Saki for her. She studies English too, but is not good at it. I hoped this study would help her to become more motivated to study English. My part-time job is at a bar. I usually make cocktails, serve dishes and clear and prepare the tables. I chose ‘5 ways to happiness’ to teach because the words in this song are simple and I can teach them with gestures.

I taught her the song during our work from 6 pm to midnight on November 14th.

First, I sang it and showed gestures during a pause in our worked. Then she asked me to tell what the 5 ways is one by one. So I taught her with gestures. She understood all of the words in the song. After that, I stopped teaching but I kept humming while I made cocktails and walked around our bar. She heard my humming.

I asked her to sing it but she could sing only one line and forgot the next line. So, I showed the gesture and she remembered. We repeated it about ten times. She remembered the melody easily when I was humming it and she heard it. But she had trouble with the melody when singing alone. She could not put the words into the melody at first, so if I heard the parts that sounded strange, I helped her to sing. Two hours later when we cleared the tables I started singing the song and she joined me when I was singing it. After singing together I asked her to sing by herself and tested her again. Then, she could sing completely by herself. We worked with humming for the rest of this work time and enjoyed working. The next time when we worked together, she still remembered the song and we worked with humming again. We continue singing still now when we work together.

She was pleased that she could sing a song in English because it was the first time to be able to sing a whole English song. Also, our hard working time changed to an enjoyable working time. The song made us happy. She told me that she wanted to be able to sing more English songs. I think it means I succeeded in motivating her to study English. I will teach her more.

I really enjoyed doing this case study because now I have someone to sing with at my part-time job. Now, we are happier. I want to teach the song to more of my friends and share happiness. Moreover, I learned happy songs make people happy and enjoyable. I want to feel such an awesome feeling with my friends around me again and again!

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11. Manami Ito: The joy of laughing and singing!

I liked singing songs and music since I was child. I was greatly influenced by my family. Especially, my sister loves music and works at a recording company.

Therefore, I decided to teach Tim’s song to my elder sister. To tell the truth, I wanted to teach “Love You Forever” at first because I love this song and the lyrics very much.

However, my sister refused to learn this song. She said “I want to sing a happier melody which makes me cheerful! Don’t you have any other happy songs?” So, I taught her “Do it again.” I thought the melody of this song is more pop than LYF song, and my sister said, “I like this melody much more than the other and it might be easier to remember this song.”

First, I sang three times at the usual speed, as we do in class. After this my sister said “Hey! Sing it slowly!” Although my sister can’t speak English at all, I thought this would be much easier to remember and I thought that she would remember quickly. Actually, it was not as easy as I thought. The difficulty reminded me to use some strategies, “CHUNK” “RYTHM” and “Giving pauses”.

Following her lead, I paid attention to important points of teaching songs that I learned. I made pauses many times and sang slowly for her. She remembered this song gradually. However, there was a difficult part that she could not sing fluently.

That is the end of this song: “Make many mistakes and Do it again.” I repeated many times but she couldn’t sing this part well. Moreover, she sung this part in funny and incorrect English as if she could do it perfectly. It made us laugh a lot together. Finally, we sang together many times and she did perfectly by herself and looked happy.

Then, I asked one question ‘Can you understand what you sang?’ and she said “NO. What is the meaning of the lyrics?” When I taught meaning of this song, my sister looked much happier. Before I did this Case Study, I read a booklet of Case Studies from a previous class. Many students wrote: “After I taught songs to friends or family, they really looked happy, and I also became happy.” Somehow, I did not believe their words. I changed my mind after my experience. It is true. I can’t explain exactly why, but my sister and I laughed a lot and felt happy during the activity.

Though I hesitated to do this and thought that we might quarrel doing this, I could enjoy teaching and my sister enjoyed it.

When I taught the meaning of this song, she sang it and said, “Oh! I feel like being able to work better from tomorrow with this song!” I suppose that she might remember it and sing it when she has to overcome something bad in her job or life.

Through this case study, I learned music is really fascinating and awesome for people.

People can enjoy songs without meanings. Moreover, if people know the meaning, they might help them to control their feelings more. It has been few days since I taught her, but I still hear her singing “Do it again” in the house.

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12. Shoko Suzuki: Cram School Buddies I chose Ryo, my friend, as a student because we work in the same cram school so I thought if he was my student I could teach the song easily. Also he and I went to same cram school (our present work place) when we were JHS students so I felt more relaxed to teach the song to him there. He is a student of Meiji University and studies Economics. Since he is really a positive person, I chose the “How do you succeed?” song to teach. I think this song is totally suitable for him. It also has a familiar melody and we know that Christmas song melody very well so I thought he could remember it soon.

First we went to the restaurant to sing because there are not so many places to go near our nearest station and as I waited for him until his work was finished, it became late at night so we decided to have dinner together. First I showed him my action log where all the songs I learned are because he said he wanted to know every song that I learn. He remembered the song only after singing with me for three minutes. He repeated the melody several times to remember. We were there for two hours and I asked, “How do you succeed?” every 30 minutes. He always answered perfectly. After that he wanted to look at other songs and he looked in my action log and read. Even though he remembered many songs, he answered perfectly when I ask him “How do you succeed?”

