lyricstraining-Practice listening and having fun!

Today's website: Lyrics training

What is this?

It’s an excellent websites with many popular music videos whereby students can enjoy listening to their favorite songs while typing the lyrics they just heard. In every music video of the website, there are three modes of exercises based on the levels of students: beginner, intermediate, or expert.  Teachers no longer have to print out the lyrics or press the buttons on the CD player again and again to find the certain parts of the song.

              

Why is the content food for language learning?

• Music videos combining music and the images can capture students’ attention for longer time and also provide them with the culture of other countries.

• The music videos are not out-of-date. Besides, singing English songs are always one of the best ways to learn the language without pressure. Students will have more motivation to visit the website not only in English class but also in their free time.

• Every music video is labeled as “Easy”, “Medium”, or “Hard” so that students can practice their listening ability according to the level. Besides, they can dictate the lyrics in beginner, mediate or expert level.

Select game mode first.



• If students misspell or fail to fill in the blank, the system will continue playing the same part so that students can listen to the part for several times. They can also click on “Tab” to get the right answer.

• If students encounter problems when writing down the lyrics, all they have to do is to click “help”. There is a clear instruction of how to play to game of writing down lyrics. Therefore, they can use the resource at home.

• The website also offers music videos of other languages like French. It is a good opportunity for those who are learning a second or third foreign language.

• Listening to a song only takes for four or five minutes. Because of the length and the options of the clips, teacher can easily adopted the activity to the normal teaching context in school even within the limit of class hour.

Classroom use

• Teachers choose the music video from the website and have students listen to the whole song without lyrics. Then teachers can have students guess what the song is about based on what they just have heard or watched either in groups or as an individual.

• Then the teacher can have students work in pair and choose the mode they would like to write the lyrics. Students can help each other completing the tasks. Teacher can remind the students to take notes of the words they don’t understand and check on the on-line dictionary by themselves.

• Depending on how much time still left, teachers and students can share their feelings about the song, the lyrics or the singer. It is a good opportunity to engage students in talking about their life experience or their favorite songs in English.

• Afterwards, students can sing the song as a whole since the website also provides karaoke version, with which students can sing along with the lyrics.

Limitations

• The classroom has to have high speed access to the internet; otherwise, it will take a long time to download the webpage.  

• The messages that music videos and lyrics conveyed sometimes is related to sexuality, violence, or some biases. It is important to choose a more appropriate one when using music videos in class.

• The images might distract the students from writing down the lyrics.