Teaching and learning foreign languages through songs appeals to all ages at any time. There are a number of teachers who use songs in their classes, but there are also those who are reluctant to do so, probably because they do not know how their students will react. On the other hand, students find it interesting and challenging to study language through songs.

However, using songs in the classroom is not an end in itself. They should be always related to the activities done in class to support or supplement the language input. Nor is it the case that songs can only be used for listening comprehension. Songs can be used in an ELT classroom for many other purposes.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a variety of techniques in teaching English through songs and to show some of the many activities that can be used with various groups of students at different levels (teenagers, university students, adults). Before dealing with the techniques and activities, I discuss reasons for using songs in an ELT classroom and ways of choosing songs. 

Reasons for using songs

There are numerous reasons why songs should be included in the teaching process. They

· add variety to a lesson;
· increase motivation and create a relaxed atmosphere in an ELT classroom;
· involve participation of the whole class;
· encourage creativity and use of imagination;
· help in practising pronunciation, stress, rhythm and intonation;
· help in practising grammar items;
· help in practising new vocabulary;
· help learners remember language in chunks;
· provide reinforcement of language learning;
· encourage listening practice;
· stimulate discussion and writing activities;
· offer a lot of cultural input (based on Everett, 1987; Kurtology-Eken, 1996; Monreal, 1982).

Choosing songs

Choosing a song for practising certain activities is not always an easy task. There are a lot of songs that can be taken into consideration, but only a limited number of them are acceptable. Most of the songs that students like listening to are rock and pop songs (McLean, 1983), but country and folk songs  can be included as well (Osman & McConochie, 1978). Exposure to rock and pop music is spread all over the world. If the teacher does not know much about this kind of music, the students can be of great help. Their wishes could be a good lead in selecting the proper song. The chosen song must fulfil the purpose it is used for (Coromina, 1993). This means that the vocabulary or grammar items must be in accordance with the level of student knowledge and with the materials used in class. (Santibanez, 1979). If the song is supposed to be a starting point for discussion or writing, it should contain a message or prompts for discussion or a story that can be discussed and extended.

My experience has shown that students are not much interested in songs that are too slow paced, especially if the song is used at the end of the class when they have already been given a lot of input and need something to cheer them up. However, some activities such as putting jumbled lines into proper order will probably require a slow song. It is also important that drums or loud guitars do not drown out the lyrics or the singer’s voice. Obscene lyrics or those that are discriminatory in terms of race, religion or sex should not be used in the classroom (Coromina, 1993).

Grammatically incorrect lyrics and slang may often be found in songs. However, these songs should not be immediately discarded as inappropriate. If that language can be heard in conversation between native speakers, there is no reason why we should not introduce it to our students, provided it is not exaggerated.

The quality of recording and the quality of the singer’s voice should also be taken into consideration. The chosen song should be catchy and popular. The teacher must always renew the repertory, but classics like the Beatles or Elvis Presley can be used as well.

Techniques

Techniques used in the classroom can vary depending on the age of the students as well as their knowledge of English. On the other hand, the teacher’s imagination and creativity can also play a vital role.

The process of using songs can be divided into three stages:

 1. Pre-listening
 2. While-Listening
 3. Post-listening

1. Pre-listening

Depending on the purpose of listening, a number of techniques can be used:

· introduce new words either through discussion or by giving the students a handout;
· write questions or key ideas on the blackboard that lead the students through the text of the song;
· write the title or the topic of the song on the blackboard and ask students what they know or think about it; in such a way that it is possible to get, through a controlled discussion, information or words that will be relevant for listening comprehension;
· let the students hear the beginning or the end of the song; they can discuss in pairs or groups what the topic, or the message of the song is, what happens after the beginning or at the end, etc.
· write some key words on the blackboard and ask students to think—or write a short text—about the content of the song.

