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Songs in the Classroom As teachers we are always looking for fun games and activities to keep our lessons interesting and diversified. We use these tools to stir interest for the lesson and motivate our students to actively participate. We all know that without motivation a student will not learn much and will neither participate. Another method to create student?s interest is the use of songs in the classroom. Music is a huge part of every person?s life and there is hardly anyone that doesn?t listen to music in one form or another. So why not incorporate such an elementary aspect of our lives into a lesson to help making the learning process more fun and interesting? Before we take a closer look at how we can use songs in the classroom we need to take a look at the benefits of listening to music in general. We know that music can improve concentration while learning or fulfilling a task. Indeed I remember the times when I used to listen to music while studying for my A-levels. Music is also said to improve memory and is said to help people absorb material. Music can trigger an emotional response in us such as happiness and sadness. We listen to music when we are stressed and want to relax but we also listen to music to energize us and make us happy. We all know the feeling that everything is more fun with music. The same applies to using music in one way or another in the classroom. Learning with music simply makes learning more fun and motivates learning. So how can we use music or more specifically songs in the classroom? First of all we need to consider that we are teaching students with different language abilities or levels and as such we need to take great care that we are choosing a song or songs that are appropriate for the language level we are teaching. Any important, yet unknown vocabulary to the students should be extracted and explained by the teacher. He can do so by either preparing a list with unknown vocabulary or by making a list together with the students in the class. English songs can be used for a wide variety of ESL learning and teaching activities. We can use songs in the activate phase to generate interest but we can also make a song the centre of the whole ESA lesson. A song can be a good method to: 1. Introduce a new theme or topic; as such we could use a song about Christmas if we wanted to teach Christmas vocabulary. 2. Teach listening; students might listen to a song and get exercise sheets were they have to fill in the blanks or were they have to listen and choose the correct word from two that rhyme (play or say). 3. Teach pronunciation and intonation; the teacher might choose a variety of songs that use different slang to teach about pronunciation and intonation. Or they might choose a song like Billie Holidays ?Let?s call the whole thing off? to teach the difference in pronunciation between American and British English. 4. Teach grammar; the teacher might find a song that uses a tense that he wants to introduce to the class. 5. Teach vocabulary; in the context of a song, vocabulary might be easier to understand and it is more fun to learn vocabulary that way. students will also remember words easier as they mentally connect them to a song. The above mentioned activities are all but a few and it is to mention that there is an even greater variety of usage that you as a teacher can get out of a song. After all, like I mentioned befo
