Using Music to study English
Navigating through the English language is fraught with pitfalls and can be a confusing, frustrating labyrinth without a guide to help point out the points of interests. Trying to inspire adolescents (or oneself) to travel through this tangled maze requires a ‘hook’ or interesting approach to keep them involved.
Music, Music, Music we hum it, we sing it, we dance to it and teens and adolescents love it. Music can be a way for them to forge their own identify or blend in with the crowd. Songs are full of words. Words that your students want to learn so they can sing-along. Try a take on American Idol. You can follow along on the actual TV show, use the DVD game or create a game of your own.
Teachers can make up their own version of American Idol and have students practice their language skills as they participate. They can have their students translate and learn songs from artists in different musical categories such as country, rap, R &B, musicals, gospel, etc. The students can sing or say the words to their favorite songs in English. The judges (who are also students) must tell what the Idol participants are saying or singing and if it can be clearly understood. Another take on the American idol theme is to have students judged on creating silly songs from popular songs using all verbs, adjectives or nouns. You can also split the students into teams where they have to identify all verbs, nouns and adjectives within the song lyrics during a preset time interval.
Those who are practicing their English skills can take popular songs from their own language and translate them into English. This will help them understand the various differences in pronunciation, diction, and sentence/word sequences.
It is important to keep in mind the many (if not most) songs contain a large amount of slang and culturally specific phrases and while they may not always be grammatically correct, they are often a good representation of how English is actually spoken in the culture.
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