At some point in time in your journey as an ESL teacher, you will either run across the need or the desire to use songs as part of your lessons. With so much great content to choose from and so many ways to implement songs into a curriculum or as free-form lessons, it is often difficult to know where to begin and how to implement the content into a quality lesson. This writing will assist you with how to teach English using songs in your ESL classroom.
Song Choice & Suitability
I find it best to choose music that you enjoy listening to. Sharing your interests with the students is a form of bonding that makes the experience enjoyable. However, we as educators should adhere to 3 principles, discretion, consideration, and foresight when considering which song to use. We should utilize these three principles in the following breakdown:
Clarity: The single clear voice wins the day for an ESL learner. The roaring of guitars, throbbing baselines, epic drum solos, singers with raspy voices and or rapping as fast as lightening, and killer acapella harmonies, are all spectacular, but would you as a student be able to hear and listen to the words? The simpler the better, hence why The Carpenters are often a favorite for an English learner, especially for karaoke. Clarity then becomes one of the foremost important hurdles of the suitability standard.
Meaning of the Song: I am sure like many of us, you have listened to “that” song a million times and could recite the main kitsch chorus even while asleep (Every Breath You Take by the Police, I’m looking at you!), but you haven’t bothered to actually internalize the main message of the song, nor have you bothered to read the song lyrics as a whole. Sometimes, the song does not mean what you think it means. When a student starts to analyze this song in depth, they will learn it as is which could be quite embarrassing. We also need to be careful not to cross that line in regard to politics, religion, sex, and other taboo topics.
Suitability of the Lyrics: Of course, there are songs that don’t fit in the PG rating system either, but I don’t need to go there, do I? We also want to avoid too much jargon, too many contractions, heavy amounts of slang, and too many idioms. Unless the lesson is geared towards learning these topics in particular, your lesson may be derailed due to the sheer number of questions the students would inevitably have. Mainstream songs are “colorful”, and the lyrics would often follow suit.
Who it is for: Lastly, this music that you like may not be what they like or want. I remember a previous teacher using a Justin Bieber teenager love/breakup song with a few elderly students. The students were politely enthusiastic for the teacher’s sake during the lesson, but afterwards complained bitterly amongst themselves about it.
Discretion, consideration, and foresight will go a long way in choosing the most suitable songs for your lesson.
Why Use a Song?
Songs provide opportunities for foreigners to see, through video and or hear culture. It is immersive and poignant. The lyrics are poetic and fit to a beat and they are mirrors of what society holds dear at the time they are made. They are also trend setters at times, too. There are many books about songs and the changing of society. Songs also help develop fluency to a degree which I cover later. Lastly, a song is a treasure trove of teaching points for an ESL teacher to use. If you haven’t used a song in your lessons as of yet, you are missing an opportunity to give much to your student with so little preparation. Utilize every resource if possible.
Purpose and Focus
I just want to share it! It’s my favorite song! It’s the trendy new thing! It doesn’t need to fulfill any specific grammar points or fit into a curriculum, does it?
No, it does not. Many fine lessons can be created with this same sentiment.
However, a superb lesson can be made by using the song to tie into your current teaching point seamlessly or introducing a new teaching point, and thus making this endeavor focused and relevant. You must remember, you are asking the students to “work” on something as opposed to them just sitting back and enjoying it as is. There is no denying the fact that your students want entertainment, but they want to have something they can learn and use as well. They want something worthwhile and relevant to their studies.
Now, if you were to make a lesson using a song, what would be your purpose and what would you have them focus on?
Thankfully, you can derive many uses of a song. Reading and comprehension, listening skills, writing and possibly creative writing skills, fluency to a small and large degree, and more. It’s best to consider what your purpose and focus is when choosing your music.
Let’s give a couple of examples.
Let’s say, you want to create a lesson focusing on the present perfect which is your current teaching point at the moment. You can google “present perfect” songs and come up with a list. (Screen shot) I have used U2 – Still haven’t Found What I’m Looking For with success, but there are many more.
Actually, here is a link on this page that you can use to find a list dedicated to what I am talking about including worksheets! ESLSongs.com | The best pop song lyrics to teach ESL English
Perhaps, you want to create a lesson centering around “War”. Again, this can be googled.
You would find that a song can have numerous uses for creating an exciting lesson or two if you think about it.
Hopefully at this point, you can see that you can use any song you want, if it is suitable, but choosing a song with a focus serving your purpose makes for a far superior lesson. It is easier to look for a song with your purpose and focus in-mind then to shoe-horn these factors into a song you just like. In the end, the lesson would then be considered worthwhile by the students to study.
