Learn Languages through Songs and Lyrics: Lyricstraining

From the earliest stage of life, humans have already started to murmur and parents even use motherese or baby talk just to get babies to talk. Babies make sounds. They coo with rhythm and pitches to tell that they are hungry. As they grow up, they will be exposed to nursery rhymes and songs like "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" or "London Bridge is falling down" as such. Everything around us in fact are related to sound and music. Research has been done and it is recognised that music can help in children's cognitive development and a recent talk that I had attended by Karen Ludke who presented a little background of her current research, had helped to provide clarity to how effective music is in language learning. With this, all I can say that Lyricstraining is perceptive to use its trump card, music, in order to get a place in language learning field.

language learning-cum-singing your favourite songs

Editor's Review

★★★★
Highly recommended.

The good: It is utterly free. Plenty of songs to choose from. Not necessarily English songs. This includes: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, German and Dutch. Has a bank of songs from an array of music genres. You can choose from three different levels that are catered according to one's level whether you're a beginner or that you are a slow typer. You can store score on the wall of fame but you must first create an account which is free. You can talk to people around the world by leaving a comment to the videos.

The bad: There's no restriction to the age limit of users and music videos that are stored in the music bank. What we need is parental control option or age restriction if this tool is to be used with students at 12 years and below. You cannot enlarge the size of the video. Caution strong language ahead! Since some of the videos come in explicit version, strong language and violence are prevalent in videos. Though Lyricstraining uses youtube, it only offers limited choices and the videos are not the chart toppers. I believe that it takes time to come out with the lyrics and get them to work in parallel to the youtube videos.

The bottomline: If you believe in innovation and have faith in the use of music and songs and language learning, then you should definitely employ this tool in your teaching. Discover its unique features and incorporate it in your lessons.

How to

1. Use the search box to find your songs.

or

refine your search by clicking more 'options'.

 

  2. Choose your mode to have the 'fill in the gap' activity or you can just have a karaoke session by clicking the 'karaoke' button.

 3. Star filling in the gap. Don't forget to look for the time elapsed and how many words have you manged to score or skip. You can always withdraw or retry if you want to improve your score. Don't forget to sign up to compete with other players around the world.

Suggested Class Activities

Get Your Name into the Wall of Fame

You can ask your students to get themselves free accounts on Lyricstraining. Set a competition and they will not only have to compete against themselves but among people around the world as well. To see themselves topping up the charts will definitely motivate them to do better.

As a Homework or a Back Up Plan

Yes, well in fact you can do both. If you are running out of plan, you can ask students to use Lyricstraining to turn class into a learner centred class. They will need to work on their on to complete the challenges given out by the videos they have chosen. All in all, you will need to begin the class by demonstrating how the tool works. Making assumption that students can already work out how the tool work is one of the biggest mistake a teacher can ever do.  Additionally, by demonstrating how the tool works can help to motivate students to work on their own.

A Warmer to Other Activities

This can be used as a pre-reading activity. Just to introduce students with important vocabularies that can be found in the reading text. Or although it is unlikely that students might give focus to messages underlie in the songs, students might get a brief idea on the context or focus topic for today's lesson. 

Rationale

Gap Filling

Instead of asking students to sing along to the songs, songs can be taken into a new level that is by giving it a new look as gap fillings actvities. Students might need to listen to the words articulate in the songs in order to complete the task. Yet, again some students might have known some of the targeted songs and may have memorised the songs' lyrics. They will just need to type out the answers as quickly as possible in less than one minute to get the task completed.

Can Sustain Students' Attention

Songs and music are catchy due to their uplifting beat and matching lyrics. Students can find themselves easily absorbed into the them and might even ask you to have another go of the same activity. To choose a song or a music or a video from Lyricstraining should be done carefully. You will need to consider students' cultural background, their interest because if students don't like them, they will not bother to give attention to your effort.

Positive Emotion

Learning can be more effective if the affective filter is lower and Lyricstraining can help to lower students' anxiety due to its music and songs' features.

Idea of "din" in the Head

That is the involuntary mental rehearsal (Krashen, 1983). The rhythmic structures of music can help in students' verbal recall. It is what I will say as "the song stucks in my head". Some songs contain phrases which are not easy to be acquired through proper language learning. Grammar items like prepositions and phrasal verbs can be learnt through informal learning. Songs can sometimes include common phrases that are repetitive and students can pick them up easily especially through the contextualised songs and visualization in the videos.

Learning Pronunciation

This is not a strong point. However, songs and musics are likely to improve one's pronunciation although it is debateable that some singers wrongly pronounce some words just to get the lyrics in tune with the beat of the songs. It facilitates the process for students to grab hold of a new vocabulary especially in second language through songs than through proper speech (Schon et. al, 2008).

Detrimental Effect is still Evident

The benefits of using songs and musics might diminish if teachers are to control or alter how the songs are played. You might be tempted to fast forward the song to crux of the songs since you want to be quick. Therefore, you might just at risk of losing students' attention. Songs and musics are likely to give detrimental effects if the songs and rhythmic are too difficult. Try this song. Initially I had a headache but the song is not that outrageous after all.

Students can sing along

They can sing along to the songs and musics and even dance if you want to by choosing the 'karaoke' button. But you need to stay alert if anyone tries to be naughty and make fun of their friends. Though collectively singing can be less strenous and fun but it can be an idea for mockery or making fun of others. Instead of helping students to build confidence, their self esteem might be affected if someone make fun of their voice or that they cannot dance.

References

 
Krashen, S. D. (1983), The Din in the Head, Input, and the Language Acquisition Device. Foreign Language Annals, 16: 41–44. doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.1983.tb01422.x 

Schon, D., Peretz, I., Besson, M., Boyer, M., Kolinsky, R., & Moreno, S. (2008). Songs as an aid for language acquisition. Cognition, 106 (2), 975-983