ESL teachers can use songs to teach English to their students with great success. ESL songs can bring energy to the classroom, boost students’ confidence, and provide a much-needed active learning experience for younger students who can easily become bored or distracted. They are great for adding motivation and excitement to your classroom routine!
Integrating language through songs
Children hear complete sentences when they listen to songs; this helps them learn and remember words and phrases as they unconsciously grasp grammar and syntax. It leads them to naturally use their new vocabulary in context rather than isolated syllables or words.
Repeat through songs
Songs that ‘get stuck’ in your students’ minds lead to a constant cycle of learning: the more they listen to the song and think about it, the easier it will be for them to learn all the words and their meanings. Songs are an excellent and exciting alternative to standard reading comprehension, as they allow the child to become actively involved.
Better classroom management with ESL songs
Songs in English can also help calm down an excitable or disruptive classroom: just turn on the music and you’ll be surprised how quickly the kids will calm down. They can also bring a new zest for life and confidence to a group of overwhelmed and struggling students. Just announce a time to sing and watch the students light up with interest.
Songs to teach English cover all learning styles
Language is one of the most complex subjects, and English is one of the most complex languages. Songs help teachers engage a broader range of learning styles:
Auditory learners learn easily from songs: the rhythm and phrasing provide the perfect vehicle for teaching vocabulary and pronunciation, as well as expressing words in context.
Kinesthetic and tactile learners can benefit from actions added to songs; work with the melody, rhythm, and lyrics to provide actions that help these students absorb knowledge in a way that makes the most sense to them.
Visual learners can be helped by pictures from stories or flashcards related to the song, as well as by watching other students and joining in on the actions that match the different words.
Songs build confidence and make learning fun
ESL songs give children the opportunity to learn at their own pace within the group; instead of being singled out, they can listen and participate at their own pace, joining in when they can and learning from the group around them. They can feel comfortable as everyone else is concentrating on the lesson as well, and little by little they will build up the courage to add new words to their vocabulary and work on their pronunciation naturally.
The fact that the songs are fun means your students will be motivated to work extra hard before it’s time to sing. Singing is an energetic activity that will easily capture students’ attention, particularly if hand and body movements are implemented.
Songs can be excellent memory aids; the melody and movements make it easy to remember the words, and the context makes it easy to use the correct grammar and syntax. Songs have a strange way of ‘sticking to the head’, and in the case of English learners, this is a wonderful thing.
Obstacles to using songs to teach English
Many English songs are too fast and complex to use as a teaching tool. If the words are spoken so quickly that children cannot tell them apart, it will take too many repetitions to try to figure out the letter, leading to frustration and defeat.
Also, the average English song has too many words to realistically learn, and the words will vary widely in difficulty. If the words are too difficult, you have the same problem as above: playing the song over and over while the students fidget and overwhelm.
One more hurdle is that many popular English songs contain content that might be inappropriate for children or offensive to different cultures. So how do you overcome these obstacles?
Choice and implementation of songs for teaching English
Finding the right songs to use in your classroom is critical. Those with too many words, too fast a melody, or a difficult-to-understand context will only confuse your students. This will completely destroy any positive benefit the songs may have and demoralize your students as they will fail rather than succeed.
What you really need are songs tailored to teach ESL. Save ordinary English songs for background music while doing other activities or games, and choose something repetitive with simple words and phrases to sing.
You can start teaching vocabulary with flash cards. This is a good approach for young children (3-4 years). Once they start to recognize the words, you can introduce them to key grammar and start using the new vocabulary in the context of sentences and/or phrases.
Move on to playing listening games to practice vocabulary. Even if your students may not understand all the words at this point, previews like this will gradually move them from just ‘hearing’ to actively ‘listening’ and will help when it comes time to listen carefully to the song for the first time.
Use language games to help you focus children’s attention on specific words. They can run and jump on a noun flash card when they hear it in the song, or clap their hands every time they hear a word from a group of words that have been pinned to the wall.
Take it easy when using songs to teach English, especially with younger and less experienced students. Play the song two or three times and then set it aside until the next lesson. Break up the song line-by-line or phrase-by-phrase until you finish the level your students are comfortable with, then gradually build up on each line until you’ve learned an entire verse, then the entire song. This can take several lessons.
Make up actions that go with the words and implement them in the song. Your students can be a valuable resource here – children’s imaginations contain a great source of inspiration! With elementary students, once the song has been learned, it can be performed and set aside for review from time to time. The letter can always be used later for spelling, reading, and writing activities.