Music

1) Don't forget how you learned your first language, by singing.

Children all around the world share a love a singing. Within each culture, there is usually a set of songs that are passed on from generation to generation. Below are a list of famous songs that many children in the United States learn at home and at school. While the list is not complete, and cannot represent all the cultures that make up this country, they are some of the most common songs taught today. Besides being a good tool for learning about the U.S., these songs are great tools for listening and pronunciation practice because they are filled with repetition and rhymes.

I like to eat apples and bananas.

Click here to listen to the apples and bananas song.

Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.

(Click here to listen to many versions of row row row your boat.)

  Listen and Read Children's songs from agendaweb.org by clicking on the links below.
01.-songs for children (57 songs)
  02.-songs for kids       (85 songs)
  03.-nursery rhymes I (43 songs)
  04.-nursery rhymes II(57 songs)
  05.-songs for school    (98 songs)
06.-sing along: children's songs

2) Music is all around you.

Any time a radio is nearby, you have the opportunity to help your ears feel more comfortable with the sounds of the English language. Even if you are not listening closely, you will begin to hear where one word ends and another begins. The more you listen, the easier it will be to understand what you are hearing. If you can hear the ideas in music, you will be able to understand the fast pace of native speakers more easily, too.

If you are on a computer, here are some ideas for improving your music listening skills. The nice thing about these activities is you can print out your own worksheets and practice at home with a cd player when you are not at the computer. You can do these with any music you like.

a) For any songs you like, you can get copies of the lyrics, or the words of a song, easily by typing the name of the song in quotation marks and the word, lyrics, into www.google.com or any other search engine. You can also use websites like www.lyrics.com

b) The easiest thing to do with the lyrics is to print them out and read them as you listen to the song. You can do this several times, each time reading less and less, trying to guess what words come next by singing along.

c) A better thing to do is to listen to the song without the words in front of you and try to copy down as much as you understand. You can listen to small sections of the song several times until you feel comfortable with most of the words. Then, check to see how you did.

d) Another great thing to do is have a friend copy the words onto Microsoft Word or another typing program, and have them replace words with blank spaces or underlines. You now have a fill in the blank exercise to practice with. You could have the friend replace all the nouns, or all the verbs. You may want to focus on verb tense or articles. Choose one part of speech to guess at as you listen to the song.

e) You could also cut the lyrics of the song into sentence strips of paper and try to put them into the correct order as you listen to the song.

3) There are many good websites to practice with, too.

Songs & Lyrics

Listen and read each line to the songs at the same time here: http://www.elllo.org/english/Songs.htm
Listen and read the whole song here: http://www.agendaweb.org/songs/best-songs-A-C.html (You can continue to more lists of songs at the bottom of the page.)
This website has songs, lyrics, videos, and much more, but you must register with your email to use it: http://en.yappr.com/welcome/VideoList.action

Songs & Activities

Listen and fill in the missing words here: http://www.eflclub.com/2songs/songs.html
Listen and fill in the missing words here: http://www.agendaweb.org/songs/songs-listening-exercises.html
Listen and do many kinds of activities: http://www.agendaweb.org/songs/learn_english_through_songs.html
Karaoke, Sing along here: http://www.karaokeparty.com/en

http://www.ac-nancy-metz.fr/enseign/anglais/Henry/chans2.htm#son

http://www.tropicalglen.com/

http://www.eslpartyland.com/teachers/nov/music.htm

http://daily-english-activities.blogspot.com/search/label/video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_oLCJIYOVU&feature=player_embedded

http://iteslj.org/links/TESL/Songs/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets/songs/