I am not an aural person. Musically, yes, but not for words. Books on CD and talkback radio are at the top of my list of Worst Nightmare Activities. Needless to say, in school I was not one to record classes or notes and listen to them in my sleep. In the middle of last year though, I thought I'd give this 'learning by osmosis' thing a try, and have been listening to an Italian phrase CD as I go to sleep, which has yielded some results.
Now, for summer school we were given a booklet of 24 children's songs to learn by the end of the 2nd week. 'Look through and I'm sure you'll recognise a lot of them' said our materials teacher. I recognised one - Hot Cross Buns. Slightly nervous, I then started to learn them, singing them and looking at them (being more of a visual/kinetic learner). But with all the other singing I had to do, I didn't want to waste my voice on children's songs. So Thursday night I recorded them onto my phone. Then, whenever I had a spare moment (on the train, at lunch, at the gym), I was listening. As I hadn't recorded them with the intention of being perfect, they really weren't - which was good to hear where I would need to be careful with pitch, but annoying otherwise.
And it paid off - I made one stupid mistake in the written test (superfluous rest at the end of a piece) and got one note wrong in the singing test. Happy. Books on CD are still on the No list though.
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