After that day, I called him two times and asked the same question. Even though he spent only short time to remember, he did not forget the answer. And two weeks ago, I talked with him after we finished our classes and ask “How do you succeed?” Then he could answer for it. We sang the song together. I felt like I test him so I asked him “What do you like?” because he remembered that song, too. But he could not answered it perfectly because it is more long and complicated than “How do you succeed?” song. So I taught him “What do you like?” song again with gesture. I put gestures for that song by my own. After ten minutes teaching, he remembered that song completely and could sing it by himself.

After three days from that day, we met again and I tested him. He could answer it perfectly with the gestures. In conclusion, I did the case study twice. What was interesting to me was that the more he sang the song, the more he looked happy.

Before we did the case study, we were not good friends I think. However after the case study, I think we could be good friends and now sometimes he uses the song and gesture to teach English to his students. Now many other teachers have interests to teach English with songs so we are making songs which make English learning easier.

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13. Natsumi Akimoto: Spreading five ways to happiness!

I chose my younger sister Nana, a 19 year-old, as my student. I decided to teach her “5 ways to happiness” because the song was my favorite and it has gestures, so I thought it would be easier to teach her even if she is not good at English. She has been learning English for several years although she really does not like speaking English. I wanted her to realize the pleasure of singing songs in English with my favorite song. She is not a good English speaker yet but she loves to sing so I thought she could enjoy this project.

The first day, I sang her the song just by myself with gestures, on November 16 at our house. She seemed confused and didn’t have any confidence the first time but she listened to me and after a few repetitions; she could memorize the rhythm and all of the gestures in turn. Soon she succeeded in singing with me but there was one problem that puzzled her. She was not familiar with the word “Dare” so it was challenging for her to memorize the word. She always stopped before the part “”Dare to show your love”. I was worried she might be feeling stress about making mistakes and did not want to sing anymore. However, she was very relaxed and she laughed each time when she failed. After a little practicing, she could succeed to sing by her self. I was surprised because it was my first time to hear her confident English. It took around 30 minutes to teach and we promised to have a test in two days, and that was the end of the first day. The next two days, I could hear her practicing the song and it made me very glad. She told me that the melody had stuck in hear head, so she sang the song in her mind on the way to her university.

On November 18 at 7pm, we had a test as we promised before. She was smiling with confidence and seemed relaxed. She could sing the song correctly with gestures and still remembered the word “Dare” which was her biggest problem. We sang the song together with big gestures like when we were little kids and that was our end of the test. The test was not an oppressive test like which we usually take at school. She really seemed happy while she sang the song.

I was very glad to have a chance to sing with my sister because we are now both busy and we could not have much time to talk. This case study brought us an opportunity to sing and laugh together. I hope she could get used to English and get interested in English song. I really enjoyed this project with her. I realized the importance of music, so I would like to spread this opportunity to friends around me.

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14. Miki Kurosawa: Mom’s Good Experience I chose “The 5 Ways to Happiness” because the theme of this song is really cheerful. Moreover, I thought this song is easy to remember because I can use gestures to teach it. I taught this song to two people. One is my mother and the other is my friend in KUIS. The reason why I chose these people is that both of them like singing, but their English skills are very different. My mother cannot speak English at all and my friend is really good at English especially speaking.

On November 14th, I taught this song to my mother at my house. After eating dinner, we always talk a lot at living room, so it was good chance to do this case study.

She really likes singing songs. However, she cannot memorize lyrics easily even though they are in Japanese. So I taught the song without lyrics at first by humming.

She could memorize the melody after singing the song together about five minutes.

Then I sang the song with the lyrics using gestures. However she cannot speak English at all, so she couldn’t understand many words. Therefore I wrote the lyrics on a paper and told her the lyrics in Japanese. After that, I sang the song very slowly again. I tried it about five times and she could get about half the words. So we sang the song together with gestures. After singing about 10 times, she seemed to get used to singing a little. Therefore we sang the song with tapping hands. Finally she could sing the song after singing about 10 more times. The tempo was slowly, but she could do it perfectly. Next day, I asked her to sing the song again. However she couldn’t sing the song with lyrics. So I sang the song again. She didn’t remember the lyrics but remembered the gestures, so she could sing it again in a short time. After this lesson, she said it was really hard for her, but this experience was good. Because we had never sung English song together and she could know what I was studying at KUIS. Next, I taught the song to one of my KUIS friends. We met at Lapaz on November 15th. As I mentioned above, she is good at English, so it didn’t take much time to teach it. First of all, I did a song dictation after eating lunch. She could get almost all of the words at once. Then I asked her to sing the song with me by using gestures. After we sang the song twice, she could sing the song completely. After a week, we did not have any classes, so we talked on the phone. I asked her to sing it by herself. Although she forgot the lyrics, so I sang it one time. After hearing my singing, she could sang it completely again.

