[ELTWeekly Volume 11, Issue 3 | March 11, 2019 | ISSN 0975-3036]
Music could be a great tool to help your students learn a new language. The BusyTeacher contributor Stacia Levy has shared an article with some useful tips on using popular music to teach ESL.
Levy says, “I spend a lot of time listening to popular music—not originally by choice.
But I have an adolescent daughter, hence I spend a lot of time shuttling her to music and basketball practice and other commitments, and hence she has taken control of the car radio. She likes a specific local station that professes to “play all the hits,” which seems to be about ten songs—presumably the top ten—rotated in a constant loop. Therefore, I have memorized most of these songs and in fact have them stuck in my head—originally to my chagrin, but not only have I grown to like some of this music (I have a particular fondness for the group Maroon 5), but also I see some of the songs’ value as teaching tools. Much like poetry, these songs can teach rhyme and meter, complex vocabulary, and multiple meanings. The songs also reveal interesting aspects of not only popular culture but also deeper sociological issues: what is “pop” or popular with a culture at the moment, after all, speaks volumes about that culture. My daughter, of the same generation of most of my students, has served as a “guide” to this music through discussions about it”.