Encore ! Still with a song in my ... scheme of work!
Steven Fawkes writes (having listened to this again after 25 years):
This is the audio recording made for the original edition of this book in the 1990s. Since then the world has moved on! At that time the cutting edge technology in the Language classroom was the OHP (Overhead Projector), the OHT (Overhead Transparencies) on which you wrote or drew and the audio cassette (on which sounds were recorded). Please ignore references to ' this side / the other side of the cassette' - You had to be there. The 'blackboard' is what we now call a screen. (It was black, honest.)
Please take references to the Curriculum as being of historical interest (although many of them are pertinent in an era of Challenge and Ambition) and please excuse, of course, any slips of the tongue.
There are extra songs, no longer included in the book e.g. one about going to the toilet, but at that time there were none in Spanish. That omission is repaired in the book with contributions from Paco Fernandez.
What I still like about it is the points I made 'back in the day' about songs conveying 'a deep-seated message of enjoyment in language' about 'getting ideas from pupils' and about passing on the gift of 'things you can do with language.'
Finally the original book / cassette were published by CiLT , a national agency which has now vanished. The Publisher is now ALL, our membership charity, for whose benefit the new edition of the book was made .
You can hear an outline and explore some accompanying songs below for free:
' ... a joy to read and bubbling with information and so many ideas and creativity shine through! I love the structure with interludes throughout .... If anything might keep a teacher inspired this must be it!'
Rachel Aukett, @TheMFLHive