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##  Using Music in the Adult ESL Classroom. ERIC Digest.                         

Music can be used in the adult English as a second language (ESL)               classroom to create a learning environment; to build listening                  comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing skills; to increase               vocabulary; and to expand cultural knowledge. This digest looks                 briefly at research and offers strategies for using music in the                adult ESL classroom. RESEARCHNeurologists have found that                 musical and language processing occur in the same area of the brain,            and there appear to be parallels in how musical and linguistic                  syntax are processed (Maess & Koelsch, 2001). In one study, college             students demonstrated improved short-term spatial reasoning ability             after listening to Mozart. This was dubbed the "Mozart effect" in               the popular press (Rauscher, Shaw, & Ky, 1993). 
Adult learners in             South Africa, exposed to instrumental music during an intensive                 English course, showed benefits in language learning (Puhl, 1989).              Many educators report success using instrumental music as a warm up             and relaxation tool, as a background for other activities, and as               the inspiration for writing activities (Eken, 1996). USING SONGS              IN INSTRUCTIONMost classroom music activities focus on lyrics.              Educator Tim Murphey conducted an analysis of the lyrics of a large             corpus of pop songs and found that they have several features that              help second- language learners: They contain common, short words and            many personal pronouns (94% of the songs had a first person, I,                 referent and are written at about a fifth-grade level); the language            is conversational (imperatives and questions made up 25% of the                 sentences in the corpus); time and place are usually                            imprecise (except for some folk ballads); the lyrics are often sung             at a slower rate than words are spoken with more pauses between                 utterances; and there is repetition of vocabulary and structures.               These factors allow learners to understand and relate to the                    songs (Murphey, 1992). A further benefit of pop song lyrics is that             their meanings are fluid, and, like poetry, allow for many different            interpretations (Moi, 1994). Following are strategies to use with               songs. LISTENING AND ORAL ACTIVITIESSongs contextually                    introduce the features of supra-segmentals (how rhythm, stress, and             intonation affect the pronunciation of English in context). Through             songs, students discover the natural stretching and compacting of               the stream of English speech. For example, the reduction of the                 auxiliary have to the sound /uv/ can be heard in the song by Toni               Braxton "You've Been Wrong for So Long" (2000). Similarly, the                  change of word final t + word initial y to /ch/ can be heard in a               line from the Tracy Chapman Song "All that You Have Is Your                     Soul" (1989), where the singer says, "Don't you eat of a bitter                 fruit." Moriya (1988) points out the value of using songs for                   pronunciation practice with Asian learners because of the many                  phonemic differences between Asian languages and English. However,              students from any language background can benefit from a choral or              individual reading of the lyrics of the songs mentioned above,                  practicing the natural reductions that occur in spoken                          English. 
Students may summarize orally the action or theme of a               song or give oral presentations about a song or musician, playing               musical selections for the class. To involve the whole class,                   students can fill out response sheets about each presentation,                  answering questions about the featured topic, something new they                learned, and something they enjoyed. READING AND WRITING                      ACTIVITIESStudents can fill in the blanks before, during, or                after listening to a song, and then check to see whether their word             choices made sense semantically, even if they did not pick the exact            word used. This helps build the important skill of forming                      hypotheses based on context (predicting). This activity, called                 cloze, is usually created by deleting words at predetermined                    intervals, e.g., every 5th or 7th word. However, words can be                   deleted instead to practice a target grammar point, such as past                tense verbs, prepositions, or compound nouns, or to identify key                words (Griffee, 1990). For example, in the popular Enya song "Only              Time" (2001), the auxiliary "can" could be omitted. ("Who can say               where the road goes, where the day flows, only time. And who can say            if your love grows, as your heart chose, only time.") 
One popular             activity is to cut the lyrics into lines and have students put them             in the correct order as they listen to the song. This can be done               individually or in small groups. It may be necessary to play the                song several times. After the lines of the song have been put in                order, the song can be played once more as students read or sing                along. Alternatively, the class can be divided into teams with                  identical sets of strips and compete to see which group can put the             strips in the correct order first. 
For short songs, students can              work in small groups to write the words of a song. The process of               putting the lyrics together as a group involves making decisions                about word order, verb tense, and parts of speech. It also builds               the teamwork skills so important to the workplace and community.                When the lyric sheet is handed out, the groups can compare what they            heard and wrote with the actual words. 
Adult students enjoy                   writing responses to songs, either in class or at home. Possible                responses include topics comparing music in the students' homeland              with music in the United States. This assignment draws upon the                 knowledge and experiences that adult ESL learners bring to language             learning and provides a known context for comparing and contrasting,            often a difficult skill for beginning writers. 
