Practice your English through Songs
- ceydahosgor
- Nov 4, 2022
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 9, 2024
Episode 1: The Beatles - Yellow Submarine
The background photo is the main library building in Joensuu/Finland. It is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Main_library_of_joensuu.jpg.
Finns are known to be the most enthusiastic users of public libraries in the world. Thinking of the services and facilities that the libraries offer to the people, it is not that difficult to understand why. For example, the second floor of the Joensuu city library has a vast collection of vinyl records, music CDs, music sheets, musical books, etc. You can, as a visitor, either borrow them or spoil yourself by listening to them in the library premises where there are rooms for you to listen to your picks. The walls of these rooms are soundproof, so you don´t break the library rules. You have read a little bit of the background information about the Joensuu City Library up until now.
Here is the practicing English through songs part of this post.
My student (11) and I have online English-speaking classes once a week. We live in different countries.
We decided to have an English practice session based on a song. We mutually chose the country in which the band or singer we would listen to is based, which happened to be the UK; and the period when the band got famous, and it was the 60s. The band we chose was the Beatles. After reviewing the songs and lyrics, I ended up with 'The Yellow Submarine' song to build the next session on:
The song is highly applicable to an English-speaking session with a young learner who can easily understand and produce age-friendly English. The reasons why I think that the song is suitable for making an effective lesson plan:
The song is catchy.
The lyrics are level-appropriate.
The song has a narrative quality that creates many speaking prompts.
The sentences in the song are descriptive which paves the way for descriptive speaking activities.
The background sounds used in the song open space for listeners to use their imaginations to conjure up several scenarios about the song. Speaking over what we imagine is another meaningful activity in which we use our creativity.
Because of its descriptive qualities, it is ideal to transform auditory input into a visual output by integrating an art activity into the session. We both got our materials prepared for the art activity before the session. See her drawing of the song:
The Yellow Submarine song as a drawing
Why music rooms in the library instead of Spotify?
First, I must say that the libraries have good WI-FI connections that enable people to have efficient online sessions, workshops, classes, etc. One of the online music platforms would have worked fine for this online session; however, I went to the city library, booked the music room for a prescheduled time, and found the vinyl record to conduct the online session that I described above.
What is the purpose of doing so?
The content of the speaking session is based on the song. If we take the library as a place to put the content in context, I will probably mention place-based learning to contextualize the content via places.
Music rooms in libraries are not common in my country. So, having the session in a music room in the library has the potential for a learner to expand her understanding of the world.
Having an expansion in the understanding of the world might result in some self-explorations, self-observations and inspirations. Widening horizons inward and outward.
On the other hand,
The learner may not be influenced at all, or the effect may manifest itself in different ways. For me, providing spaces where students may see and participate in various experiences is valuable. Whatever the students cherish in themselves is what they keep with themselves, and it is great to witness the process. If something does not cherish, it is okay. It is an experience, too. Not pushing and having expectations, observing what they do with this experience, and letting them be.
Ceyda💗
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