Using Popular Songs to Teach ESL
This topic was looked at briefly during our workshop in early 2011, and the slides and materials from that session are available here on the site A Collection of TESL Resources:
Using Popular Songs
The page (link above) includes some (oldish!) songs that are not in the "traditional songs" category.
(Hopefully more material will be added to this site soon.)
The use of Popular Songs is more suitable for older children (upper primary and secondary) and adults. As a general rule, a selected song is treated very similarly to a reading or listening text, with students listening for particular words and phrases and responding on a worksheet. Because music is being used, the students will generally remember the lesson and the words much better than they would if it was just a reading or listening (without music) text.
A great deal of care needs to be taken in choosing suitable modern songs, especially in countries with religious sensitivities. Nevertheless, there are quite a lot of nice songs out there, and websites such as "Busy Teacher" offer ready-made worksheets (not all of them necessarily suitable) for the ESL teacher in a hurry.
There are a number of bands that play very pop-sounding songs for children - the Wiggles, Hi-5 for example - which can be fairly safely used with younger children and are full of good learning themes. Generally you need to purchase CDs or music by these bands.
Using Popular Songs
The page (link above) includes some (oldish!) songs that are not in the "traditional songs" category.
(Hopefully more material will be added to this site soon.)
The use of Popular Songs is more suitable for older children (upper primary and secondary) and adults. As a general rule, a selected song is treated very similarly to a reading or listening text, with students listening for particular words and phrases and responding on a worksheet. Because music is being used, the students will generally remember the lesson and the words much better than they would if it was just a reading or listening (without music) text.
A great deal of care needs to be taken in choosing suitable modern songs, especially in countries with religious sensitivities. Nevertheless, there are quite a lot of nice songs out there, and websites such as "Busy Teacher" offer ready-made worksheets (not all of them necessarily suitable) for the ESL teacher in a hurry.
There are a number of bands that play very pop-sounding songs for children - the Wiggles, Hi-5 for example - which can be fairly safely used with younger children and are full of good learning themes. Generally you need to purchase CDs or music by these bands.
