ROXANNE

ROXANNE
Typography
Level: Second/Third Year Art & Design/ ESL high-intermediate to advanced

Language Focus: pronunciation for intelligibility

Design Focus: typographic treatment

Time: 2 classes of 2h 40 min. (each class 1h 50min activities + 25min. break/debrief)

Prep time: 4 hours

…teachers and students can overcome the frustrations, difficulties, and boredom often associated with pronunciation by focusing their attention on the development of pronunciation that is “listener friendly.” After all, English pronunciation does not amount to mastery of a list of sounds or isolated words. Instead, it amounts to learning and practicing the specifically English way of making a speaker’s thoughts easy to follow.

Judy B. Gilbert, Teaching Pronunciation: Using the Prosody Pyramid

Lesson Description:
In this lesson, students practice pronunciation in order to recognize the value of intelligibility and avoid the pressures that come with trying to attain a native-like accent. The teacher introduces typography (anatomy and contrast) in conjunction with design principles (scale, value) as a device to illustrate prosody, that is, the patterns of stress and intonation in a language, specifically, word stress, intonation, rhythm, and connected speech. Students will work in teams to design the typographic style of 1978 Roxanne, by The Police (song lyrics), for a Karaoke screen. Students will be introduced to design principles as a way to visualize.In 2001, the song was one of the many remixed covers in the film Moulin Rouge!—named “El Tango de Roxanne”—which was combined with the tango composition “Tanguera” by Mariano Mores; this mixed version of the original song gives an opportunity to test/reframe prosody based on the song’s new rhythm.