I love using music in my junior high school EFL classes. Besides providing me with another way to introduce the English language, I find it a great warm up activity. I love to sing and feel that music introduces a warmth and vibrancy into the class. Singing reflects something of my personality too and is a way to share something of myself with my students.

I love to use songs from the Carpenters (Close to you), Abba (Dancing Queen, Money, Money, Money) and the Beatles (Hello, Goodbye) in particular. The lyrics are generally easier for non-native speakers to listen to and understand, the lyrics are often repeated in the songs, and the meaning of the songs aren't too difficult to explain. The lyrics are easily downloadable from the Internet and the CDS are readily found in most music stores. My suggestion would be to choose songs that you think your students would enjoy learning and singing and that match their English level.

For beginners, I mainly focus on teaching them the lyrics. We sing the song as a warm up activity for a period of several weeks. Don’t be discouraged if you find that at first your students are not singing or are singing only the chorus or just a few words. Just give it time and they’ll soon pick up the lyrics and soon enough you’ll be hearing them sing segments of it in the school corridors. For intermediate students, I like to tear up the song into strips and have the students work as a group to put the lyrics back in its song order while they listen to the song several times. I always start them off with a few lines. Afterwards, I go over the song with them and we sing it a few times. You can easily turn this activity into a game if you like. Award the first group to put the song back in song order with stamps or stickers. For the most advanced students, I like to take a song and white out about 10 or 11 words from the lyrics, and then have the students listen to the song several times and figure out the missing words. I always provide them with a list of the missing words.

The benefits are numerous for using music in the classroom. It’s a fun way to improve listening comprehension. It’s a means to expose junior high school students to Western and American music and culture. Most important of all, it focuses the class and promotes learning. I like to add that there has also been some benefits for me. Besides giving me the opportunity to sing, my voice has gotten nicer. Good luck.