By doing this case study, I learned how difficult teaching is. I had never taught English to people, so it was very difficult for me. However when my mother could sing the song, I felt happy. My mother said it was a good experience, but it was a good experience for me too.

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15. Konatsu Yasui: My Mom Can’t Get Enough!

On Nov.14th at the evening, I taught a song, “Doi ta gain!” to my mother in the Kitchen while she was washing dishes. I was helping my mother to dry the dishes.

She was brimming with curiosity. She has no knowledge of English but she likes English, singing, and trying something new. Before I started to teach the song, I sang 4 different songs I learned in the class so far. This is because I did not know what she might like to sing and I wanted her to enjoy this activity. Then she was worried which to chose “Doi ta gain!” or “What do you like?”. At last, she chose “Doi ta gain!” to learn.

She knew the melody and the lyrics are easy to remember. Moreover, she chose it because Christmas is coming soon.

At first, I sang the song three times and also sang it slowly for her two times and she did shadowing. Then, she sang by herself many times, however, she could not sing it completely. She mixed up the words, like “many make mistakes” or “make mistakes many…?” When she did like that, we sang the phrase together for five times and that taught her the order of the sentence. Then she could sing it almost completely.

On Nov.17th at the evening, I said to her “Sing the song I taught you on Thursday.” She was surprised and took a little time to remember the song but she could sing it completely! I was surprised because I thought she must have forgotten it.

Finally, I told her the meaning of the song. However, she had already gotten the meaning of the song by herself. She said “I memorized the melody of this song a long time ago, so it’s easy to learn for me. Above all, the lyrics are simple. Additionally, I enjoyed singing this song! I agree with Doi ta gain is important thing for success.”

Additionally, I knew she practiced the song everyday while taking a bath, playing a video game, using a computer, and even while working! She came to like this song, so I felt happy that I taught it to her.

Through this activity, I realized that it is important to show an example. I sang the song many times for her then she memorized it. I did not write anything about the lyrics. She just memorized the song lyrics from my singing. Additionally, it is important to shadow. She shadowed me many times then she memorized the song. To do it, she stuck the lyrics in her head (*SSIMHP), Moreover, to sing together again and again is a great way to learn the song. That’s Doi ta gain!

Even now, (on Nov. 26th) she still remembers the song and sings it while she is washing dishes, cleaning the room, driving a car and so on. She wants to learn another song now! I enjoyed this Case study with her because we enjoyed singing a song together. Actually, I am teaching the other song (What’s the weather like?) to her now. I am curious how she will memorize it this time.

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16. Mariko Sasamori: A Happy Story I could easily decide the person who learned the affirmation song in the Case Study. It was my younger sister who is a third grade of the high school and studying hard for the entrance examination of university. She seemed to be under stress because of the pressure and restricted life to study. Therefore I thought she needed to relax through the song and that was why I chose my sister to my partner.

I taught her “Love You Forever Song” because I had already sung this song once before to tell the story of ghost discourse for her. At that time, she thought “I” was herself and “you” was her dog after I singing. Therefore she had a clear image of the song and I thought it helped her remember this song easily.

First, she refused my request to learn the song. She said coldly “Don’t you see I am busy studying? I don’t have enough time.” So I answered “You don’t need to make your time to learn what I will teach you. You will be able to learn one of the way to feel relaxed and happy.” I tried to persuade her but I couldn’t on that day. I felt difficulty to teach person who have no interest and make the person feel motivated.

Next day, I changed my teaching way. The new one was singing beside her although she didn’t listen to my song. I kept singing the song again and again when she took a rest in the living room. Then, she became increasingly curious about the song so sang following me with the little word mistakes. After singing slowly three or four times together, I taught her the meaning of lyrics to have her own image more clearly. She completely sang it by herself even thought I didn’t teach for a long time.

Few days later, she had an admission examination. When she came back home, she came to meet me. She told me her performance on the test and what she sang the song inside herself while she waited for interview test to calm down. I was so glad to hear it and be helpful to her. I would not forget this experience with the LYF song.

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17. Natsumi Okada: Today while the blossoms…

I taught a song to my younger sister, Ayumi. She’s seventeen years old. She likes singing songs and she is studying English at high school. That’s why I chose her as a learner. At first, I wanted to teach an easy song, but I thought that a difficult one is better because she likes trying hard. Then I decided to teach “Today”. That’s because I like this song the best, and I was sure that she would like the song too.

My first teaching was November 18 at 10 am for 30 minutes. In my room, I started teaching her. First I sang the refrain to her three times. She caught the melody soon, so I explained some difficult words like “blossoms” and “vine”. After singing together three more times, she could sing alone. So I taught the first verse. I sang it three times and taught some words, and we sang together several times. The second verse’s melody is the same as the first, so she could sing soon. Then I asked her “Do you remember the first part?” because I thought that she forgot it, but she could sing perfectly. I was surprised. We sang the whole song together three more times, and I said to her “I will ask you to sing it tonight.”

