The spread of holiday cheer came in the form of language lessons and performances by students for Tavern patrons.
On Dec. 4, French and Spanish professor Dr. Frederic Leveziel organized a French Holiday Chorus composed of 15 of his students. Dr. Leveziel constructed the chorus to fill the Tavern with holiday spirit and assist his students in mastering the French accent.
“I felt like my French students needed more oral practice to improve their punctuation,” says Dr. Leveziel. “It is common for adult learners to struggle with pronunciation in a foreign language.”
Dr. Leveziel conjured the idea after reading a cognitive psychology article titled “Singing can facilitate foreign language learning.” In the study, 60 adults learning the Hungarian language were randomly assigned to one of three “listen-and-repeat” exercises: speaking, rhythmic speaking, and singing. Subjects assigned to singing showed a superior overall performance in Hungarian language tests after a 15-minute learning period, as compared to the other groups.
Research by Institute for Neuro-Physiological Psychology suggests singing in another language grants more practice time in pronunciation and in learning and remembering new words. A “listen-and-sing” learning method has been found to facilitate verbatim memory for spoken foreign language phrases. After multiple studies, findings have concluded that there is a connection between pitch awareness and phonological awareness.
“It is a really interesting concept to introduce singing to help students work on foreign accents,” said student Simone DeLoach. “It was a great performance.”
“The students and myself had a good time learning and singing old French songs,” said Leveziel. “I do believe the students’ pronunciation has greatly improved through the understanding of the rhythm of the [French] language.”
