How to Teach English by Songs
By Kara Page, eHow Contributor
Using music in the English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom is not only an educational tool,
it's a way to make learning more interesting and memorable for students of all levels. No matter
what the age of your students, you can incorporate songs into your English lessons in a way that
will help them improve their listening, speaking and overall comprehension skills. At the same
time, the enjoyable atmosphere may reach students who are not stimulated by traditional
teaching methods.
1. Review your lesson plan for the day and pinpoint the key concepts you wish to teach. This
can be anything as specific as "progressive verb conjugations" to something more general,
such as "improve conversation skills."
2. Decide whether you wish to incorporate songs that students will sing (best for working on
verbal skills) or listen to (better for listening skills), or a combination of both. Select songs
from your teaching materials, or create your own. The easiest way to create your own
songs to teach English is to choose a well-known song with a simple melody, such as
"Mary Had a Little Lamb" or "Three Blind Mice," then write your own words, incorporating
the concept you wish to enforce. Repetition is the key, so make your songs simple and
repetitive, focusing on the skill or skills you wish to work on in your lesson.
3. Have students listen to the songs at least once before attempting to sing. While some
children love to sing, others may become shy and withdraw due to intimidation. Play or
model the song for them and review the lyrics before having them attempt it themselves.
4. Intersperse the songs throughout the lesson. For example, for every five minutes you
spend lecturing, spend one minute listening or singing. Not only will the song activity help
students remember key concepts, it will help to "wake up" the class and ensure everyone
is paying attention.
5. Choose popular songs (rather than nursery rhymes) and focus more on listening and
discussion than singing for older or more advanced students, For example, if students are
studying the challenging concept of phrasal verbs, provide them with a lyrics sheet with
words to a well-known song and have them highlight all the phrasal verbs they see. Play
the song, and then discuss how those verbs were used in context to see if students can
discern the meaning. Play the song again to help reinforce how those phrasal verbs were
used, which will help the students remember.
Read more: How to Teach English by Songs | eHow.com
http://www.ehow.com/how_7692523_teach-english-songs.html#ixzz1lom4EyjK
Techniques Using Songs for Teaching English
By Ethan Pendleton
English is often considered a difficult language to teach and learn. This difficulty is
increased when both teacher and student are native speakers of widely different languages.
Music, however, is a human universal, reaching us emotionally, whether we like it or not. Music
also reaches us intellectually, offering the opportunity to use music in teaching. Whether
prerecorded or performed live, songs can help a person learn English, either as a first or additional
language?
Here are some techniques to help you accomplish that goal.




Employ lyrics as mnemonic reminders in songs that you write yourself. For example, it can
be very difficult to conjugate verbs, particularly irregular ones. Write lyrics that will fix the
tenses in the student's mind: "Catch, caught/ buy, bought/ go, went/ spend and spent..."
Assign your student to translate the lyrics of popular regional songs into English. Not only
will this acclimate the student to the conventions of poetry in English, but it will also force
them to work with words they might not be comfortable with to conform to the meter
and rhyme.
Create assignments that ask students to first write out the lyrics of a song, and then to tell
what they really mean. MusicalEnglishLessons.com posted such a lesson for the Beatles
song "I Saw Her Standing There" that you can use as a model.
Acknowledge one of the difficulties of teaching English through music: lyrics are
sometimes written with poor grammar. This is an opportunity for the student of English to
correct the grammar of the artist. In his song "Only the Good Die Young," Billy Joel sings,
"That never hurt no one." The English student, in correcting Joel, will learn both the
proper word to use (any), but will also learn that speakers sometimes do not adhere to the
rules.
Performance
Encourage students to perform songs in English, as this allows you to gently correct their
pronunciation and allows them to hear difficult words in the context of a sentence. This kind of
karaoke instruction also gives you the opportunity to teach regional idioms and vocabulary
through popular song. For example, Slang City notes that the narrator of the Bare-naked Ladies hit
"One Week" uses the idiom "get that together," meaning to reassume a normal attitude. It also
mentions pop culture references such as "The X-Files," an American television show.
Set lyrics to easy songs that all of your students understand, like local nursery rhymes.
Start with easy topics, such as the weather or eating, but begin increasing the difficulty. Your
students could learn English by writing lyrics commemorating the best day of their lives to the
tune of "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star." Hold an informal concert in which the students sing their
songs.
Read more: Techniques Using Songs for Teaching English | eHow.com
http://www.ehow.com/way_5231860_techniques-using-songs-teachingenglish.html#ixzz1lol2nieG
Teenagers love listening to music. Here are some ideas for
using songs in class.
Songs and music with secondary students (11+)
Why use songs and music with this age group?






