English for Wizards

The ESL song and dance

By John Moore

A-Z Lyrics Universe では最新の洋楽曲の歌詞や映画のサウンドトラックも検索できる

Like many people, my son Peter likes to sing in the shower. He sings Japanese songs and English songs, often mixing up the two. He invents his own kid's songs or translates songs from one language into the other.

Singing is great for improving your fluency in a foreign language. Some people who are too shy to speak out can really loosen up with a groovy tune. And if you learn the words to a song in English you like, you will never forget that vocabulary again.

There are a couple of problems, though. Often when you listen to a song in English, it's hard to understand the words, even for native speakers. And with some songs, the words don't really mean anything, like when the Beatles sang, "Obladi oblada life goes on bra." So how can you find good lyrics for your favorite songs?

The Internet, of course. Take a look at the esl-lounge page (www.esl-lounge.com/songstop.html). You'll see that many ESL teachers have posted ideas on the Web for using song lyrics in lessons.

Me too. Back in 1983, when I was teaching at a high school in Germany, I made an English lesson using Michael Jackson's song "Thriller," which was extremely popular at the time. If you want, you can download this old lesson from my personal Web site. Just go to www2.gol.com/users/johnm/ and click on the link for the lyrics lesson.

But the easiest way to learn English with song lyrics is simply to download the text of a song you really like and just sing it to yourself in the shower or wherever. There are several good search sites where you can find just about any song's lyrics. Try Lyrics.com (www.lyrics.com/) or A-Z Lyrics Universe (www.azlyrics.com).

Your computer can also be a karaoke machine, if you download and install some free software and get some free MIDI files to play from a site like The Midi Karaoke Library (www.midikaraoke.com/home/). I haven't tried this yet myself, but it looks interesting.

It's clear that musical sense and language sense are linked. If you had musical training as a child, that might help you learn languages later.

I'm not good at music myself, but I still remember an old German folk song my grandfather sang when I was a baby. The song is about a fox who stole a goose. After 40 years, I still can't get this silly song out of my head. Of course it's now on the Internet (http://ingeb.org/Lieder/FuchsDuH.html), along with an English translation.

Shukan ST: Aug. 22, 2003

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