During my search to find fun and unique ways to help learn English I found a few websites that explain how music helps ELLs. This means of teaching is helpful for children of all ages. The rhyme and repeatition enable the children to learn, repeat, and understand.When I was in school I had a difficult time remembering what I was learning. I used to always to try to put the material into a song that I liked in order to remember better.
Check out the site.
http://www.caslt.org/research/music.htm#teaching
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I mentioned in another comment that I did a portion of my sophomore field at Harrison Elementary School in Roselle. Harrison was filled with ELL's and ALL the teachers I observed used music at some point to help their class learn and remember material. During my time in that school, I heard a song for just about anything and everything: ABC's, numbers, state capitals, math, grammar rules, prepositions, etc. Even the art teacher created raps to help the students learn. She had a different rap for almost every famous artist and style of painting/drawing you could think of. It was really amazing to see how quickly the students, including the ELL's, were able to learn just by putting the material to song instead of lecturing or writing on the board. I guess if I really think about it though, it is not all that shocking considering I can still remember to this day every "content" song I learned growing up.
I think that teaching English through music is a great way to teach. It keeps them engaged and interested. At the preschool school where I'm doing my junior field, the children are learning to sing songs in Spanish, French, and Korean. I was so impressed to hear English speaking children sing a song in French. Just like English Speaking children learn another language through music, ESL children can learn English through music too.
I found it funny that I was reading this post on a Wednesday because the class that am I doing junior field in has world languages on wednesday (basically Spanish class). Today the Spanish teacher brought in Spanish music cds for the students to listen to and see if they could recognize any Spanish words from the songs.
I didnt get to see the entire lesson but i thought what a fun way to learn a new language. It captures their attention and presents a different way to learn something that may appeal to the students more,especially since the artists the teacher brought in were popular ones that the students were familiar with. several of the students commented "I didn't know Shakira could sing in Spanish"
Also, the class that I am in uses songs and rhyming phrases to learn a number of skills. So far I've heard songs for the states and capitals and for divison. They use saying for math like " 5 and up bump it up, 4 and down hang around" to help them remember how to round.
If these techniques work that well for English speakers imganine how they could help people learning English.
Learning English through music seems like an engaging way to learn. It is amazing how many things can be learned through music. For instance, I did some research on Music Therapy and found some interesting facts. I could not believe how listening to music can influence the lives of others. I found out that music is great for people with depression, stress and other forms of medical disorders. If it works in the medical field, I cannot imagine the amount of influence it would have on English Language Learners. I bet some ESL students prefer to learn through music because they can follow the rhythms and hear the correct pronunciation of each word. I can see how this form of learning can alleviate stress for ELL individuals.
Music can be such a universal language. Songs can be used to learn lots of different things. Remember School House Rock? Those were short songs dedicated to teaching students certain skills. The same thing can be done for ELL students. Children learn something more quickly when it is in a song. My students in my preschool class know the days of the week because of a song. If I asked them to say the days of the week before I taught them the song, they had difficulty. After teaching them the song, they were able to pick up on the days of the week more quickly. Now they can remember the days of the week without having to sing the song.
When I was in elementary school, we sang a song that listed the 50 states in alphabetical order. To this day, I can list the 50 states in alphabetical order because of that song.
I think using music for ELL students is a fantastic idea that would greatly help them in learning English.
I teaching English including musica is a great way. Students like it and it keeps them interesting on it. Is the best way to learn, I learned a lot from "Madonna" her lirics were very melo and romantic back in those days. Music will always be a great tool to learn a language, you have to be carefull with the bad words in lirics.
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