Best Music ESL Lesson

If you were to ask me the hardest type of lessons to plan, I’d probably answer, “Music.” It’s one of those tricky ones that sounds super fun, but often falls flat. I’ve tried so many styles of lessons, until I found one that actually worked! Students often send me messages after class, saying that they loved this music lesson.

It’s so simple, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner.

Just learn English from songs.

Before, I would make the mistake of having students do a lot of (boring) discussion or learn technical vocabulary about music genres, before showing them one song and dissecting it.

Now, I let them listen to a variety of songs and learn just a handful of things from each song.

Follow this structure:

• Introduce the general idea of the song

• Teach what they’re going to learn or ask questions

• Listen to the song

• Review what they learned or answer questions

For example, let’s say we’re going to study the song “The Man” by Taylor Swift. First, I’d introduce the general idea of the song (Taylor’s frustration with gender inequality, wondering how much more successful she’d be if she were a man). Then, I’d teach a few vocabulary words from the song (i.e. complex, brag, toast). I’d also give them a few questions to answer. Perhaps it could be general questions about the meanings (What examples does she give of gender inequality?) or questions about additional vocabulary words (What does fearless mean?) or questions about phrases or idioms (What does sick of mean?) Third, when we listen to the song, students have to listen carefully to find the answers to the questions. Finally, we’d review a few vocabulary words, have them discuss the song using the vocabulary, or review the answers to the questions together as a class.

Now, one difficulty with music lessons is that it can feel a bit repetitive and disjointed. Learn some vocabulary, play a song, learn some vocabulary, play a song, learn some vocabulary, play another song—you get the idea. Something I’ve found that helps is giving each song a theme.

For one song, we’ll study commonly used vocabulary words. For another song, we’ll study idioms. For another song, metaphors. Another song, native pronunciation.

Tips:

• If possible, send the lyrics to the students so they can preview the song or follow along.

• Always use video instead of audio, if possible.

• Instead of showing the official music video, it’s better to have the lyric video, so students can more easily follow along.

Like I said, it’s a simple structure, but my students always love this lesson! Each semester I teach this topic, students always tell me how much they enjoyed it. If you’d like to check out 5 ideas for a music lesson, I’ve written about that here:  https://www.atlasteaching.com/lesson-planning/eslmusiclessonideas