After dinner, I asked her to sing. She still remembered the song except some difficult words. We checked them together, and sang again. As I expected, she liked the song. The next morning, she said to me “Now I can sing alone” and she sang the whole song perfectly. I praised her because I can’t master songs so quickly. Then she said, “I watched the movie on Youtube”. I was surprised, but actually I did the same as her when I learned the song in the class.

This experience was good for both my sister and me. I learned that singing together is very fun and better than singing alone. Also, I was surprised at the power of youth. I couldn’t master the song as fast as she did, so I felt a little sad to realized that I got old. However, I also think that if I keep trying new things like singing songs, I can keep my power from now on. Therefore, I will keep learning new songs and will live a life full of music and song.

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18. Manami Murakami

My Genius Brother!

At first, I decided to teach a girl who has been my best friend since high school, but we do not meet a lot these days, so I finally chose my brother, who graduated from high school and has been studying just for the entrance exams to university. He is a so-called Ronin, and he knows lots of English words, so I thought it would be easy to teach him, and I taught him “Super happy optimistic joyful and prodigious”.

On November 25th, I suddenly woke him up in the evening (he was supposed to be studying), and asked him to memorize this song. Of course, after rudely awaking him, he did not feel like singing the song and ran away from me! But I caught him and insisted that he try. At first, I sang the song, and told him to repeat after me.

He could sing the first part but needed help with the ending. So, I sang it more clearly.

He could sing “Super happy optimistic joyful and” after I sang only three times. I was really surprised that he could sing almost all of the song very soon, but as many people could not say or understand, he also could not say “prodigious”, so I wrote the spelling for him and explained it. After that, he could sing the song while looking at the word’s spelling.

On the morning of November 26th, he told me to ask him “How are you?”, so I did, and he sang the song perfectly without looking at the lyrics. So I said “Wow! You did it!”, and he said “Yay” happily. I was surprised to see that he was using some gestures with the rhythm in order to remember some words, although I did not tell him to use them. I guess people will naturally use gestures to embody the words of a song (Atkinson 2011).

He did not seem to want to sing the song at all, and his face looked bored, but his face looked so happy when he could sing it completely, finally. Moreover, I think I helped him to learn a new English word for the exam. Teaching him the song made me happy, too.

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Good Life with Affirmation Songs An analysis of Music Therapy Case Studies 2010 Natsumi Okada, Rica Kawai, Arisa Satou, Natsumi Akimoto, Ayaka Tonouchi, Saki Kubota Introduction Our fall class of 2012 was lucky enough to analyze these case studies class publications from 2010, 2011, and the spring of 2012 and write about them in small groups. Our group read Music Therapy Case Studies 2010. In the book, there are 29 case studies written by students about teaching English songs. All stories were interesting for us, so we talked a lot about them. Especially, we discussed five important points. Which song songs they chose, problems they had, happiest moments, impressive stories, and learners. From the discussion, we discovered some interesting things.

Results of research According to the studies, “5 ways to happiness” was the most frequently taught affirmation songs, used 15 times (see Figure 1). Second highest were “Young and Strong and Beautiful” and “What do you like?” four each. Next highest song is “How do you learn?” Every learner had a lot of troubles to memorize each song at first, because they did not know the meaning of the songs. Therefore, they tried to sing songs many times to remember. Then, they learned them completely. Finally, most of learners said they were comfortable and relaxed. They also said singing a song by using body gestures was really helpful to remember.

Figure 1:

Most popular songs

Song

Number of people

5 ways to happiness

15

Young&Strong&Beautiful

4

What do you like?

4

How do you learn?

3

The other songs

3

Main problems for learners According to Case Studies, there are some problems for learners. Firstly, a lot of learners were poor at English, so it was difficult to get them interested. Secondly, for the learners who did not study English, it was difficult to catch what words a teacher

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sang in a song, and also they could not understand the meaning of the lyrics. To solve this problem, some teachers explained the meaning in Japanese, and then learners lastly understood what the song was about. Finally, almost all learners faced memorizing problems. Some teachers used gestures to help them remember the lyrics. Teachers said this way was really effective to help learners memorize. These were the main problems that learners faced in the Case Studies.

Happiest Moment Through the Music Therapy Case Studies, students and the learners experienced various emotions. According to our statistics, almost all of the learners could enjoy the task of singing each song together and those songs were clearly memorized (see Figure 2). The learners seemed to improve their feelings to become more positive through singing. They came to learn more even when they were not fluent English speakers. This task had an effect not only on learners but also instructors because they had to struggle to consider the ways of teaching songs. When the learners got a clear understanding, instructors could experience a sense of achievement. We realized that both people felt happy in the case study. Their greatest achievement was actually getting the song stuck in their heads (Murphey, 1990) Figure 2: Feeling happiness

When people feel happiness the song stuck in their hea d singing tog ether after they sang lea rned the English pronunciation

Most impressive case study for us We were impressed the most by CS #29 by Shota Shittaka. The reason why we chose it is we were in the same situation as Naomi. First of all, we could not understand the meaning of “prodigious”, so we were a little bit confused. However, we could enjoy singing this song after we understood the meaning of it. Also, the writer’s way of thinking gave us a big impact. He cared not only about people who like English

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such as KUIS students but also people who are not good at English. We think it is the important thing for us to care for many kinds of people.