Children like songs and music and have strong personal preferences about what
they like
Songs often include a lot of repetition that helps to make language memorable
Songs contain chunks of language that children can remember and use
There are many songs that are about issues of interest to this age group
Songs often contain current usages of language that are meaningful to children of
this age group
Because songs are sung at a reasonably fast speed they contain natural
phonological features like linking and weak forms that students learn to recognise
and be comfortable with


Music can help promote a relaxed, stress-free atmosphere in the classroom
Music can stimulate strong feelings that can be channelled to enrich the language
learning experience
Teenagers: Songs 1: Music in the background

Having music playing in the background during lessons can be very successful in most
contexts, though not all cultures will be happy with this, of course.

Music is played while students work in groups discussing, planning or doing language
exercises. I choose instrumental music or songs sung in a language that the students do
not know, so that they aren’t distracted by the words.

The music helps create a relaxed atmosphere

Often when students are asked to speak together in English, they feel shy about speaking
up. With music playing they need to raise their voice to be heard by their partner(s)

If groups of students are planning or competing, they do not want to be heard by other
groups, so the music creates a barrier of privacy

Teachers must recognize what is positive noise and what levels of noise are unacceptable
in the classroom

If students do not like the music I choose, I welcome their contributions of background
music, increasing their sense of ownership in the lessons
Teenagers: Songs 2: Music as a stimulus for speaking

Visualization is a tool you can use to help stimulate students’ imagination, encourage them
to speak to each other and as a preparation for writing. For example, while focussing on
descriptive writing:

Play some mood-inspiring music in the background e.g. Rodrigo’s Guitar Concertos,
Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Scheherazade’

Ask the students to close their eyes and relax, listening to the music

Ask them to ‘see’ a place in the countryside slowly giving the following prompts: Which
country is it? Are there mountains, lakes? Is it green, dry? What is the weather like? What
can you see? Are there trees? Flowers? Buildings? People? How does this place make you
feel? Etc for at least 5 – 10 minutes, allowing them to completely ‘enter’ that place

Then get students into pairs, describing these places to each other. You can give a task,
such as - find what similarities your places had

You could use this technique for creating a story-line too

After the speaking students could write the description – you’ll find descriptive writing
richer after this preparatory activity, as they have had a chance to concentrate on the kind
of details that makes writing more interesting.
Teenagers: Songs 3: Music as a stimulus for writing
A great way to use music in a writing activity.

Choose four very different pieces of instrumental music (e.g. some ragtime, a gentle piece
of classical music, a stirring tango and a march or brass band)

Give each student four pieces of paper and tell them NOT to write their names or which
piece of music they are listening to on them

Play each piece of music separately and ask students to write what they see/feel on the
pieces of paper as they listen. They do not need to write in sentences – single words are
fine, or even pictures are a possible response

Give the students enough time to listen, respond and write

Pin up all the pieces of paper on the class walls and ask students to walk around reading
them and decide which piece of music inspired which descriptions. Check if they were
right – though it is NOT a test – it’s just interesting

In pairs students choose one description that they like – it can be written by one of them,
but not necessarily

