Unidades Didácticas
Inglés
Working with songs
Leslie Bob Wolff
Profesora titular de la Universidad de La Laguna (Tenerife)
Catedrática de Inglés de Secundaria
Rationale
| Choosing the Songs| Some
Techniques | General Suggestions |
Dealing with vocabulary | Another
Suggestion
I think songs can be used at
any level. However, since the activities I am suggesting all use
written text, the level discussed here will be that of students
who are old enough to read.
Within the range of students
who are able to read, a difference I have noted between younger
and older students is their willingness to accept songs chosen by
their teacher. My personal experience with secondary school students
has been that my students invariably did/do not like the same music
as I did/do. This means that letting the students choose the songs
we work with is more motivating than working with songs I have chosen.
With younger students, I think
songs can more easily be chosen by the teacher and there are many
nice collections published. The ideas I am suggesting here could
work as well with songs from these collections.
LETTING THE STUDENTS CHOOSE
THE SONGS (BUT WITH TEACHER CENSORSHIP):
When I have worked with songs
in class in secondary school, I have had the students choose the
songs they want to study. I do this by first setting the total number
of songs I think we will have time to work on in a given period
- usually a semester. Then they do a pyramid brainstorming plus
voting so that we have this number of songs.
I warn my students ahead of
time (before they begin the brainstorming) that I will be "censoring"
the songs in the following two ways: 1) if I cannot understand the
words to the song with the words in writing before me, it's too
difficult to do in class and 2) if the song is basically music,
we will not work with it. (I have reached these two censorship criteria
after having students choose songs which had one of these features.)
I tell the class about this "censorship" when I first
present the idea of working with songs because it saves "disgustos
posteriores". The students must also bring me the music and
the words to the songs they choose. Then I prepare the song at home
(although, see below).
Specific techniques for working
with songs:
Here is a list of ways I have
worked successfully with songs :
1 This technique is good for
rather difficult or fast songs. Write out the song disordering
the lines of each verse; that is, mix up the lines within
each verse. A variation of this for easier songs is to mix up
all the lines of the whole song. The students get a copy of the
song which, at first glance looks correct but as soon as they
begin to read or listen to it, they realize something is wrong.
What I like to do with this
technique (and the next one, below) is to give out the words without
saying that anything is wrong, start the music and let the students
realize that things aren't as they should be. Then I blame it
on my computer. Missing words can be blamed on a computer too.
Nice for surprising students.
2 This one is not terribly
easy to prepare but fun. It can only be done with relatively slow,
easy songs. Change specific words to others that sound similar
and "make sense" in the context. For example: "When
I was young, it seemed my life was so wonderful" (from "The
Logical Song", Supertramp) can become: "When I was one,
it seemed my wife was so wonderful" Another example from
"Yesterday": (Remember how it starts? : "Yesterday
all my troubles seemed so far away, now it looks as though they're
here to stay, oh I believe in yesterday") Here's a new version:
"Yesterday, all my lovers seemed so far away, Now it looks
as though they're all at play, Oh why believe in yesterday?".
Students have to listen closely to find and correct the changes.
I got this idea from Teresa Woodward at Pilgrims some years ago.
3 Prepare the song as a ‘cloze'-
leaving out every seventh or ninth word. The students must complete
the song as they listen to it. Depending on the frequency of words
left out, this can be more or less difficult; that is, every tenth
word left out is easier than every fifth word. This can also be
made easier by writing all the missing words somewhere else on
the page all mixed up, or on the board.
4 Leave out words of some
specific type- for example, leave out all the verbs. Students
work as in number 3. Another variation is to leave out whole phrases-
that is, blocks of 2,3, or 4 words in most lines. Again, if the
song seems difficult, you can include all the left-out words somewhere
on the page.
This one is a nice way to
review some specific point when the song lends itself. For instance,
songs that tell a story usually have a lot of the verbs in the
same tense and this is a way of reviewing that tense.
5 Before giving out the text
of the song, give the students a list of 10-15 words from the
text, but not in the order in which they appear in the text. The
students must number the words in the order in which they appear
in the song while listening to it.
