How to Use Songs in a Foreign Language Class

Songs are not only fun, they also help students of a foreign language memorize vocabulary and phrases more easily than they could by reading. What's more, songs offer a window on the culture of the people who speak the language.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Music in the target language
• Good sound equipment

1. Find some songs in the language you teach. Pick songs in which you can easily understand the lyrics. A little slang or a few idioms can be fun, but only if they don't make it hard for students to understand the overall meaning of the song.

2. Set a goal for your lesson. Decide exactly what you want the students to learn from the song. While songs are a good way to practice listening and pronunciation, you can also use songs to teach foreign language vocabulary and even grammar.

3. Create activities. Based on your goals, design some activities that will guide the students towards the knowledge you want them to have. Remember that you'll need some very simple activities for the first listening and more complex ones for the next few times you listen.

4. Lead into the song. Before you play the music for your foreign language class, get your students thinking about what they'll hear. Discuss the song's general theme and use some vocabulary from the song. Give your students a simple "first listening" task like picking from a list of possible titles or just explaining what they think the song's about.

5. Play the song. Let your students listen to the song one time through without interruption. When you use songs to teach a foreign language, you'll need to give students a little time to take in the song as a whole before they can focus on the details like new vocabulary and grammar.

6. Do some basic activities. After discussing the question you gave before the listening, move on to more involved questions. You might ask your foreign language class what emotions they think the song expresses, what mental images they got while listening or what "story" might be behind the song.

7. Give the students some more complex activities. Now is the time to set tasks for vocabulary and grammar. You might give students a list that has both words from the song and some similar-sounding words and ask them to mark which word they heard. For grammar, you could ask questions like whether the singer said "if you love me" or "if you loved me" and discuss the difference. At this point, you'll probably need to re-play certain parts of the song.

Tips & Warnings

• Ask your students what kind of music they like. After all, one of the advantages of using songs in a foreign language class is that it's more fun than book work. If you're tutoring an individual, ask if they can bring in some of their favorite music in the language they're learning so you can create a lesson with it.
• Only use recordings with high quality sound and make sure your equipment projects sound clearly. What sounds "a little fuzzy" to you may be completely unintelligible to someone just learning the language.
• Don't give students complete lyrics during the first listening. They may be tempted to read instead of listen.
• Don't be to quick to explain lyrics that your students don't understand. Instead, let them listen to that part of the song a few more times. To keep them from getting frustrated, give hints.

Resources

• Get a complete plan for a song-based lesson at LessonPlansPage.com.
• TwistedSisters.com helps kids learn foreign languages through music.
• At WorldMusicStore.com, you can find songs in dozens of languages.
• Read research on music and second language learning.
• MusicalSpanish.com presents a fun way to learn Spanish.