Music

When we talk about using music in the classroom, we often automatically think of filling in gaps or putting a song in the correct order. However, there are so many other ways in which we can use music. Below are just some of the ways that I like to use music in my lessons.

Role plays

How can we make role plays seem a little bit more realistic? Why, with music of course! Whatever the scenario of your role play is, think of  what kind of music you might hear in the real life situation. You can use a CD, iPod, or YouTube on your laptop or IWB (Interactive White Board). If you use YouTube, you could invite the students to choose some music that they like. For some role plays, music might not be realistic, but you can use background noise. Here are some ideas that I've used:

• Restaurant: gentle instrumental, especially piano
• Fast food restaurant: background noise
• Coffee shop: the radio or jazz
• Party: pop, R'n'B, or salsa (Whatever the learners would prefer)
• Gym: workout music
• Hotel reception: gentle instrumental, piano or jazz
• Train station: background noise
• Airport: background noise

Playing music in the background in this way means that students are less self-conscious when role-playing, so they can let go a little bit more and really get into it.


Dictations

If you want to make a dictation more challenging, you can play some background noise of people talking to simulate a more real life situation. For example, while sitting in a coffee shop or chatting in a disco, you sometimes have to really concentrate on what the other people is saying because of the background noise.

For running dictations, I find it's good to play background noise so that the students don't try to listen in to the other team and cheat!


Music for concentration

For some learners, playing gentle music in the background while they are doing activities and tasks can help them concentrate. Keep the music at a very low volume so that it isn't distracting.


Musical Chairs

Musical chairs is not just for children's birthday parties! This can be fun for adolescent and even adult learners.

What you need:

1. Space in the room you are using for everyone to walk around.
2. Chairs
3. A song that contains examples of the target language, e.g. grammar focus, lexical, or pronunciation feature. (You could also do this with a paragraph or story that you read out.)

Procedure:

1. Make some space in the centre of the room.
2. Arrange the chairs in a circle, or scattered around the room.  Have one less that the number of students.
3. Play the song and tell the students walk around the room.
4. When they hear the target language, they have to sit down on a chair and you should pause the song.
5. The student left standing has to say what the item of language was. If they can, they stay in the game, but if they can't, they're out and you remove a chair.
6. Because there is going to be a limited number of examples of the target language, you probably won't be able to play this the traditional way and wait for the last two students to be left in the game, unless you would like to play the song more than once.

Inspiration for writing

Materials needed: 2 contrasting pieces of music. For the first piece, I usually a piece from Buffy the Vampire Slayer called  Close Your Eyes. It's an emotional piece. For the second piece, I like to use something faster and upbeat, like Obsession by Shakira.

Procedure: Each learner takes a blank piece of paper and draws a horizontal line across the centre of the page. At the top of the page they write the sentence: He turned and looked at her. Play the first piece of music and as they listen, the learners have to continue writing the story by using the music to inspire them. Depending on the learners, you may need to play the music twice.
  Next, the learners turn the page upside down, and write the same sentence at the top of the page: He turned and looked at her. Now play the second piece of music and they have to continue the story according to how the new piece of music makes them feel.
  When they finish, they turn to their partner and they read one of the stories. Their partner has to guess which piece of music it belongs to.

You can use this in conjunction with various language focuses. For example, narrative tenses, emphatic language, adjectives and adverbs. It gives the learners great fluency practice in writing.