In pairs they use that as a basis to write a short story or descriptive piece of writing – this
time ensuring that they also focus on grammatical correctness

Writing in pairs helps maintain interest and students can share knowledge about
vocabulary, grammar and their ideas, and takes the stress out of writing. Also if the
students are writing in class, you can monitor and help them.
Teenagers: Songs 4: Activities
Using pop songs in the classroom is a common activity. They are an enjoyable alternative to the
traditional listening comprehension.
Choose songs that are clear, make sense and do not contain a lot of unknown vocabulary.
You may decide to pre-teach some key vocabulary.
Gap fills
Write out the song lyrics but leave gaps instead of some words. For example, gap all the verbs or
adjectives.
Students listen and fill in the missing words. They may need to listen two or three times.
If you feel students will find this difficult, write the missing words randomly around the text and so
the students have an idea what they are listening out for.
Jumbled lines
Write out the song lyrics, but this time jumble whole lines and students have to put them into the
correct order while listening to the song.
You may wish to cut up the lines, to make the task easier for the students – or get them to cut up
the sheet before the activity.
Students can work in pairs.
Spot the mistakes
An easier activity:
Write out the lyrics of the song, but make about 20 mistakes e.g. change the tense, write an
opposite or synonym instead of the correct word. The students listen.
The first time ask them to underline the words that are different and the second (or third) time
actually write what they hear above the word or phrase that is wrong.
After each hearing they can check with each other – in a mixed ability classroom this ensures noone is left behind and gets demotivated.
After they have checked that they got the right words, ask them to go through and see if the
mistakes were words or phrases that were the same, similar or opposite in meaning: a good focus
on vocabulary and/or grammar.
Translation activity
A challenging activity for monolingual classrooms:
In pairs or small groups, students choose a popular song in their Mother Tongue and translate it
into English, ensuring that it is still singable to the same tune! They could also do it the other way
round choosing a (pop) song sung in English and translate it into their own language.
You could also do this in a multilingual classroom or where students share two or more language
other than English, (such as Senegal where the children could translate an English song into French
or Wolof) as long as there are at least 2 or 3 children who can work together.
Teenagers: Songs 5: Discussion and presentation
Songs can be a good starting point for a discussion or a presentation.
Discussion of themes
Choose a song that deals with a topic of interest to your students (e.g. Imagine by John Lennon
which is about peace and brotherhood, Money by Pink Floyd or Money Money Money by Abba
etc), do a listening activity like a gap fill, then follow up with a careful reading of the song and a
discussion on its theme(s).
Presentations
In most of the world a class of teenagers will be full of music fans. I have yet to find a teenager
who likes no music at all. By using the theme of music with children of this age group, they will be
more motivated than if the topic is of no interest to them.
Students can work individually, in pairs or small groups
They choose a favorite singer, group, musician, composer.
They research (internet, magazines etc) the above
They produce a presentation – which can cover the biography of their chosen musician(s), their
career. It can be a talk, a role play, interview, and sketch.
They can use cassettes or CDs, posters, handouts to support their presentation
This could also take a written form – be produced as a poster, booklet, magazine article.
Teenagers: Songs 6: Songs and grammar
Ideas for using songs to teach grammar.
Passive voice quiz

When working on the passive voice with your students, bring in a few well-known songs
(no matter whether in L1 or English) and ask: Who was that song sung / written by? A
great example of the passive voice in use and also drawing in the students’ knowledge of
the world.

Ask students to get into teams. In their teams they must come up with at least 10 similar
questions (they could do some research for homework) about songs.

Organize a class quiz, where team members challenge each other with questions like: Who
were ‘Satisfaction’ and ‘Brown Sugar’ sung by? (Rolling Stones) or they could bring in
tapes/CDs (if this is possible) or sing a snippet of the song and ask the questions.
http://www.onestopenglish.com/teenagers/skills/songs/teenagers-songs-1-music-in-thebackground/146788.article