Teaching Tips

Using songs in the classroom

The lyrics (or words) of popular songs make interesting language texts for use in the classroom. They can be treated as texts for comprehension, for linguistic analysis or for literary analysis. As texts, songs are interesting because most do not follow the structural patterns of normal writing. Often their structure is closer to speech. They are great for practising pronunciation and they are also a lot of fun! A book which should be on every teacher's bookshelf is Alan Maley's Short and Sweet. In this book, Alan demonstrates techniques for exploiting very short texts. Amongst the examples included in the book (and also in Short and Sweet 2), there are a number of short poems. We can use many of the same ideas in our exploitation of song lyrics. Alan Maley lists 12 generalised procedures for exploiting short texts. These provide a useful checklist for the teacher looking for techniques for exploiting songs. Here are six with practical suggestions for the classroom. 1 Creating text: the text can be used as a springboard for the creation of new texts. Take the chorus or verse of a song and remove all words but those at the beginning of each sentence. Ask your students to complete the sentences with their own ideas then compare them with the original song. 2 Reformulation: the text must be expressed in a form different from the original without loss of essential meanings. Use 'Strangers in the Night' by Frank Sinatra and ask your students to write the love story of how the two people met and what happened.

3 Matching: a correspondence must be found between the text and something else. Great for vocabulary practice, especially informal language. Start with something simple by giving your students a list of words. They then have to find words of similar meaning in the lyrics. 4 Reconstruction: coherence or completeness must be restored to an incomplete or defective text. Use a song that you know your students like and select some words to remove to make a gap fill. These could be a connected lexical set or practice of a structure. Alternatively, if your students have problems with sentence formation, remove all punctuation orevenallthespacesaswell! 5 Analysis: the text is submitted to some form of language focused scrutiny. Songs often repeat the same structures in such a way that students dont get bored with 'more grammar'. 'Tom's Diner' by Suzanne Vega is excellent practice for the present continuous. 6 Project work: The text can be used as a springboard for some related practical work with a concrete outcome. There are many songs which are related to a topic. Try 'Old before I die' by Robbie Williams as a lead-in to discussions about ambitions or old age. For further details of these procedures and many practical examples, have a look in Short and Sweet. And remember to get everyone up singing and dancing! Need to find some song lyrics? Try Songfile.com, but remember to stay within the copyright laws. Do you have any favourite songs that you like to use with your students? Go to Teacher Talk and add them on the chat board.