Teach English in Dashizhai Zhen - Xing'an Meng — Hinggan

When it comes to teaching English, teachers will sometimes choose authentic materials to ensure English input. English songs are good materials that can be used in classroom and here are some main reasons which I found during my topic based music English corner. To Cultivate Students’ Interest As an authentic material generated directly from native speaking countries, songs are good material for students to cultivate their interests in learning English, especially for those students who like to sing and to imitate. This especially works for young learners because some of them may not have a specific aim to learn English as adults who may strongly need to learn English for business trip or promotion. And for those adults who would like to manage the language quickly, they would also need the inspiration to help them learn happily so that they can form a good leaning habit. In my class, I would sometimes encourage students to listen to English songs more often and it’s always a surprise when a student come to you and tell you that she found a beautiful English song and want you to teach them in next class. However, we do come across those students who are not into music. For those students, authentic materials such as movies or books also work for them but the most important thing is to figure out what they are really interested in. To Help Students Learn Native Phrases In English songs, student can pick up phrases easily and use it quickly. For example, when teaching the phrase “as…as…,” I recommended Everything At Once by Lenka which has the lyrics: “As sly as a fox, as strong as an ox. As fast as a hare, as brave as a bear. As free as a bird, as neat as a word.” This song helped students learn many native phrase and students will also quickly use it into their daily lives after following the song for several times. The song can also be used into the elicitation part of an ESA lesson to elicit the main phrase we want to teach in a certain class. To Form Grammar Habits In non-native speaking countries, the main difficulty for English learners is that there is no similar grammar rules in their mother tongue so that they don’t have the habit or the sense of using a certain grammar even if they’ve learned it in the class. One example is conditional clause, which make a lot of Chinese students confused. By learning certain songs, take the popular song If I were a boy by Beyoncé for example: “If I were a boy Even just for a day, I'd roll out of bed in the morning”. This is a perfect example for teaching condition clause because almost everyone knows this song. Other than this specific grammar point, passed tense, future tense, passive voice and so on are commonly seen in English songs which plays a perfect role in helping students form grammar sense and habit. To Help Students With Pronunciation As what we have learned in the TEFL class, Stress, Rhythm and Intonation are three important parts of teaching pronunciation. In my class, I always find students have some difficulties in noting the stress of a vocabulary and this directly reduces their confidence in speaking English. English songs are good listening materials because chorus are always repeated which is easier for students to make self-correction and improve their pronunciation. Take the word “isolation” for example, by teaching the song Lemon Tree: ”Isolation is not good for me. Isolation, I don’t want to sit on a lemon tree ”. It’s hard for students to forget the word after learning the song. To summarize, English songs are more than entertainment if we use them appropriately and wisely in the classroom. As teachers, we also need to explore more songs and pay attention when listening to find out if they can be used in a certain class. While teaching, it’s important to teach in detail, including the pronunciation, phrases, grammar points, and the culture background of the lyrics so that the students can fully gain something during the class and thus love learning English.