¿Qué Dice El Zorro?

What Does the Fox Say?  If your students aren't already going around school singing this strange song, they soon will be.  With 30 million YouTube downloads and more than 130,000 comments, this song and the accompanying video are beyond popular.  That said, it is every bit as strange as it is popular.  The song is performed by the Norwegian band Ylvis in very basic English and it explores the theme of animal calls, ultimately asking the title question, "What does the fox say?"

The ridiculous suggestions of what the fox says and the unusual video are the humor and the hook for this particular song: Ring-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!  Joff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff!  A-hee-ahee ha-hee!  These are the things I keep hearing my students singing in the halls to each other.

I did not do the art for this particular piece, but I created the caption.  Your students will probably get a kick out of it and it might be a nice transition piece into a lesson about animal calls in Spanish.  My students have often been interested in qui qui ri qui and guau guau as well as pio pio pio.  Perhaps your students might enjoy translating the song into Spanish?  It has a very basic structure and vocabulary, so it might make a good assignment or an extra credit that they would find entertaining.  (Translation has been a bad word in language instruction for the past 30 years or so, but I think it has its place as an occasional tool.)

Regardless of how you use it in your classroom, I hope you and your students enjoy it!

Hasta la próxima,

--AnneK