Using Songs in ESL Classes

It's great to use songs in the class to avoid boredom. But beyond using them solely to give your students some 'light relief', there are many other ways songs can be used in ESL classrooms to consolidate what students have already learned. Here are some ideas you might want to use:


A. Phonetics
You can use a song with a clear rhyme pattern to do some phonetics work on particular phonemes.

B.  Language Components
Some songs lend themselves well to structure and vocabulary. Carefully choose which words to blank out depending on the grammar points or target vocabulary you want your students to work on. Retype the lyrics and have students fill in the blanks.


C. Listening Comprehension
Instead of doing your usual listening comprehension out of the course books, do a song instead. Here is how:

1. Get your students think about the subject and do any pre-teaching of vocabulary. As with standard listening comprehension, there are a variety of exercises that you can do with songs: true or false, matching exercises, comprehension questions, etc.
2. You might get your students to sequence song lyrics.  Type the lyrics and cut them into strips which then need to be reconstructed as the song unfolds. Alternatively, each student is given a strip to memorise beforehand and the students then work among themselves to 'physically' rebuild the song.