A FeW WoRDs AbOUt SoNGS anD ViDeoS

BAcK To TeeCHuR TipZ MenU

Ah, what would modern EFL teaching be without songs? The mind boggles. A silent, grey place it would be. . .

The thing is, though.

In my experience, teachers almost always like doing songs in class more than students do.

There is one primary reason for this: your musical tastes are almost certainly nowhere remotely similar to the tastes of the majority of your students. And don’t expect them to be too impressed by novelty, either.

Cold hard fact – the majorty of your students will like only the most mainstream and bland popular music. Kylie Minogue, Backstreet Boys , etc. Most English teachers fancy themselves to be hipsters, and probably like your various types of classic rock or quirky alternative or whatever. Many teachers misguidedly expect to gain “street cred” with their students by showng off how they like Radiohead or The Velvet Undergound, but in fact all it’s very likely to get you is your students complaining to the director about the “weird” music you’re always playing in class.

As for John, Paul, George and Ringo, you’ll probably get a good reaction if your students are middle-aged, but if they’re teenagers expect yourself to be labeled “old fart” pretty quickly.

So here’s a suggestion – do songs the students like, rather than songs you like. Tell the students to bring in CD’s they like and tell you what songs they’d like to hear in class. Lyrics are easily available off the Internet now, so it’s not too much effort to get them and remove a few words here and there for a classroom worksheet. Do it maybe once a month or something. This will establish you as a guy who cares about your students’ needs, and also frees you from responsibility – if the students don’t like it, they can just bitch at each other about it. Hey, it wasn’t your idea!

A lot of text books have songs in them already, of course – usually nothing newer than 1987., and usually bad cover versions at that. Might as well do them – if only so you can laugh about how stupid they are.

Now of course there’s a lot of other stuff you can do with music in class. One recommended activity is to play some kind of music and have the students write down their feelings about it, or try to write a story based on it, or all the words it makes them think of. This is known in the EFL profession as “a bunch of stupid hippie crap” and should be avoided at all costs, unless you really want to see your students vomit.

Now, a very under-rated use for music is as background music. It dispels the uncomfortable silence before classes begin and allows you to adjust moods. Just put on some quiet classical or maybe some pleasant DJ chillout music and rowdy classes will be pacified. Quiet classes can be energized by some techno or house. You can feel "down with the kids" by playing some rap or pop while the students are shuffling into class.

Videos, in my experience, seem to go over a little better than songs as activities. As long as you play a relatively recent movie, the students are likely to enjoy it. Everybody loves a good multimedia experience, eh?

Playing an entire video should be reserved for emergencies, such as when you have an excruciating hangover or you’re coming off an all-night drug binge. Most schools would probably have some kind of rule against doing that too often anyway – most of mine have, anyway. You get the students giving that old “But we could do that at home!” complaint.

But playing one scene – well, nobody could complain about that, eh? Don’t bother writing out the script and having students fill in words – just think of some general comprehension questions to ask. What’s that guys name? Why did he shoot that other guy? What do you think “Fuck you and die, shitbrains?” means?

You could also tell the students to watch a scene and then think of some comprehension questions to ask each other.

But uh, don’t expect miracles.