Beatles Fans

In my General English class this semester I may have inadvertently created a bunch of Beatles fans. As an exercise, I brought in my mp3 player and speakers and played "In My Life" for them. I chose that particular song because it's slow, the lyrics are clear and easy to understand, it's not too long, and it's a nice song. Perfect for low and intermediate level students.

So, I played the song, wrote out the lyrics on the board, explained and discussed them with the students so they would understand it, and then played the full song again.

They loved it. Kept asking me to play it over and over again. One girl came up and used her cell phone to record the song and others approached me after and asked if I could get them copies of the CD. One had heard "Let It Be" somewhere before and when I told him I had that one too he begged me to play it, so he and some others stayed after class and I played that one for them as well.

So, as an American sent to Africa partly to introduce Cameroonians to American culture I have now successfully introduced them to a legendary ... British band.

After the Beatles experiment I tried a little Norah Jones so they could hear a female voice with a different accent. I played "Don't Know Why" for them - also slow and relatively easy to understand. They liked it, but it didn't go over quite as well as the Beatles for whatever reason.

I think next year I'm going to get ambitious and try Motörhead.