Hey guys! ESL English teacher and language enthusiast here.
A few months ago, my friend and I were talking about learning new languages and how the R sound is always one of the trickiest sounds to master. (English, Japanese, Mandarin, French, Spanish and Dutch all have their own unique R sounds.)
He told me how in Japanese, not only do they have a different R sound than English, but they also don't have the English L sound. Instead they have a sound that is "kind of in the middle of the two". ( らりるれろ) And he said that this makes it difficult for Japanese natives to learn to differentiate the L and R sounds.
Being language enthusiasts (and teachers), we started discussing the best way that ESL learners can learn to differentiate these 2 sounds. During our chat, we didn't really come up with anything special that hasn't already been said a hundred times on language learning forums.
But a few weeks after the conversation, I was cycling home from work when I randomly started singing the word, 'Rolo' over and over. I probably sung it four or five hundred times, at different speeds (fast, slow, superslow) and different 'Ro' and 'Lo' combinations, ro-ro-rolo, lo-lo-lo-ro, ro-lo-ro-lo. This lead to the creation of the song "Call me Rolo."
If you're interested in reading exactly how I turned this song from an idea into a reality, I made another post here.
But in this post, I'll just go over what the song is and how you can use it as a teacher.
Call me Rolo is a song designed to help ESL language learners to differentiate the L and R sounds in English.
The choruses of each song focus on a simple back and forth between two minimal pairs in English. (Either 'Ro' and 'Lo' or 'La' and 'Ra')
The verses of each song focus on words that have both an /l/ and /r/ sound in them.
The idea behind this is that as the student listens to the constant back and forth of L/R sounds, they learn to tell them apart with greater clarity.
When I wrote this song, I had in mind the image of sharing them with adult Japanese friends or an adult/teenager 1 on 1 lesson. I think it might also work for adult/teenager group classes if you have the right group. But it's probably not the best fit for a young kids ESL class.
Here's a link to the Karaoke videos on Canva(dot)com. I'll upload them to YouTube in the next few weeks.
Summer Pop version: https://www.canva.com/design/DAG6tsupKxo/NYKIDG7YMkFmRE_uQF4R_g/watch?utm_content=DAG6tsupKxo&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=uniquelinks&utlId=hbac3eeaeae
If you like, have a listen and let me know what you think.
by ESL_Card_Games