Educators have long understood that music is a powerful educational tool, especially in language learning. Skilled language teachers include songs in lessons to boost engagement and improve retention of new linguistic features.
The Cognitive Benefits of Music in Learning
According to research, music activates multiple brain areas simultaneously, leading to increased neural activity and improved cognitive function. This heightened brain activity prevents boredom and supports memory formation and recall. When students hum or sing along to catchy tunes, they unknowingly engage in active learning that reinforces language patterns and vocabulary.
Music as a Mnemonic Device
Songs’ melody and rhythm make them excellent mnemonic devices. Learners often find it easier to remember sung lyrics than spoken words, as the musical structure provides additional cues for recall. This phenomenon can help students retain complex grammatical structures, idiomatic expressions, and new vocabulary.
Enhancing Motivation and Reducing Anxiety
Music evokes emotions and creates a positive learning environment. It can also prevent boredom and reduce language learning anxiety, which are often a significant barrier for many students. Teachers can create a more relaxed and engaging classroom atmosphere just by incorporating enjoyable musical activities.
AI-Generated Music: A Game-Changer for Language Teachers
Artificial intelligence has opened up new possibilities for language teachers. New AI tools allow educators to create custom songs tailored perfectly to their students’ needs and lesson objectives. This was previously unavailable, which limited teachers to pre-existing songs that did not necessarily suit their curriculum.
With AI-generated music, teachers can:
- Create songs that focus on specific vocabulary or grammar points
- Adjust the difficulty level of the lyrics to match students’ proficiency
- Incorporate culturally relevant angles and topics
- Produce music in various genres to appeal to different tastes and age groups
Incorporating Songs in Language Classes
Here are some effective ways to use songs in language learning:
- Vocabulary Building: Use lyrics to introduce and reinforce new words in context.
- Grammar Practice: Highlight specific grammatical structures within songs and have students identify and practice them.
- Pronunciation Improvement: Encourage students to sing along, focusing on proper pronunciation.
- Listening Comprehension: Use songs for dictation exercises or gap-fill activities.
- Cultural Understanding: Select songs that reflect the target language’s culture and discuss their significance.
Some Practical Exercises Using Songs
- Lyric Gap-Fill: Provide students with lyrics containing blanks and have them fill in missing words while listening. (View an example HERE.)
- Order the Lyrics: Cut up song lyrics into strips and have students arrange them in the correct order as they listen.
- Translation Challenge: Have students translate lyrics from the target language to their native language or vice versa.
- Verb Tense Hunt: Ask students to identify and categorize different verb tenses used in a song.
- Rhyme Creation: Encourage students to create additional verses that rhyme with the original lyrics, reinforcing vocabulary and phonetic awareness.
- Song Dictation: Play short segments of a song and have students transcribe what they hear, focusing on spelling and punctuation.
- Vocabulary Categories: After listening to a song, have students categorize words from the lyrics into different themes or parts of speech.
Teachers can create a more enjoyable, engaging, and effective learning experience by adding music and songs to language lessons. A combination of traditional teaching methods and innovative AI-generated content provides new possibilities for language education that maximize retention and enhance linguistic development.
Visit our YouTube channel to explore a collection of educational songs in English and German.
References
- Zatorre, R. J., & Salimpoor, V. N. (2013). From perception to pleasure: Music and its neural substrates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(Supplement 2), 10430-10437.
- Ludke, K. M., Ferreira, F., & Overy, K. (2014). Singing can facilitate foreign language learning. Memory & Cognition, 42(1), 41-52.
- Calvert, S. L., & Tart, M. (1993). Song versus verbal forms for very-long-term, long-term, and short-term verbatim recall. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 14(2), 245-260.
- Dolean, D. D. (2016). The effects of teaching songs during foreign language classes on students’ foreign language anxiety. Language Teaching Research, 20(5), 638-653.
- Huang, Y. M., Shadiev, R., & Hwang, W. Y. (2016). Investigating the effectiveness of speech-to-text recognition applications on learning performance and cognitive load. Computers & Education, 101, 15-28.
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
