So i begin my year in germay in a few weeks as a teaching assistent. In one of the British-councel handbooks it reccomends using songs and their lyrics. So i'm after some suggestions as to which Prince songs you think would be usefull. Or if you've done a similar thing, which one(s) you used.

No swearing or overtly sexual lyrics please lol

I was thinking 'sign 'o' the times' what do yo think?

Hi toofastbabe,
I indeed brought SOTT to my class but that was long ago (and kind of advanced class).
It depends on where you wanna bring it (which age, what ambition), I even had bad experiences w/ native lyrics, they did a new version of Murphy's law (what can be misinterpreted will be misinterpreted (mostly due to LACK of imagination)).
So it really depends on what grade and what kinda school.
1st choose with this in mind: keep it stupid, simple! (or viceversa )

If I may ask:
Where will you spend your year, which City?
[Edited 8/15/07 4:09am]

I'm going to be in Laatzen, just outside Hannover. The ageof the kids is 11 to 18 (i think), They should all be of a decent standard of English though as it's a grammar school

Man, keep your hopes high ;-D
I had my own experiences...

One should think..., yes,...

Laatzen (I spent my 1st 20 years some 50 miles from that place)
extremley conservative I tell you, hope you like metallic silver cars. Think I'm joking, you'll see.

One german vocabulary for you, when they refer to sth you do as being "different" they mean "wrong" ;-D ("oh, well, actually, we do it in a different way" means "don't do it the way you intend to, you could rock our world by showuing us that there are different proper approaches to do things...")

So, back on topic, yeah I guess depending on what the main topics are, SOTT is rather universal, slightly cryptic (slightly for us (U,me) ) (big disease little name etc) plus the references (rocketship explodes etc).
If i.e. USA is the topic, Dear Mr. Man would be a choice (but 16 y. or older)

Or generally sth new like Resolution or Planet Earth

you can orgnote me in case you got probs or Qs when you're there, I studied those minds for a few decades, sometimes (!?) it'S not easy to understand what they want from you.
[Edited 8/15/07 4:38am]
[Edited 8/15/07 4:42am]

oh dear lol, i hope i'm not going to some backwards conservative town lol, I wonder how they'll take to the gay forigner lol

Thanks for your advice.
Play them planet earth? are you mad? They'll laugh at me!! lol
At least sign 'o' the times is respectable

Gotta be a slow song but not too sexy. I played Holy River to a group of Korean businessmen at 6:00 in the morning while teaching English in Korea. By the end of the lesson, most of them were singing along. If you can imagine that. It was pretty funny. So, you never know.

U want 2 uze Prince lyrix 2 teech English? hehe, =P (try starfish and coffee!)

.
[Edited 8/15/07 11:03am]

Babydubistzuschnell said:

Hey,I've been an English teacher for the last 8 years. I sometimes do songs in class (have sometimes thought what a good Prince song would be), it is quite difficult because you want a song which does not have a lot of repitition or long periods of just 'music' with no singing. Sign of the Times could be good, or maybe Dear Mr Man from Musicology.
Songs that work for me are: She's Leaving Home by the Beatles, Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye by Leonard Cohen and It's Over by Roy Orbison