2. While-listening

This is the most important part of the listening activity. Sometimes the pre-listening stage can be skipped, especially with students at higher levels. Here are some of the techniques:
 

· the students can listen to the song once to get an idea of what the song is about;
· the second listening may involve writing down a couple of key words or ideas, as many words referring to a certain idea as possible or rhyming words;
· one of the possibilities is to give students the text with blanks where they have to put in the missing words, collocations, idioms or grammatical structures; if the teacher expects this to be difficult for the students, she can give two or three possibilities for each gap at the side of the line with the gap and ask students to choose one of them.
· students may be given the text with intentionally made errors and are then expected to correct the errors;
· the text of the song may be given with jumbled lines; students are supposed to put the lines in the proper order while listening; this can be done in groups or pairs.

3. Post-listening

This stage is probably as important as the while-listening stage. Without it, all the work with the song may seem incomplete. In this stage the teacher gets feedback from the students on their performance; students have the opportunity to check what they have done. Let us have a look at some techniques in this stage:

· check if the students have properly filled the gaps or written down the words they had been asked to put down;
· give students true or false statements about the song;
· give students comprehension questions to answer; this could be done in groups so that they can later compare the answers;
· if they were asked to write a text or think about the possible content of the song in the pre-listening stage, make them talk about how their ideas are similar to or different from the ideas in the song;
· ask students to write another ending to the song or extend the story;
· start a conversation about the topic or any other interesting details from the song;
· have students sing the song; after the whole procedure this is usually  fun for students and a good break before proceeding with something else.

These are only some of the techniques that can be used with songs. They can be combined or changed slightly to meet the needs of the activities done in class. Which stage will be given the greatest attention depends on the students’ knowledge level. We have already seen that the pre-listening stage can be skipped and stres    s put on the second and third stages.

Activities

Activities that may include the use of songs are: warming up, practising grammar, listening comprehension, vocabulary-building, initiating discussion and writing or just relaxing. Sometimes more activities can be combined in working on a single song. This paper will just pinpoint some of many activities that I use in teaching different teenagers, university students and adults.

1. Warming up

Any class can start with a warmer. Occasional warming-up with a song can be a good idea, especially if the students come tired from previous classes (Santos, 1995). It also prepares them to switch to English in an easy and funny way. Here are a couple of lines from the song Hello, Goodbye  by the  Beatles  where students at a pre-intermediate level practice greeting and saying farewell.
 

2. Practising grammar

Songs can be a rich source of material for studying grammar. We all know that in most cases it is not a favourite activity of our students. This made me find songs through which I could make grammar practice more interesting for the students.
 One of the songs that works really well in classes is Those Were the Days  sung by Mary Hopkins. The activity in class includes filling the gaps with the missing irregular verbs. As the first step, students can be asked to guess the verbs that go into the gaps. Later on, while listening, they write the verbs they hear. This has proved to be a useful way of making students learn irregular verbs. Let us have a look at a stanza from this song:
 

 The missing verbs are: ‘seemed’, ‘saw’, ‘stood’  and ‘was’. The song also contains the construction ‘used to’ for expressing past time. Another song that is very good for practising past tense is Rasputin  by Boney M. A combination of tenses is well illustrated in Help  by the Beatles. Working on reported speech can be fun with the song Sylvia’s Mother   by Dr. Hook. Here is the first stanza as an example:
 

 The activity includes putting the direct sentences into indirect speech, first with the reporting verb in present tense, as it is given in the song, and then changing it to past tense.

 Songs help in practising a variety of grammar items. El Condor Passa  by Simon and Garfunkel is good for practising conditionals, Tom’s Diner   by Susan Vega for present continuous, It Must Have Been Love  by Roxette or The Day before you Came” by ABBA for ‘modal plus perfect infinitive’ construction.

3. Listening comprehension

Most students listen to English and American rock and pop songs and, quite naturally, they want to understand the lyrics. Very often they are too shy to ask the teacher to help them understand lines or words from a song. On the other hand, some of them do ask the teacher to listen to a song and write down the lyrics. This is actually what made me start bringing songs into the classroom.