The easiest person to teach to The results showed that the easiest person to teach is a friend. Next is a brother or a sister. Eleven people chose their friends, ten people chose a sister or a brother. You may notice the number both who chose a brother or a sister and who chose friends almost same. We think the reason to choose a sister or a brother is that they live together and the learner may be learning English in school so they can catch the meaning. The choice of friends is probably because they can meet every day and learners weren’t uncomfortable to learn English because they studied at KUIS. In short, the good person to teach is a student who we can meet every day and who knows English grammar and vocabulary.

Conclusion In conclusion, it is not easy to teach English songs to someone. Almost all students and learners faced some problems. However, after getting over their difficulties, they became relaxed and deepened their relationships. Learners could be happy when they mastered the song, but it is not the only reason of their happiness. What makes learners happy is teachers’ heart. Teachers choose songs for learners, practiced many times together, and never gave up because they wanted leaners to be happy.

The experiences are valuable both for teachers and learners.

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Relationships Grow Through Songs Analysis of the Booklet 2011 Konatsu Yasui, Hitomi Sohzu, Yurika Takagi, Eri Yamashita, Miki Kurosawa, Manami Ito Introduction Our fall class of 2012 was lucky enough to analyze these case studies class publications from 2010, 2011, and the spring of 2012 and write about them in small groups. “Super Happy optimistic joyful and prodigious!” We are sure that every member of the Song and Music Sogo class is still able to sing this song and many others we learned as well. These songs are positive, helpful, and have good benefits for us. Music Therapy Case Studies 2011 shows how songs work practically for people. Writers of this booklet were trying to teach songs that they had studied to their family, friends and classmates. And they wrote how they went about it and what happened. In the 2011 edition there were 21 case studies of students lessons. We analyzed them using 12 questions.

The success rate of teachers 23 people were successful but 10 people were not totally successful because they couldn’t enjoy or sing songs completely (see Figure 1). Especially, KUIS students or English learners could memorize lyrics easily so they seemed to enjoy this lesson. On the other hand, learners who didn’t study English often couldn’t understand the meaning of the lyrics, and it was difficult for them to remember the lyrics. It would have been interesting to check back at a later time, several weeks later, to check retention.

Figure 1

Degrees of success

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The measures of success According to our analysis of writer measures of success, most learners felt happy or joyful when they could sing correctly and liked the melody. Some people said “I felt happy because we could meet or call to teach a song.” However, some people had trouble learning because they didn’t study English much and so they were not already good at speaking and memorizing English.

The song most used We found that 11 songs were used in these case studies. “Five ways of happiness” was most used, as seven people chose this song to teach (See Figure 2).

We think this song is catchy and easy to remember because we use gestures and the melody is really poplar. Therefore, the song was most used.

Songs

Number of people

5ways of happiness

7

How do you have a good life?

5

Do you love me?

5

How do you write?

5

Today

3

Who are you?

1

What’s happy person?

1

How do you succeed?

1

How are you?

1

Are you young?

1

The problems learners had In our booklet, nine case studies used two songs. We think it is because the writers who used two songs couldn't choose one song as they'd learnt so many beautiful songs in the class. Although these songs are amazing and all writers longed to teach them to the learners, it sometimes caused problems. Most learners didn't

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speak English, so memorizing lyrics was difficult for them. They could remember the song and lyrics once, but they often forgot them some days later.

Solutions to problems Mostly, when problems occurred, they solved them pretty much every time.

Most of the problems had to do with remembering lyrics or melodies. Some of the teachers tried to figure out good ways to teach, some had their learners practice over and over again. When the first ways didn’t work, they used two or more ways as needed. The solutions they used the most were having learners sing as many times as possible. This is very simple but according to the results, it clearly worked well. As we all know, repeating things in your mind settles the memories. However, the memories will be easily diminished in a very short time if you do not recall them in a few days. Since these case studies were not conducted in the long term, and the song was repeated within a certain short period, this way was effective. Writers used many other ways, depending on the situation, such as explaining the meaning of the lyrics, dictations, or singing together.

Some of the learners didn’t speak English, and they thus thought it would be impossible for them to sing an English song at the beginning. One solution for this problem is having the learner teach the song to another person. To teach things requires an understanding and it helps us to comprehend things more. In Masanori Hoshino’s mother’s case (p. 24), she was not completely sure if she could do it. But teaching someone else helped her to be confident. Some teachers utilized body language. It is proven that using the body helps the brain memorize (cf TPR, Asher, 1977). Additionally, body language adds fun to studying or learning (Brown, 2009).