Songs Used For Fluency
You can see these types of titles on YouTube. It states that a student can gain fluency by listening and possibly singing to these particular songs. Can a student gain fluency by singing and or studying a song? Yes and no. Not without teaching at least, and not without the student speaking unnaturally or with a sing-song voice in their own “output”. You, as a teacher, could focus on linking words, accents, and intonation, but it would be irregular. Another thing of note, songs are created with poetry in mind. They have a shortening and lengthening of vowel sounds, unnatural contractions, and assimilation to maintain the beat of the music. Fluency under these conditions, isn’t easily qualifiable … A piece of advice, try not to fall into the YouTubers traps.
I must point out something important about childhood songs. A song does help shape your mouth around the vowels and consonants thereby increasing your abilities to speak more fluently hence why childhood songs have repetition and are popular at a young age. Passive or active peer monitoring for accuracy is a constant for this activity in childhood. I imagine an adult can benefit from a children song just as well, but would probably not appreciate singing Old McDonald so much now.
How to teach English using songs in a lesson
These are the steps I take when making a lesson based on a song. Of course, you may alter things as you see fit, but these have been successful for me.
1) Choose your Song and Get the Lyrics
Download or copy the lyrics of the song. It is as simple as googling the song + lyrics. Read them, use Wikipedia if there is a deeper meaning, and internalize them so that you know what they are all about and that there are no surprises.
2) Think of Options
Use your focused thoughts on what you can do with the lyrics. Songs are based on stanzas, which also have chorus lines and a possible lyrical bridge. Stanzas are a set of lines like “paragraphs” of rhyming and metered units that sound similar. A bridge is a unit similar to a stanza but has a different meter and a different rhyming scheme. Generally, the lyrics are written with breaks between the stanzas.
For example: The first stanza of I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, by U2:
I have climbed the highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you
3) Make a Decision
At this point you must decide what to do with the stanzas. There are many many options! I will point out the www.ESLSongs.com website once again for the sheer amount of options available for you to peruse at leisure. In any case, I often like to separate the stanzas and mix them up physically for the Ss to put in order if it is a story-based song. I also like to have them do picture association to the stanzas as well. Physical materials aid in Task Based Learning projects, in my opinion. Missing information is also a key ingredient when using listening activities so that is almost always a given.
4) Finish Making your Lesson
You can get as detailed as you want.
5) Introduction of the Song to the Ss
Preparing the students for what is to come is a basic skill. Some teachers like to have the students listen to the song first and ask the students afterwards what the song might be about, or what the mood of the song might be, or some other general non-specific question without giving the student the title, theme, or artist name. Some teachers like to give cursory information about the song but keep the details secret. There is no specific way of introducing a song but keeping it as simple as possible is best for the first time listening. As with regular listening activities, asking the students to do tasks before they listen to it deprives them of any sense of mood, or emotions invoked by the song.
6) Play the Song to Invoke Feeling and General Information 1st time
When you listen to a song for the first time, do you critically listen to the words, or do you just hear it? More than likely, you just hear it, and it evokes emotions and impressions. We can’t ask more from an ESL student on the first listening. Do you play the song in its entirety or just the focus point? Well, this is your decision. Generally, people like to have a feeling of completion therefore, I often play the whole song in its entirety the first time only (minus the 10-20 second fade-out of a typical song) just to give them that sense of satisfaction.
7) Play the Focused Part of the Song 2nd time with Task
This is when the student will be listening and following your directions. It is at this point in time where your purpose and focus will align, and you will be targeting what they need to hear. Provide your lesson sheets. Instruct your Ss what to do.
8) Play the Focused Part of the Song Once Again 3rd time with Task and Resolution
Playing the focused part of the song once again will hopefully provide your students with enough information to achieve your goal. If not, once more.
Thing of Note
Avoid Redundancy: One common mistake teachers make in creating a lesson based on a song is that they assume that the whole song must be used. If you were to have the students listen to a 4-minute song in its entirety two or three times, … It certainly eats up time. Do you want your students to listen to the same guitar solo again and again? You want to avoid redundancy if at all possible and just focus on what is necessary. Sometimes, you can just focus on one stanza or just the chorus and leave the rest as a hand-out at the end of the lesson.
Finish
In summary, teaching English using songs is rewarding and fun. It changes the feel of standard lessons and provides the students an opportunity to hear a piece of a different culture. It also gives you as a teacher, something to smile about. If you have any songs that you have taught and you want to share, feel free to write them below. Also, if you are unsure of a song and you would like me to analyze it for you and give you some tips about it, again, write below. I am always curious about what people do. Signing off.
*This is originally a YouTube Video of mine: https://youtu.be/6hC6jqXpC2Q
For more videos or posts that pertain to teaching, please feel free to visit www.austinworx.com
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