Peer Review

French Music Blog

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Reviewed:: Jul 26, 2016 by World Languages

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

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Overview:: French Music Blog: Frenchify Your Playlist is the perfect resource for discovering the latest French songs and for learning about the artists who produced them. This highly attractive and engaging site, which allows you to search for pop, bands, R&B and rap, provides a biographical sketch of each featured artist, as well as embedded video and audio clips of their greatest hits.
Type of Material:: Collection. The latest French music with a mix of different popular genres. Music from French and Francophone artists, perfect to engage language students.
Recommended Uses:: Teachers can use French Music Blog in class in order to introduce students to popular French music, as well as to emphasize grammar or vocabulary by providing each student with a cloze paragraph and asking them to listen repeatedly to the song in order to fill in the appropriate blanks. Many of the music videos were filmed in famous French locations, and students will enjoy identifying known landmarks or neighborhoods as they watch the clips. Students can also be asked to create with their own French music playlist after reviewing the site on their own or as a group.
Technical Requirements:: Internet access, HTML
Identify Major Learning Goals:: French Music Blog allows teachers and students to broaden their knowledge of French and Francophone popular culture. Listening to the music clips will allow students to improve their French listening comprehension, and teachers can easily design lessons in which they use the site's material to emphasize select grammar points or vocabulary words.This material exposes the student to modern popular music and culture in a Francophone setting (Belgium)
Target Student Population:: French Music Blog is designed for high school and university students and faculty who wish to learn more about the most popular French and Francophone singers.There are musical resources to reach a variety of levels. The material can be used in Music, World Language, History and Sociology classes
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: There is no prerequisite knowledge or skills needed to use French Music Blog.Some contextual introduction to modern Francophone music trends could be useful.

Content Quality

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Strengths:: The quality of the site's content is high. The biographical information and video clips provide the user with authentic cultural knowledge of the French and Francophone world, and the author of the site responds to all user comments and inquiries. The French Music Blog is a great place for the teaching of small c culture in any level of French language or culture classes. Geography and History, not to mention Music classes can also benefit from the collection of music on the blog. Instructors who value inclusion and diversity in their teaching of culture will value this resource. This is also a resource that includes Francophone artists and is not restricted to France.
Concerns:: It is no longer possible to view some of the embedded videos.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

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Strengths:: While the site is not specifically designed for classroom use, its attractive layout, ease of use, and plethora of video and audio clips are certain to fully engage students. In addition, faculty can easily create listening comprehension activities using cloze paragraphs, as well as cultural activities in which they ask students to identify a singer from five different francophone countries or to identify famous French landmarks present in each video. Students will also enjoy exploring the site on their own in order to create their won top ten French music playlist.
Concerns:: None.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

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Strengths:: French Music Blog is aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate. Students can choose to explore new artists according to musical genre: pop, bands, R&B and rap. They can also click on the most popular artists from the home page, or use the search feature to learn more about a particular artist.
Concerns:: None.

Other Issues and Comments:: The author of the site does a wonderful job of describing each singer's style and selecting his/her most representative songs. Instructors may need to provide some background information on cultural references and idiomatic uses.
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