Deutsch Lernen mit Musik
MEDEA Awards Audience Favourite Prize 2013
The project "Deutsch lernen mit Musik" is created by Shirin Kasraeian-Moghaddam and her team at Deutsche Welle and EINSHOCH6, a band from Munich that mixes hip-hop with classical music.It is designed for young German learners and German learners of levels B1 and B2 of the European Framework of Reference and offers them a completely unusual learning experience.
In 53 video-episodes learners can accompany EINSHOCH6 in their everyday lives, not only practising authentic and relevant expressions of everyday language, but in addition getting to know modern German music and popular culture.
The videos have interactive grammar exercises, vocabulary and cultural studies. They can be used in German or foreign language classes, as well as for self-study. No internet is needed in the classroom because the videos, manuscripts, vocabulary lists and exercises can be downloaded in PDF format. For German teachers there is specially created material for self-training, plus further tips and ideas for the use of the format in the classroom.
The content of "Deutsch lernen mit Musik" contains an authentic everyday language, as it is spoken by young Germans. This also fills the gap that many conventional schoolbooks miss. The sympathetic band members of EINSHOCH6 serve as role models, who make the sometimes unknown topics more accessible. At the same time, by regularly watching, learners will develop a strategy despite the unfamiliar everyday language and slang to capture the most relevant content and aspects.
What the judges said
"Schools from Germany and UK created a partly perplexing and as such outstanding video that boasts a refreshingly unusual combination of traditional fairy-tale story-telling, music, an insight of young people's lives and different kinds of digital animation art, a little bit in a kaleidoscopic way. But there is speed and good alternation which makes it attractive to watch. There is very creative use of animation and live action, sound and music."
Shirin Kasraeian-Moghaddam about the creation of Deutsch lernen mit Musik
"Deutsch lernen mit Musik aims to motivate young learners of German to learn about language and everyday life culture. Music not only helps to read phrases in a foreign language, syntax, grammatical structures pronunciation and memorize better - it will also, especially for young learners, increase the motivation to deal with a foreign language and their pleasure in language learning.
The choice of the video medium was made for didactic reasons: Being able understand the meaning of unknown words and develop vocabulary by visualization, it also makes it easier for learners with a medium language level to understand content and extend vocabulary and grammar skills intuitively. Secondly, it provides an opportunity to present the content of regional studies in a vivid and lifelike way. In addition the videos can be seen with or without subtitles and as a karaoke player of 13 songs to sing along. Ultimately, the web video is also a very popular format that can be used and retrieved nearly everywhere in the world.
The format was launched in July 2013 and consists of 53 episodes. There will be a new episode every Tuesday until July 2014. The learner accompanies the band for a year learning about seasonal events and festivals such as the Oktoberfest and the Cologne Carnival. All episodes will remain online after the completion of the series and continue to be available for free."
About Shirin Kasraeian-Moghaddam
Shirin Kasraeian-Moghaddam
Since 2006, Shirin Kasraeian has worked for Deutsche Welle's Language Courses Department. As a project manager and editor she is responsible for the development and implementation of numerous multimedia formats such as the telenovela for German Learners "Jojo sucht das Glück" (Jojo's Search for Happiness) or "Das Bandtagebuch mit EINSHOCH6" (Band Diary with EINSHOCH6) which combines the video portrait of a young Bavarian Hip Hop Band as well as their newest songs with a comprehensive, free, online language course. Shirin Kasraeian studied German language and literature and German as a foreign language at the University of Bonn and has taught German at various levels.
During the MEDEA Awards Ceremony that took place during the Media & Learning Conference, “Deutsch lernen mit Musik” was announced as the Winner of the Audience Favourite Prize 2013. Shirin received the MEDEA Medal as well as a Philips PicoPix 2230 and aCamtasia Studio & Photoshop & Premier Elements 12 software bundle.