Fame At Last?

Hello dear reader(s), and welcome back! I just have one thing for you today, although I'm hoping to have several posts out in the near future. Today I am pondering the idea that I am now famous :)

Well, sort of.

Earlier this academic year, i.e. before Christmas, I enrolled on a module called "Fremdsprachen; Lernen und Lehren" (Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages for those who don't speak German). The aims of this module were to teach us about theories of language acquisition, to explore second language development at various ages, and to essentially teach us how to teach. It was a great module, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who gets the chance to do it (so, German Studies students at Nottingham Uni.) Despite initial worries that it was just a module aimed at German learners to remind us that our only job prospect was teaching (yeah, right), it was actually very informative and interesting in itself.

The assessment for this class was an essay, but the formative assessment, carried out halfway through the module to ascertain how well we were coping with the content, was to create teaching materials for a Beginners' German first year class. We had the option, in groups, of either preparing a lecture and presenting it, or making a video. I worked with Jordan, and we made a video exploring the difficult pronunciations found in German, which just don't exist in English. Our video was, somehow, a resounding success. Sascha, who ran the module, absolutely loved it (far more than we did!) and this made us all very happy.

A few weeks ago Jordan and I received an email from Sascha, asking if he could use our video as part of a report on the module's success, with a link being put on the University's website. We of course said yes. You know, whatever makes you happy, Sascha.

From Helen

Oddly, this has ended with two people, so far, sending me links to my own video, telling me I'm famous. Well, two is hardly thousands, and I don't really need a link to the video - I'm in it! But it's nice to be recognised. By my housemates.

Anyway, here's the link to the original blog, if you fancy a read. The video link is on there:
http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/clas/2015/05/21/flipped-roles-german-students-as-teachers/

Much love xx

A Very Controversial Video (This post comes with a content warning)

***THIS POST IS NOT SUITABLE FOR SOME READERS***

See introductory paragraph for details.

Being at uni has both its good and bad points. Today in this (hopefully) short post, I'm pondering what could be seen as both. If you are of a delicate disposition, are easily offended by swearing or dislike very obvious sex references, I wouldn't bother reading further. I will not be doing any of these things, but the video I am discussing does all of them almost constantly and I do have to refer to it somehow for this post to make any sense.

I was shown a very controversial video on YouTube last night; it's apparently been removed from YouTube once and then replaced there in all its resplendent glory because of the debate surrounding it. In short, it is a parody of the song "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke but in long, so to speak, it's a bit more than that.

[SIDEBAR:] For those of you who don't know the song "Blurred Lines", it's a very provocative song about how women behave around men and how men want women to behave around men. In the words of Beth (who is very nice) "It's a bit rapey".

The parody in question is called "Defined Lines" (don't click the link if you don't want to be exposed to a high level of sexuality and swearing, or if you are somewhere that swearing and sex would be frowned upon, e.g. work) and it's by a group of girls called Law Revue, who appear to be highly feminist to the extreme. And American. But that is irrelevant.* It is a good video; as a parody it's almost identical to the original in its layout, apart from the obvious content change. The words to the song, whilst overly explicit and full of expletives, are actually part of a very good argument about women being treated like pieces of meat and used for sex. However, as mentioned, the video is much more explicit than it needs to be and could have been done almost as effectively without the constant swearing and sexual references.

This then creates a good argument though because, content-wise, the video is very close to the original song (which is probably known to quite a lot of young children) but with the gender roles reversed. Therefore, we must come to the conclusion that the original song is far too explicit to be played on the radio. But this isn't true. YouTube actually did remove this video at one point because of its obvious sexual nature. Law Revue apparently then wrote to YouTube and said "If that's the case, take down the original "Blurred Lines" video on the same grounds." At that point YouTube unblocked the parody video on their website.

So you see, this video does lead to a very good and in-depth argument, which I actually would enjoy having with people who weren't over the internet. And I am actually beginning to have with myself after this post. I hope I haven't caused too much offence with this video/message, I just find it interesting how different the standards are for men and women and how a song which could be conceived as being about rape is actually number 4 in the charts as I write this.

I apologised for any offence caused anywhere in this post, but I gave as much warning as I possibly could, considering that there is no "Explicit" button on Blogger.


*Future Emma believes the ladies are in fact from Down Under. Leave it.

Please, Let Me Explain...!

Ok, so many of you have seen this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJuuqxWwcNE  and it may have raised some questions in your heads. You may be pondering "Why on Earth would Emma subject herself to this level of humiliation?", "If she doesn't like the video, why has she put in on Facebook, YouTube and now her blog?" and some of you may even be thinking "How could she do this to me?"

Allow me to tell you what I was thinking.

The recording, as you can see, is from my twelfth Birthday party in 2007. It was a really fun day and the recording of the song itself is actually, in my obviously unbiased opinion, rather good. The video, however, is super-embarrassing, although it was quite fun to make at the time. The problem with Facebook is that I couldn't uplaod the audio recording without the video because of the formatting and the fact that I don't have/want Soundcloud.

The reason for putting the clip up in the first place should be fairly self-explanatory. Friday (19th July) was my last ever day at school and everyone else in the video is in a similar position; having just finished, or being about to finish, forever. Therefore, considering that the song is "School's Out", it seemed only logical that we should relive this amazing moment.

And anyway, it seems to have gained a highly positive (if sarcastic/ironic) response. Please don't kill me. Sorry again, but it was fun...