using songs in EFL teaching

[snehvit]

Dear colleagues,

You are kindly asked to answer the following questions in order to contribute to the study of songs’ usage in teaching English as a foreign language (EFL). The results will be used only in the generalized way.

1. How would you evaluate the productivity of using songs in EFL teaching? Please rate in the scale from 1 to 4, where 1 is low productivity and 4 is high productivity.
2. Do you use songs in teaching EFL? (Yes/No)
3. What is the reason of your not using songs in teaching EFL?
a. It is time-consuming
b. It is not effective
c. It is not appropriate for my students (their interests, age, etc)
d. Your variant, please specify
e. I use songs in teaching

4. What methodological advantages do you think using a song in teaching foreign languages has? (e.g. songs help students to relax) (a detailed answer is welcome)

Thank you for your answers!​

 

[Tdol]

1
Almost never
c

(I am not a fan of songs in the classroom, so others may see things differently)

 

[White Cuckoo]

1. 2
2. Once in a while.
3. A , C
4. It helps to grab attention of younger students, kids. I think it's all there is to it.

 

[Mr_Ben]

1. 2

2. yes

3. a, e

4. I only use songs in speaking classes or classes of more than 10 hours per week. Otherwise there just isn't enough class time to justify what is often 10-15 minutes of frustrating vocab practice.

That being said, I think they can be good vocabulary/collocation activities if you have the students match/guess the words before they hear the song and then only listen to check their answers. The activity must be very focused or it becomes totally overwhelming for the students.

2 successful songs I've used:

YouTube - Paul Simon - Loves Me Like a Rock + lyrics

My elementary students were having trouble remembering to use do to make questions, so I gave them the lyrics with only was and do gapped and asked them to put them back in. I monitored and checked their answers as they did it (basically made sure they had all the right answers before we listened) and then we played the song and "checked." It didn't take too long, the focus was very limited and I think most of them noticed what they had been forgetting.

YouTube - Michael Jackson - Beat It

I used this with my FCE-level speaking class. I teach mostly French mother tongue students and in the previous class I had one insist that there just wasn't a noticeable or important difference between i: and I (sorry, I can't figure out how to get the phonetic symbols to appear but the title of the song should make it obvious what they are). I printed the complete lyrics and asked them to listen to the song and discuss what it meant with each other, specifically the phrase, "Beat it." So they were all using the phrase quite a bit before we actually discussed the phonetics and MJ helpfully provides a short and long version of the I sound (beat it beat it beat it beat it... as well as BEAT IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT, BEAT IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT). The lyrics also provided surprisingly rich discussion, can he beat his problem or should he just beat it? What is his problem? Have you ever overcome a very difficult situation? What kind of problems do you have to run away from?


I try and use a lot of repetition in my classes so that we can return to examples they know and have discussed before when we learn new material. Songs can be part of this too as they can be very memorable for some people.