The Teachers' Room: Using songs

Music is a great resource to teach all kinds of language: grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. Dan and Sian suggest a few things to do with songs.

Generate interest
Lyrics gap fill
Lyrics slice
Sing and dance

[Teachermarciafigueiredo]

Hahahaha You guys rock :D I always teach my students using songs and my favorite activity is to cut the lyrics into strips and students sort out it. They love!

[ManInSanFran]

I like the tip to put the song on strips and have the students put them in order… I am totally using that! Thanks :-) Those arms though!

[emilianopenacand.repub.arauco]

I would like to have the t -shirt, my only tip is that if you teach songs give them time to sing the easiest parts to get confidence and make them know what is your point of view of the song.:)

[richgirl]

Thank you very much! When I teach second conditional, I always play Beyonce's song "If I were a boy" and I print a worksheet so they can fill the gaps. Students really like this song!

[fredericdaudu]

The Teacher's Room videos are always great, but this particular one is even greater! Thank you.

[xiaolianzhou]

Give the title and ask students to predict the type of song. Then, for the first time of listening, we could ask students to check if their predictions are right or wrong. This could a nice task for gist listening.

[hamedmosavi]

that was nice
of course when we mix it with body language(tpr)

[vothuog]

Thank you teachers, Dan and Sian.it´s so funny and helpful.

[irinarimskaya]

Thank you very much for very interesting tips! They can be really useful while studying and teaching English as the foreign language. Dan and Sian, you are wonderful BBC presenters.

[NirNaethCZ]

I still remember my high school teacher using Madonna's "This Used to Be My Playground" to teach us the "used to do something" grammatical structure

[quanghungnguyen]

So in love with the video. Thanks Dan and Shaun.

[FactsBFeelings]

just saw this on my TEFL course. OMG i HAD to come to youtube to tell you HOW AWKWARD AND UNCOMFORTABLE AND CRINGE this was. Just NO to all of it.

[mohammedzahboune]

Good techniques to teach English using songs. I ask my students to fill in the gaps by listening to the song for three times. To make them listen carefully and competitively, I put some of money on my desk, and tell them the first to fill in the gaps takes it. 😊😊😊

[anthonysandle]

I don't think Dan's voice is that bad... you're a bit unkind, Siân!

[lucy-cogaibancom]

What a good idea! Thanks for sharing and keep up your good work!

[senghtoipanlaga]

I usually use songs as a timer and it works