This can also be done with
a specific group of words- say verbs given in present- students
must write past and participle forms before listening to the song.
I’m not too crazy about this variation because it is a little
to ‘grammarish’ for my taste, but it’s a possibility.
6 For some difficult songs,
I may give out the complete text. I have the students underline
the words they don't know and work in small groups to define them,
sometimes with dictionaries.
7 For easy songs and/or relatively
advanced students, one possibility is not give out any words at
all but ask the students to reconstruct it entirely. However,
this is quite difficult and can take a good deal of time.
8 One possibility which occurs
to me but which I have not done myself is to write comprehension
questions on the song after any of the above exercises. Students
of mine have done this with their classmates when they have presented
a song (see below).
9 Cut up the lines of the
song so that each line is on a separate piece of paper. Put them
into an envelope. Give one envelope to each group of 4-5 students
They have to put the lines in order as they listen to the song.
(For easy songs, I've put two songs mixed-up into the same envelopes.)
Cutting up the lines and stuffing into envelopes is a pain - get
a couple friends or students to help.
10 Sometimes for difficult
songs that a group is especially interested in, I've prepared
a bilingual version; that is, in two columns, the English on the
left and a translation to Spanish on the right. I can recall doing
this specifically with FP groups who were very interested in Bruce
Springsteen songs that were really difficult.
Ask the students to number the
lines before starting to work with the song. Then check that you've
all got the same number of lines!
After each "listening",
ask the students to compare their results with a couple of classmates
to check, compare and pool information. They'll want to do this
anyway, but telling them to do so shows that you approve of their
working together and learning from each other. People from each
group can also go to the board to gradually complete a song between
‘listenings’ ; this is a way of having better students
help weaker ones and also a way of demonstrating to the class that
working together they are capable to a better final product than
working individually.
If you've prepared a song in
such a way that you realize it is too difficult for the group, give
hints (e.g. If you've left out too many words, put line numbers
on the board and write the first letter and spaces for each of the
other letters of the missing words - you can get students to go
to the board and fill these in as they can.
The amount of time spent on
a song seems to me to depend on how much time you feel you can invest
in any particular one. It also depends on the difficulty of the
song itself, although to a lesser degree since this can be solved
by using one of the techniques which are easier to do. I tended
to use between one half and one entire class for each song, depending
mostly on the time of the year. For example, those last days before
a holiday break are good ones to spend the entire class working
with a song - you don’t feel guilty because they are working
on English but at the same time you are not ‘fighting’
to keep their attention - and if it is a song they have chosen,
you will be sure to have everyone there and attentive.
Depending on the specific technique
you're using, going over new vocabulary ahead of time may not make
sense. However, if it does, this is what I like to do: The lines
of the song are already numbered, right? I ask students to read
through the song individually and mark any new words, then compare
what they've marked in small groups, explaining anything they can
to one another. Any words they can't understand in the group get
written on the board along with the number of the line where each
is. We go over these together. I always start by asking if anyone
in the class can say what the word means, if they have any idea
from the context. I try to give hints rather than giving an immediate
translation but rather than going on with long explanations I will
translate.
Many times, songs students want
to study do have so much new vocabulary that I prefer to
use a technique which makes going over vocabulary before doing the
song unfeasible, for instance, lines cut up (number 9 above). In
those cases, sometimes I use this vocabulary technique after we’ve
worked through the song; I say sometimes, because there may be too
many new words for this to be realistic. It also depends on the
need the students express to understand all the words.
Give any or all of the above
suggestions to a group of students and have them prepare and present
a song in class instead of doing it yourself. What I have generally
done is use a few of the above techniques myself so the students
see how they work, then I ask them, by groups, to prepare a song
for their classmates. I remind them about the steps of getting the
lines numbered beforehand, make sure they get me any material to
be photocopied ahead of time and show them how to work the tape
recorder if necessary.
POSTSCRIPT
If you try any of these techniques,
I’d be interested in hearing how it has worked; in fact, aside
from sending me specific comments, you might also include them at
the end of this article or in a separate one.
|