| Sumario: | Foreign language instruction not only encompasses a set of strategies that encourages learners' engagement within a social and communicative framework, but it also involves other aspects of students' lives. Language has a tremendous impact on our internal thoughts, feelings and intentions. When it comes to learning a foreign language, this process involves an immersion in different values and thinking structures that may be completely alien to us; i.e. language learning/teaching goes beyond the fact of simply learning new lexical items. Otherwise, in music, it is impossible to mark out limits or boundaries. This noticeable feature can also be observed in languages. In the case of music, this conveys a unique way of thinking, feeling and expressing, alongside a host of other aspects. In fact, performing musicians, educators, researchers, composers and arrangers are unable to agree on a cohesive definition of what music actually is. In other words, music professionals are still struggling to find a fully complete concept of music that might include all of its possible social, affective, physical, spiritual, historical and even mathematical or linguistic uses and assumptions. In light of these complex and wide-ranging academic perspectives, I decided to create a course on English for Specific Purposes focused on Music (ESP-Music) during my undergraduate studies on a Latin-American Popular Music Bachelor program at the National University of Cuyo (Mendoza, Argentina). Many undergraduate and post-graduate students from Music degrees, as well as EFL students (from teaching and translation degrees) took the course. Within each lesson I outline a general instructive outcome: to foster relevant concepts related to music in English as foreign language students in order to facilitate professional refinement. This course appears to be extremely relevant due to the increasing interaction among musicians in different parts of the globe, the numerous professional challenges that can emerge for Spanish-speaking musicians and music researchers in terms of performing or presenting their own artistic projects. At the same time, learners will be able to consult and understand different reference sources, give precise opinions on any musical work, utilize music software with ease, and understand the meaning of expressions and symbols in any score printed in English. In terms of background course requirements, this method is open to all students who have mastered an elementary level of English (A1-A2 onwards), which seems to be enough for comprehension/production purposes. This is due to the fact that the learning strategies involved are focused on the association of many terms musicians would have studied and mastered beforehand in their mother tongue. Therefore, it is crucial to mention that an average learner of this course should have a consistent conceptual basis related to solfège and sight-reading, harmony, music history, organology and instrumentation, music analysis and aesthetics. Contents are presented in order of importance by considering some musical methodological aspects, which are developed with an increasing level of difficulty. Throughout the first topics, brief and engaging concepts will be presented. Towards the later topics, reading comprehension is going to be more relevant. The idea is that musicians can get involved in real contexts concerning their professional careers and the use of reliable reference sources. With this in mind, contents are also presented, where possible, for both classical and popular musicians, fostering exchange opportunities between these two main disciplines. From a linguistic point of view, lexical items are presented either in isolation or in chunks, supported by pictures, drawings or video/audio Youtube© links. This encourages teachers and students, on the one hand, to foster the use of English at all times. On the other hand, theoretical/practical music exercises are presented in English in order to train students in some methodological strategies seen in English-speaking conservatories. Furthermore, some reading boxes or articles are also featured so as to position these items within a real context ('Language Corner' and 'Some notes on…' sections). A complete list of reference sources has been consulted in order to clearly present each topic and to provide in-depth and up-to-date coverage of the most relevant musical features. Paper-based and digital publications, journals, articles and reports from the most prestigious universities, colleges and specialized media from around the world were utilized for this purpose. There will always be new concepts to deal with in the never-ending world of music. Therefore, this material is also meant to aid EFL teachers and translators in planning and designing courses, or looking up key words that are hard to encounter in most dictionaries. At the same time, all kinds of musicians can use this publication as a starting point for an immersion in technical music terms which will undoubtedly represent an effective academic support.
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Biblioteca Digital de Vanguardia