One thing we noticed is every writer had difficulties. The other thing is none of them gave up and they all achieved their purpose.

The factors that made them happy Many teachers felt happy when learners could sing songs completely. It is because they knew how learners have difficulty with remembering English songs.

Mari Takiwatari (Case#21) said “I think this experience was interesting for me because I could see how she could improve.” Most of the learners couldn’t sing songs easily, so to see their progress was a sense of achievement to the teachers. Also, learners’ smiles that came from being able to sing songs completely made them happy too. Some people said singing songs together made them happy. Of course, singing a song is very fun for most people, so it is really understandable.

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The Target Learners in the Case Studies Sixteen people chose friends (including a mother’s friend), 13 people chose family members, and 5 people chose boyfriends or girl friends, and 1 person chose a co-worker (see Figure 3). We think the reason why most of the people chose friends was that it is easy to have frequent contact them. Some people compared friends who are good at English and those that are not. It was really good to study these Case Studies, because we could learn the effective ways to teach in different ways for different people and that we should try to adjust to the individual and their problems and concerns.

Figure 3: Choosing learners

Teaching songs is for fun, not for study We were impressed by Case study 14 written by Ko Onishi. The reason why we chose his was that we were impressed by his attitude. He tried to do a song dictation with elementary students who didn’t know English at all. In his writing, He mentioned “I told them the four main importance of memorizing English, but it was incomprehensible for them, So I chose not teaching, just enjoying and having fun with them by using English” (p.20). We liked his way of teaching song dictation to children because our opinions are almost the same as his. Singing songs is for fun not for hard study. To enjoy singing songs might be more effective than just studying English songs.

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Singing happy songs is contagious Some teachers said when learners got the melody and could sing well happily, teachers also felt happy. In another Eigo Sogo Class, we learned psychology and our teacher taught us ”Happiness is contagious” (Hatfield et al, 1994). This phrase is really impressive for us and some of the cases remind us of this phrase. Singing songs has great power and makes learners happy and also learners can make teachers happy. It’s like a chain reaction. This is an awesome point that we realized through reading the booklet.

Conclusion When we sing songs, everyone looks happy in our class. M sic has big power in spite of it being invisible. Most writers also realized that songs have fascinating power for people and studying. Through this research, the most amazing thing is that the writers realized how songs work effectively and learners looked happy. Moreover, the writers seemed to learn many things through this research.

Be the change, Be the change, Be the change You wish to see in the world I don’t serve… my dear world… by pretending to be small I’ll stand tall, I will stand tall

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When you change yourself, You change the world!

Singing Songs Makes Us Happier Analyzing Music Therapy Case Studies from Spring 2012 Manami Murakami, Yuka Honjo, Erika Omori, Shoko Suzuki, Monique Yonaha, Mariko Sasamori How can we make people happier? Some answers were shown by the 28 Music Therapy Case Studies from the spring Sogo class 2012 which KUIS students published in July 2012. We read all of the case studies carefully to analyze the following 5 points: 1. Songs most used in teaching 2. Degrees of success 3. The main frequent problems with teaching 4. How researchers solved the problems 5. What made researchers and participants happiest Songs most used in teaching We found the most popular song was “Super happy optimistic joyful and prodigious” and the second most popular song was “Five ways to happiness”. 13 students chose the first one and six students chose the second one. We guessed it was because they were easy to memorize. “Super happy optimistic joyful and prodigious” gives people some kind of shock when they listen to it for the first time. It sounds really funny and interesting so it gets people’s attention by its complicated words and sounds. It also has a familiar melody. Most people know “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” from the movie, Mary Poppins. Therefore, even for people who do not know English, it is easy to remember. However, the melody of “Five ways to happiness” is not so familiar but it was also popular to the students. It is because they thought it may make people happy to remember, we think as they said in the case studies. Also maybe the gestures helped them to remember.

Degrees of success Every student in 2012 succeeded to some extent on their Song Teaching Case Study, but the degree of success of 2 students was so-so, we thought that 9 students were successful and 16 students were very successful. The case of “So-so” is, for example, that a person who was taught couldn’t sing a song without looking at the lyrics and maybe he/she was happy while singing but not so much. We evaluated a case “successful” when a student who taught learned more than a person who was

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taught. Finally, The “very successful” case is when both a person who was taught and a student who taught could sing a song happily and learned something from Song Teaching Case Study experience.

The main frequent problems with teaching When researchers taught songs, some problems happened. According to their Music therapy case studies in 2012, remembering the songs was the most common problem (see Figure 1). There are twenty-eight cases and eight people said that it was difficult to get people to memorize the song in English. Many of them also forgot the song melody too. Especially this problem happened among people who were not used to listening and speaking English. When people try to teach a song in English, it is a challenge to teach people who are not interested in English. In addition, pronunciation is also a common problem. Six people said that pronunciation was the problem when they taught. People could not pronounce the words, especially ‘optimistic’ and ‘prodigious’. Another problem was the meaning of words. Some people could not understand the meaning of words, so they could not understand the meaning of the songs. In addition, some researchers faced a difficult situation which they didn’t have enough time to teach their songs.