Practising listening comprehension can be done in many ways. Apart from filling in the gaps with words or phrases missing, it is also very useful to ask students to put jumbled lines into proper order. This can be done as group work. The song that works well in my classes is Save the Last Dance for me  sung by Bruce Willis. Each line in the song is different, and it is also slow enough to enable the students to carry out the activity after listening two or three times. This is the proper order of the lines in the song:
 

Here are the jumbled lines:
 

 A good example is also Greenfields   by Dr. Hook. Another activity that is great fun for students is correcting errors. Students are given a text in which some of the words are replaced by others that rhyme or sound like the proper ones. The Blue-eyed Boy   by Van Morrison is the song that I use in my classes, although most songs can be used in this way.
 
 
 

Lyrics with Mistakes	Proper Version
Hey where did we go	Hey where did we go
Nights when the moon came	Days when the rains came
Down in the hollow	Down in the hollow
Playin' a new song	Playin’ a new game
Singing and a-walking, hey, hey	Laughing and a-running hey, hey
Skipping and a-running	Skipping and a-jumping
In the misty evening sun	In the misty morning fog
With our hearts a-beating	With our heart a-thumping
And you, my blue-eyed boy	And you, my brown-eyed girl
You, my blue-eyed boy	You, my brown-eyed girl

4. Initiating discussion and writing

Very often songs produce a heated discussion in class, especially at more advanced levels. This may lead to essay writing later on. “The Winner Takes it All”  by ABBA is an excellent example. Here, the activity includes filling the gaps with the missing phrases and discussion about the topic afterwards. Let us have a look at the first several lines (the underlined phrases were left out):
 

The song tells about breaking up and its consequences. Other songs that I would recommend are In the Ghetto  by Elvis Presley, House of the Rising Sun  by the Animals or Candle in the Wind  by Elton John.
 

5. Vocabulary practice

Many songs lend themselves for practising vocabulary. Here is an example that I use for the description of a person. After extensive work on adjectives used for describing a person, I give the students just the beginning of each line where one word (an adjective) is missing. I ask the students first to give all adjectives beginning with the given letters, thus revising what they have learnt. While listening to the song, in the next step they are expected to put down the adjectives they hear. The song is D-I-S-C-O  by Ottawan. 
 
 

That is what the students get:	This is what they are supposed to write:
She is D -	She is D - delirious
She is I -	She is I - incredible
She is S -	She is S - superficial
She is C -	She is C - complicated
She is O -	She is O - oh

There are four stanzas altogether, and each stanza contains different adjectives. Apart from being useful, this activity is also great fun at the end of the class.

6. Singing

The lesson can end with a song that the whole class sings. The song should be relaxing and easy to sing. This activity usually takes no more than 10 minutes. The song that I use very often is Let it Be  by the Beatles. Here is the first stanza:
 
 

 These are just some of the activities that teachers might find useful in the classroom. We can devote a whole class to a song and find quite a lot of useful activities with it, but we usually do not have so much time. However, if we introduce a variety of activities, songs will bring an extra quality to the teaching process.

Conclusion

In finding ways to improve the teaching process, songs can be of great help. It is important, though, that the teacher be ready to experiment with songs and always do something new and unpredictable.

As we have seen, there are many reasons for using songs. They bring variety in the classroom and motivate students. Through songs students can also practise pronunciation, stress, intonation and new or familiar patterns. They are a rich source of vocabulary, as well. Songs create a relaxing atmosphere in the classroom, which is sometimes necessary for getting students to communicate. Songs are also a rich source of cultural input that all students who study a foreign language need. The list of reasons why songs should be used in a classroom could go on and on. But one of the main reasons for using them is that they bring a lot of pleasure into studying a foreign language.

Notes

1. This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the IATEFL East Conference, Constanta, Romania, in 1998. (back)

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