Ear Worms?

I was ready to write..."But what about?"I thought. Then it hit me -- ear worms. Why earworms you ask? Because it's my most googled post, and I think people are searching for the definition...So here goes the definition of ear worms from a puny little perspective such as my own.

An ear worm is a song that you just can't seem to get out of your mind. It keeps playing in your brain over and over again. It can be a jingle or a single or whatever... makes you tingle.

I would list some of my personal favorites but then I'd have to deal with numerous ear worms ...simultaneously... which I choose not to do at this time since I'm supposed to be writing...about ear worms.

Comments

[shem]

an ear worm is an example of audio virology, yes they get in head and u have to flush em out!

however the earworm is a potent apparatus of infection of the advertiser and the sonic "brander" a discourse exists inwhich a memetic model has been devolped in sonic culture in understanding the contagion aspects of these sonic weapons...........

and yes macdonalds is guilty of shitting in our headz!

[Andrew Lodge]

We've put this concept 'Earworms' to a positive and educational use with a language learning Musical Brain Trainer...

Imagine 90% of school leavers learning 4 languages within 1 year just by taking a course of pills, after which you could speak Spanish, Chinese or the language of your choice! Credible? Incredible?

The Musical Brain Trainer learning method, designed by language training experts at earworms, uses the ‘language pill’ idea as a metaphor to describe how its courses work; one learns passively, almost effortlessly, and the medium here is music. Its vision for school leavers on the other hand, is deadly serious. The earworms team are currently working on an accelerated multilingual qualification at O-level which will have pupils and students speaking four or five languages to a useful level in one year!

The approach: The Musical Brain Trainer kick-start approach can be summarised in a few words: language learning success depends on the student seeing a positive result and having a positive emotional response within the first few hours of learning. The “Wow, I can do it!” and “I can really learn with this method! “and “words just stick in my brain”* reactions are crucial in motivational terms. These reactions indicate that the student's mindset towards learning the language has been influenced in a positive way, creating fertile ground for the planting of new knowledge.

Background: Ever wondered why you just can’t get that song out of your head? The earworms learning method uses this same brain function to boost the retention of words and phrases when learning a language. It's a well known fact that we use only a fraction of our brain power and traditional book learning is now recognised as not suiting every learner. Course author Marlon Lodge recognised this early on in the context of his teaching and has developed simple techniques which open up and exploit more of the brain's native power. He explains: “Music is an ideal medium for learning. It gets to deeper subconscious levels of your memory, and most people really enjoy it….Although you feel that you are just listening to music, subconsciously you are taking in masses of verbs, nouns and connecting words, and picking up the correct accent all the time!”

Science: Recent neurobiological research has shown that the body rewards the brain with a quick shot of dopamine, the happiness hormone, when it solves problems or learns something successfully. Neurologically seen, and left to our own devices, we are all learning addicts! Solving problems and gaining new and useful insights multiplies, strengthens and brings order into the clusters of neurones and synapses which lead to thought and logic. Unused neurones on the other hand whither and wane.

Simply providing learning material with traditional ‘chalk and talk’ teaching does not engage the emotions or the mind enough to really stimulate neuronal expansion. It is generally not enough, for example just to read a language learning book and expect to have a high degree of recall. The sounds and the rhythms of the words are indispensable elements to the complex whole in the memorisation process, as are visual and situational associations. Teaching has to be more brain-optimised using our knowledge of the architecture of the brain to give learners “a handle” on the learning process, providing them with a learning strategy that they can cognitively lock into.

The optimal programme: With this in mind, the optimal language learning programme should be designed to make learning:

· Easily accessible - showing the learner how he or she can learn.
· Effective - giving immediate success and producing a positive learning attitude.
· Fun - generating enthusiasm for the learning process.
· Convenient - taking into account time and other constraints of today's learner.

The material to be learned has to be engaging in both its content and the way it is delivered. The target language chosen has to be useful - covering situations which learners might face. Indeed the concept of usefulness is a significant factor in determining the learner’s positive attitude towards the learning process.

Earworms solution: From a psychological point of view the earworms Musical Brain Trainer can be seen as a kind of benevolent brainwashing, but to the layman it is a set of 10 songs on an album which after listening to a few times will give the learner the wherewithal to get by in the language of his or her choice. Recent scientific research has pinpointed the auditory cortex as the part of the brain which stores sounds, melodies and spoken words. Adding music and rhythm to the learning equation gives a more direct access to the long-term memory.

The research may be recent but the phenomenon is age old. Before the age of writing, ancient historical events e.g. in the Finnish sagas, were recorded in verse and song form, for easy memorisation. In his book 'Songlines' Bruce Chatwin describes how the Australian Aborigines were able to navigate their way across hundreds of miles of desert to their ancestral hunting grounds without maps. And how? The extensive lyrics of their traditional songs were exact descriptions of the routes! The advertising industry knows only too well how powerful music can be in getting the message across with brainwashing-like jingles and soundbites.

A kick-start for language learners in the UK - The UK's dilemma: In theory, UK citizens have a significant advantage over their foreign counterparts. They already speak English, whereas their counterparts have to invest a lot of time, energy and money in acquiring it.
The downside of this is perhaps that it makes us complacent - there is a perception by many people that because English is the world's business language, we don't actually need to learn languages at all.
Far from it, knowing a modicum of the language of your business partners, especially if they are from Eastern cultures, where trust and personal contact is often more important than price, can often make the difference between gaining and losing the contract.

Certainly the government and captains of industry are taking this issue seriously, insisting that we dramatically improve our language skills. Britain's economic future will be “compromised” unless more students study foreign languages, according to Sir Digby Jones, the director-general of the CBI, and the government is supporting its appeal with structured programmes and financial backing, investing an extra £115 million in promoting language learning in 2005 plus £10 million for each year thereafter. “Anyone who is serious about doing business in international context needs to wake up to the need for languages,” said Hugh Morgan Williams from the CBI. But the take–up of language learning programmes does not match this latent demand. earworms learning language courses are tailor-made for the UK learner because although we Brits are not particularly good at languages, we love music.

earworms mbt vol.1 covers the essentials for a visit abroad. It looks at typical situations: taking a taxi, at the hotel, at the restaurant, requesting, polite phrases, finding your way, numbers, dealing with problems and so on.

On the pedagogic methodology side, earworms mbt adopts the so-called lexical approach. In essence, this means it looks at the language in terms of whole meaningful chunks, which are broken down into their component bite-sized parts, practised thoroughly and reconstructed. Learners not only learn complete immediately useful phrases, they also intuitively learn something about the structure (the grammar) of the language. The earworms musical brain Trainer has been tried and tested with great success in the classroom over a number of years. Whereas in the past in difficult vocabulary test pupils would achieve 50% if they were good, now 90 or even 100% is not unusual. But just as important as the objective success of the method, is its subjective appeal.

The Vision: It is our vision that all school textbooks include an earworms learning CD to enable pupils and students to anchor in their memory all the facts, figures, vocabulary and other kind of information they need in an effective and enjoyable way. Pilot schemes in schools are ready to go ahead in the near future and although we of course know how well the system works, we shall be conducting controlled tests in conjunction with a university psychology/ language studies department to enable us to convince local education authorities that Musical Brain Training is an extremely powerful learning concept.

[barbie]

where can i buythe earworms?

[izzy]

hello

xx

ly guys x

[izzy]

hello

xx

ly guys x