Teaching ESL Through Music

Music is a part of all cultures and, for many, is a very important part of their lives. For this reason, music is an exceptional tool for teaching ESL when used in combination with your lesson plan for the day. Using music in the classroom can offer a creative and beneficial break from the normal classroom routine and can assist your students in developing for 4 main language skills - listening, speaking, reading and writing. The fact that music provides enjoyment and assists in the development of language skills has been documented by a myriad of researchers.

What makes using music in the classroom helpful?

One of the most important attributes of songs is that they are often repetitive and, if you’ve been an ESL teacher for more than 3 days, you know that importance of repetition in the ESL classroom. This allows for reinforcement throughout the song.

As with most things, language evolves and common language or colloquial English undergoes this evolution at the highest rate. Another benefit of modern music is that it reflects the language of the time and often includes a considerable amount of colloquial English and idioms. Most ESL instruction is focused on conversational English and having a resource that allows you to exploit this is extremely helpful.

The most important thing to remember when using music in the classroom is something that is important across the board with ESL – KEEP IT RELATIVE! Using ‘Old McDonald’ in a class of 12 year olds is likely not going to go over too well but Jessica Simpson or Outkast probably will. Taking the time to learn what type of music your students are interested in and using that in the classroom will encourage them to seek out the music outside the classroom and thus continue their learning.

So music is good…how can you use it in the classroom? There are a variety of ways to incorporate music and songs into your classroom but for most of these activities you will need to acquire a copy of the song (obviously) and a copy of the lyrics. Luckily we are in the time of the World Wide Web and have access to the lyrics for almost every song imaginable.

Check out these websites for lyrics:

http://library.music.indiana.edu/music_resources/songlyr.html
http://www.lyricsfreak.com
http://www.top20lyrics.com
http://www.top100lyrics.com

For your younger students being able to sing along to the song and practice pronunciation will probably suffice. For older students you can use the songs and lyrics to put together activities such as:

Fill in the gaps - This can be geared to your specific lesson. If your lesson is focused on verbs and nouns, have the students fill those in.
Comprehension exercises – Have your students listen to a song and answer questions about the story in the song.
Writing a new verse – Have your students listen to the song and write a verse in the same style.
Transcription – Have your students listen to the song and write down the lyrics.

The following websites may give you some additional ideas for using song in your classroom: