Teaching Guitar Hero for English

**TwilightNights** · Joined: 13 Dec 2006 Posts: 84 Location: SA, Australia!

Hey guys, it's been ages since I've posted anything here, been missing everybody.

I'm not sure if this is the right forum to be posting in, but I'm teaching a group of friends how to play guitar hero on medium fairly well as part of my English course this year. I was wondering if people here could give me ideas on how to structure the lesson.. it will be just one day, possibly 3 or 4 hours at my place. Any ideas on games, songs, etc. would also be extremely helpful as well.
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**RichardGHP** · Joined: 01 May 2009 Posts: 2327

Telling us what in the world Guitar Hero has to do with English might be a good start.

**GesterX** · Joined: 24 Dec 2007 Posts: 1242 Location: Birmingham, UK

I have no idea how you would combine the two.

Show a flash card of an object, whoever gets it right in English... get's to play a song.

If you were planning to use the songs to teach English I would highly advise against it. Songs contain lots of phrases and sentences that are very abstract and metaphoric. Therefore to some one who is trying to grasp a new language you would want to stick more to: "Where is the nearest Restuarant". "What time is it?" etc etc etc

**RichardGHP** · Joined: 01 May 2009 Posts: 2327

Actually, abstract, eccentric and metaphorical phrases are more prevelant in the English language than we give them credit for. Of course there are the basics, which you must learn first, (Please, thank you, my name is ____ etc) listening to songs in which a certain language is spoken can help you understand that language better.

**DanTheBib** · Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 9:24 am Post subject:

Just to clarify, you are teaching them Guitar Hero and NOT English aren't you?

If so...I'd do something like:

1) Explain that you actually have to strum and fret at the same time. My sister thought just pushing buttons would do it at first xD
2) Have some easy customs, in 4/4 of say 8 green notes, then 8 red notes, then 8 yellow, then 8 blue, so they get strumming right, and figure out where it is. Do that till its pretty easy I guess. Then maybe try the same thing with a GR chord and YB chord.
3) Play some easy song they know and like

Don't really know where to go from there. They should be able to play stuff okay. If they're panicking and strumming lots or w/e play it once for them, showing them how slow/fast the thing they're struggling with is...
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**DarKRiffz87** · Joined: 17 Jan 2010 Posts: 118 Location: noitacol

im not sure how this would work but considering guitar hero is based off music it might work well for music (LOL go figure.)

i think another way for guitar hero to be based in a curriculum would be for hand/eye coordination i want to say Physical Education but sitting on a couch strumming and fretting isnt much exercise.

if you are going to try to use this for english you could always interpet all songs into poems! all songs do indeed have a rhyme and scale to them so why don't you try it out for your lesson in poetry? (that is if your going to do poetry)

and tell your students ill kick their ass in it anyday. XP
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**Prong1978** · Joined: 07 Aug 2007 Posts: 2257 Location: Flint, Michigan

Let me try to clear this up on behalf of the OP.

The OP is NOT a teacher.
He IS a student.
He is in a English class.
Part of this english class requires him to teach somebody (or a small group) how to do something.

What he teaches is not as important as HOW he teaches. The fact that he chose Guitar Hero is just because he likes Guitar Hero.

In high school, I taught a class how to fold paper into a drinking cup as part of an English class assignment. It's actually a fairly common assignment in English classes (especially speach classes).

Possible outline:

1. Demonstration (you play a song)
2. Parts of the guitar controller (fret buttons, strum bar and whammy bar)
3. Strumming while fretting
4. Chords
5. Play a song (I recommend GH2's Surrender on medium)
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**Cyberwaste** · Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2010 12:45 am Post subject:

Twilight, trust YOU to find a way to squirm GH into ANYTHING mate. :P

Seeing as you're being judged on how you teach, my idea would be to truncate the evolution from Easy (maybe go over how the game works, what things are called), through to Medium (Introduce how to use the pinky once everyone has an idea, maybe bring up Chords too) all the way to Expert (Say something along the lines of "If you stick with it, you can do this! *play a tough song, everyone knows, like Scream Aim Fire*).

Prong has a solid outline for a good lesson plan, try and include that somehow.
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psxfreak101 wrote:

But seriously I hate this country when it comes to my beloved hobby of presing buttons on a controller and making shit on my TV follow my every command.

**FingerQuick** · Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2010 1:39 am Post subject:

**SpoonMan** · Joined: 06 Dec 2006 Posts: 3631

prong: you should teach a course on translating vague confusing posts into coherent thoughts.
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**CaptainToasteh** · Joined: 16 Mar 2009 Posts: 28 Location: Portland, Maine

This is essentially what I have to do for my English assignment - teach my class how to play GH. What I'm doing is I just created a simple song in FL Studio that goes over all of the difficulties, Chords, Hammer-ons/Pull-offs, trills, tapping, sweeps, etc. and it's all on the same piano sound. Good luck with your assignment.

**ElementOfZero** · Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2010 4:28 am Post subject:

**TwilightNights** · Joined: 13 Dec 2006 Posts: 84 Location: SA, Australia!

Thank you for the clear-up Prong, I only just realised how confusing I made the original post sound. :P

Yes, I'm not teaching them English, it's an actual lesson on Guitar Hero. The stuff I have to comment on in the end is a written piece on the language used, and an oral reflecting on pros, cons, etc. I only have access to my 360 at the moment (may have broken the PS2 trying to clean the laser), but the lesson outline that Prong gave does sound really good. It will be a group of around 10 people (hopefully), so I won't be able to teach individually really but I could have them playing pro face-off on medium after most people have the basics.. which would allow me to help with fingering techniques

and timing. I still have no idea what game to use/songs.. I do own all of them on 360 (besides from GH2) so I could use a variety.
_________________

Justice is lost, Justice is raped, Justice is gone..

Not phail at GH [ ]
Get GH5 to work [x]

Goals for Holidays
200 FCs across GH5, GH3, GHM, GH:SH [ ]
50 FCs on GH5 [x]
60 FCs on GH5 [x]
70 FCs on GH5 [x]
80 FCs on GH5 [x]
FGFC GH5 [ ] (21st Man left)

**PhD** · Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2010 8:11 am Post subject:

ahaha can i be one of your students o' wise one - he who rules teh australians

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**sadied0g** · Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2010 11:51 pm Post subject:

Didn't iamchris4life do an assignment like this and like 900k TTFAF in front of his class? haha you should do that, explain the basics then blow everyone's brains open.

EDIT: o wait, you have to teach, not just explain and demonstrate? I would reccomend using GH2 as the game to use for teaching as it has the most entertaining easy songs. After explaining get some people to test out a 1st tier song of their choice on medium or something
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