Week 1 - June 2, 2017

Despite challenges, songs add value to the high school ESL classroom. 

Article: http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/despite-challenges-songs-add-value-to-the-high-school-esl-classroom/education

This article looks into ways in which a high school teacher uses songs to improve grammar and vocabulary amongst her ESL students. For grammar, she will do an online search for songs with lyrics of the words she wants to reinforce. Watching the YouTube video of the song with the lyrics below allows her students to recognize the proper usage and placement of particular words. The author went on to talk about how although it is a lot of time to spend on one word and can't be used for all new vocabulary, it is a good option for words the students really struggle with. A good website recommendation is busyteacher.org which has many song worksheets. Including the story behind a song will make it more interesting for the students.

This idea is an extremely creative way to engage ESL students in learning new vocabulary. As soon as I read this I thought about the many times my students asked if they could sing or listen to a popular science song related to the topic we are learning and I always say no because it is distracting and we need to move on. This has opened my mind to the power that songs can have on helping students remember certain content they learn. For ESL it can be very valuable for teaching new vocabulary. As the author said it can be challenging to get students excited about it, but if students really like a song or artist they will be more motivated to stick with it. This can be helpful in deciding what types of songs to choose for this type of activity to work.