Figure 1: Problems encountered Problems

# of People

Remembering the songs.

8

People are not interested in English.

8

Pronunciation

6

People are not used to English.

6

Didn’t understand the meaning of the songs.

4

Didn’t have enough time to teach the songs.

4

Researchers felt embarrassed to teach the songs.

2

Researcher did not know the problem

1

How researchers solved the problems To solve the problem of learning English using affirmation songs, student-teachers used many solutions (see figure 2). The most used solution was gestures (9 people), followed by using the 5 strategies (chunk, rhythm, sing, back

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formation and tie) (6 people) and telling the meanings (4 people). Other solutions were writing lyrics, practicing pronunciation, and singing slowly. We thought many people used gestures because the learners can make their own gestures which are easier to remember for them, and they can enjoy learning English and remember efficiently (Asher, 1977). Finally most of people noticed repeating a song again and again is important to learn. Everyone repeated and practiced many times little by little, and as a result all learners could enjoy learning English and the case studies were successful.

Figure 2: Solutions found

What made researchers and participants happiest Most of the people who were taught the songs seemed to changed their mood and emotion through the case studies. For example, one of the students, Eisuke, tried to teach "5 ways to happiness" to his mother, while she was ashamed to sing it at first. After practicing the song several times, she became to enjoy singing and asked him to teach her more songs. We found this case very successful because his mother's attitude was completely changed. Similar positive effects were found in the other cases. Singing affirmation songs makes people happy.

In conclusion, every teacher had some problems when they taught an affirmation song to somebody. Additionally it was more difficult to teach an English song to people who usually had no contact with English. However everyone tried various ways to solve the problems and finally could overcome them. As a result of this analyzing, we could find one of the ways to make people happier. It is not only power of affirmation songs that makes people happier, but also the process of teaching. In other words, both people, those who teach a song and people who learn a song, can have an experience of success through overcoming problems. That was why when teachers saw a learner sing an English song well in the end, they felt so happy. The case studies showed us that music makes us happier and sharing songs through teaching them can make us happy. Therefore we will try to spread the

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affirmation songs among those precious to us.

References Anchor, S. (2010). The happiness advantage. New York: Random House.

Asher, J. (1977). Learning another language through actions: The complete teacher’s guidebook. Los Gatos, CA: Sky Oak Productions.

Atkinson, D. (2011). A sociocognitive approach to second language acquisition* How mind, body, and world work together in learning additional languages. In Atkinson (editor) Alternative approaches to second language acquisition. Pp143-166.New York: Routledge Brown, S. (2009). Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul. New York Penguin.

Dörnyei, Z. (2009). The L2 motivational self system. In Z. Dörnyei & E. Ushioda (Eds.), Motivation, language identity and the L2 self (pp. 9-42). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Dornyei, Z. & Murphey, T. (2003). Group dynamics in the language classroom.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J., & Rapson, R. (1994). Emotional Contagion, Cambridge: Cambridge University press.

Mithen, S. (2006). The singing Neanderthals: the orgin of music, language, mind, and body. Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press.

Morris, D. (2012). The seven ways of improvisation. Victoria TEDx Murphey, T. & Alber, J. (1985). A pop song register: the motherese of adolescence as affective foreigner talk. TESOL Quarterly 12: 793-795.

Murphey, T. (1989). The when, where, and who of pop lyrics: the listener's prerogative. Popular Music 8 (2) 163-170.

Murphey, T. (1990). Song and Music in Language Learning: an analysis of pop song lyrics and the use of song and music in teaching English as a Foreign Language, (Ph.D. dissertation). Peter Lang Verlag, Bern, Switzerland. dissertation in Peter Lang's European University Studies in Ed. series XI. 374 pages Murphey, T. (1990). The song-stuck-in-my-head phenomenon: a melodic din in the head. System 18 (1) 53-64.

Murphey, T. (1992). A Teddy Bear in Your Ear! Using music and song in your language learning. Avenues 45: 8-9. (Translated in the Finnish NLP Journal VAK Murphey, T. (1992) Music and Song Oxford University Press (4th printing) 151 pages.

Murphey, T. (1992). The Discourse of Pop Song TESOL Quarterly 26 (4) 770-774.

Murphey, T. (2005). Song for all languages. Languaging #5 22-24.

Whitney, D., & Troston-Bloom, A. (2010). The power of appreciative inquiry. San

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Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Musical Glossary: Adolescent motherese: adolescence is the time usually between puberty and adulthood, 12 to 19 years of age, the teenage years. Motherese is the language of mothers to little babies. Affectionate talk to anyone at any age can have ‘motherese’ qualities, especially between lovers. Pop songs often sound like ‘adolescent motherese’, and serve to give adolescents more affectionate messages. Since adolescents are no longer children they do not what their parents to talk to them like babies, they want to feel grown up. But they still need affective messages from somewhere to stay healthy, so many of them get these messages from pop songs.

