Top 5 ways to use songs for listening practice in your lessons

Wanna know why you should really use songs for listening practice in your lessons? It’s because it’s a really fun way to learn a language, one students actually do all the time, and one that actually speaks to students’ interests. I think listening to English songs is a great way to learn more about the English language. And I will tell you why.

I still remember the first set of lyrics I ever read to make sense of what a singer was actually singing. It was Céline Dion’s My Heart Will Go On from Titanic, and I’d heard it, and I desperately needed to know what she was singing. I guess I felt it brought me closer to Leonardo DiCaprio, my soulmate. Back then lyrics weren’t readily available and I don’t even know how we found them. But we did, and I studied them so carefully and that was the first time I learned what a singer was really telling me in their song. It really felt like an accomplishment that I knew that.

Wanna know how I plan a listening lesson around a set of lyrics? Grab my free Lush Listening Lesson Cheat Sheet to check that out, right here!

Use songs for listening activities

So why are English songs so good for doing listening practice with your students? I think there are multiple reasons. 

1. Listening to a song helps students understand pronunciation of words. 
2. Listening to songs will help students understand sentence structure and grammar better. 
3. You can ask students comprehension questions about the language they’re hearing in a song, so it can also work as listening fluency. 
4. Students can learn new vocabulary from listening to songs and studying the words.
5. Listening to songs can teach students about poetic devices such as rhyme, repetition, alliteration, and figurative language.

English songs for listening practice

So what are some good English songs for listening practice? I think good songs to listen to with students are songs that are clearly pronounced, that have a good rhythm, and the lyrics are correct or mostly correct English. Gosh, have I seen some grammatically incorrect songs in my day. And while these are also fun to discuss, for your beginning learners that is probably not what you want.

I think some good songs for listening activities are the following:

• For practicing grammar, like the past simple, I like I Kissed a Girl by Katy Perry, and I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor.
• To practice poetic device I like Let Her Go by Passenger, and Without Love from the musical Hairspray.
• For learning new vocabulary any song applies, really. 
• The same goes for comprehension questions. You can ask those about any song. I’ve made a whole set of questions about six well-known Christmas Carols that I use every year with my little ones. 
• And then of course most songs are good for pronunciation practice. I find Taylor Swift pronounces her words carefully, as did James Blunt (but where is he?). Britney Spears is famously not so good at that, as is her ex Justin Timberlake with his “It’s gonna be ‘may’.” And neither is Ariana Grande.

Fun activities

As far as actual activities you could do around these lyrics, here are some ideas. You can create a gap text out of the set of lyrics, erasing a few of the words. And students then have to fill them in while listening. You could have them look for a certain grammar point, like all the past simple verbs, or any other tense that you’re currently teaching. You could ask them comprehension questions about the meaning of the lyrics. What does line so and so say about this and that? What is the message of this song? Which two things are contradictions in this song? Etc.

You could have students bring in lyrics they like, and have them look up any words they don’t know so they’ll build their vocabulary. And you can have them annotate a song for its poetic devices and explain those devices are their effects. This I do with my older students, I have to say, although rhyme is easy to do with little ones too, as they’ll recognize end rhyme easily. 

And then of course there is the fun activity of having students write and sing their own songs! If you teach them first what a song looks like and about all the parts, then that is a super fun activity to do!

For any audio of video text I use with my students, I use a set of questions that I made a while ago. It’s some pre-listening, while listening and after-listening exercises that will help students understand spoke texts better. They can be used for any spoken text you like, or students like, as the questions are general. Check them out in my store, here!

Reading and listening to learn English

Apart from listening to them, you will also use songs for reading fluency when you do these activities. That’s why it’s such good practice of the language, because it asks for use of multiple skills. I think getting them to read and listen to songs oh really helps students understand the language. And it’s actually something they enjoy. Most people love music, and if you can combine something they love with something they have to learn, isn’t that worth a try?

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