Ghost discourse: a term first used to describe the linguistic characteristics of many songs or poems in which sometimes specific references are NOT present. In order to have meaning, the listener or reader must supply the references, (for example for the time of enactment, the place, pronouns I, you, she, he, they, it, etc.). Murphey (1989) suggests that, when we try to make meanings our of such events, that the words are like “ghost words/discourse” (coming out of nowhere) and that listeners must give their own meanings to the words if they are to make sense of them. So when a singer sings “I love you”, the listener imagines who the “I” is and who the “you” is.

SSIMHP (Song Stuck in My Head Phenomena): People often report the fact that tunes and jingles get stuck in their heads, sometimes without them noticing it or wanting them to get stuck. Because they heard a tune on the radio before leaving home, they hum it all the way to work and then notice it. It seems our brains are very good at ‘pattern recognition’ and that songs and music are actually very consistent mathematical patterns of sounds and rhythms. So when this happens accidentally, we call it the SSIMH Phenomena. Teachers in schools, and learners themselves, can make this happen more purposefully for good learning as well. You can do it.

Teddy bear in your ear: Teddy bears are always nice and affectionate. An I-pod, or any devise that can play songs through earphones, are like a teddy bear in your ear.

The songs are affectionate and will never be angry with you for not understanding.

You can ignore them and they will stay the affectionate.

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Some Song Affirmations & Classroom Management Questions List Tim Murphey //// Kanda University of International Studies //// Jan 2013 1. How do you succeed?

Doi Ta Ga In x4 /or/ (duidagin, duidagin)x4 (tune of Santa Claus is coming to town) Make Many Mistakes and duidagin Yarebadekiru Nasabanaru x 2 + Nana korobi ya OKEY 2. How do you change the world?

When you change yourself, You change the world!

3. How do you write? Write write write it down, set your feelings free I make it upasi go along, my pen is writing me.

4. How are you?

Superhappy sodelightful joyfuland amazing Superhappy optimistic joyfuland prodigious Trulyawesomsotenatiouslovelinglyvivacios [5 strategies: Chunk/Backf/rhythm/song/Hru?] Sugoi kanpeki subarashii sekkyokuteki genki すごい かんぺき すばらしい せっきょくてき げんき 5. What’s the weather like? It’s raining cats and dogs and its cold outside My sunshine is deep inside [Story: Hiking Mt Fuji SSIMHP] 6. What’s a happy person?A happy person/ is not a person /in a certain set of circumstances, /but rather /a person /with a certain set of attitudes.

7. How do you have a great life?

8. Are you Young?

Make new friends, and keep the old One is silver and the other’s gold

I’m young and strong and beautiful, I’m living an adventure The world’s so fascinating, it makes me want to cry.

I want to cry to the world, I want to fly all around I want to tell everybody I’m in love, I’m in love I’m in love X4 I wanna tell everybody I’m in love.

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9. What are you gonna do today?

Today while the blossoms still cling to the vine I’ll taste your strawberries I’ll drink your sweet wine And a million tomorrows will all pass away Before I forget all the joys that are mine today.

10. What do you love?

I love us playing, I love us singing songs I love us interacting, when we talk a lot We talk a lot we laugh a lot We talk a lot we learn a lot We talk a lot we laugh a lot When we talk a lot Hahahaha hohoho TeheheheHuhuhuhu Tehe [naturally broken laughter] When we talk a lot 11. Where do you belong?

Werdaya Werdaya Werdaya Werdaya Werdaya come from friend?

Howdaya Howdaya Howdaya Howdaya Howdaya like it here?

Wadaya Wadaya Wadaya Wadaya Wadaya wanna drink?

Whodaya Whodaya Whodaya Whodaya Whodaya love so dear?

I come from over there and I really like it here, I want another drink and I love you all so dear. Werdaya howdaya whadaya whodaya we all belong in the zoo.

Extra Bonus Tracks What are you doing now?

Collaboratively Energizing My Imagination (tune#5) ROUNDS Combine Row x3 Your Boat versions of 3, 8, & 9 into a nice four part group sing!)

A. Write x3 it down, set your feelings free, I make it upasi go along, my pen is writing me.

B. Smile, breathe, look at the sky, sing a melody, dare to show your love to me, dare to show your love.

C. Young strong and beautiful, living an adventure, the world’s a fascinating place I love to love to love.

D. Friends, friends, friends you know, I will miss you so. You helped me learn a hell of a lot, to laugh and go with the flow. (“How to say goodbye?”)

Tim Murphey Resources Email: mitsmail1@gmail.com Youtube Search: “Tim Murphey Tips” for short video teaching topics from NFLRC Podcasts: Google “mits mind” http://mits.podomatic.com/Tim’s YouTube mitsmurphey Channel – A few Videos (more coming)

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Make New Friends

And keep the old ‌