Many songs tell a              story, and these stories can be rewritten or retold to practice                 narrative or summarizing skills or direct and reported speech.                  Students can also complete a writing prompt or answer a question                from the point of view of the narrator or other characters in a                 song. For example, the Nancy Wilson song, "Guess Who I Saw                      Today" (1960) is sung by a wife catching her husband having a                   romantic lunch with another woman. The prompt could require the                 students to respond to the accusations in writing, saying what the              husband might say. VOCABULARY BUILDING ACTIVITIESPop songs are            written to be easily understood and enjoyed. As discussed above,                they tend to use high frequency lyrics that have emotional content.             This makes them strong candidates for word study or for reinforcing             words already learned through written means. If a series of songs is            to be used, students can be paired and given a song to teach the                class. 
However, the songs may also have idioms in them that might             be difficult to explain, depending on the level of the students. For            example, Cat Stevens' rendition of "Morning Has Broken" (1975) may              appear initially to be a solid intermediate-level song that                     practices the present perfect tense. On closer examination, the                 expression "morning has broken" can be confusing to English language            learners and may need to be discussed prior to listening to the                 song. CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE ACTIVITIESSongs can be used in                   discussions of culture. They are a rich mine of information about               human relations, ethics, customs, history, humor, and regional and              cultural differences. A song can be part of a unit that also                    contains poems, video footage, or still photographs. Recordings of              freedom songs from the civil rights movement can be a powerful                  accompaniment to watching Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream"             speech on video, for example. SELECTING MUSICSongs should be              carefully selected for the adult ESL classroom. Lems (1996) and                 Poppleton (2001), make the following suggestions: 
1. Song lyrics              should be clear and loud, not submerged in the instrumental                     music. 
2. The vocabulary load for the song should be appropriate              to the proficiency level.  For example, Led Zepplin's "Stairway to              Heaven" (1971)-with its vivid imagery and possibilities for multiple            interpretations-might be successful with an advanced-level class.               With other learners, however, its fast pace, obscure references, and            lack of repetition could prove troublesome, as could the word                   inversion in lines such as, "There walks a lady we all know." 
3.              Songs should be pre-screened for potentially problematic content,               such as explicit language, references to violent acts or sex, or                inappropriate religious allusions. 
Griffee (1990) recommends using            short, slow songs for beginning-level students and discusses                    activities such as creating song word puzzles, drawing a song, or               showing related pictures. With higher levels, he suggests using                 songs that tell stories, moving toward short, fast songs, and                   finally, longer, fast songs that have fewer high frequency                      vocabulary items. 
Finding copies of song lyrics is not difficult.             Many are available on the Internet, and many recordings contain                 lyric sheets. Beatles' songs such  as "Yesterday" (1965) and "In My             Life" (1966) have clear, direct lyrics and a timeless quality that              make them appropriate with adult English language learners. Because             teachers will show care and effort when  presenting songs they are              especially fond of, their favorites are also good. Finally, students            are often strongly motivated to learn the lyrics of a new pop song              or an old favorite they have heard and never understood, so their               choices for classroom music should not be                                       overlooked. REFERENCESEken, D. K. (1996). Ideas for using                 songs in the English language classroom. "English Teaching Forum,               34"(1), 46-47. 
Griffee, D. T. (1990). Hey baby! Teaching short and            slow songs in the ESL classroom. "TESL Reporter, 23"(4),                        3-8. 
Lems, K. (1996). "For a song: Music across the ESL                       curriculum". Paper presented at the annual convention of Teachers of            English to Speakers of Other Languages, Chicago. (ED No. 396                    524) 
Maess, B., & Koelsch, S. (2001). Musical syntax is processed             in Broca's area: An MEG study. "Nature Neuroscience 4",                         540-545. 
Moi, C. M. (1994). Rock poetry: The literature our                   students listen to. "Journal of the Imagination in Language                     Learning, 2", 56-59. 
Moriya, Y. (1988). "English speech rhythm and            its teaching to non-native speakers". Paper presented at the annual             convention of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages.               Chicago. (ED No. 303 033) 
Murphey, T.(1992).The discourse of pop              songs. "TESOL Quarterly, 26"(4), 770-774. 
Poppleton, C. (2001).               Music to our ears. "American Language Review, 5"(1), 23-26. 
Puhl,             C. A. (1989). "Up from under: English training on the                           mines". (Report on 1988 research project conducted at Gold Field                Training Services). Stellenbosch, South Africa: University of                   Stellenbosch. (ED No. 335 864) 
Rauscher, F. H., Shaw, G., & Ky,               K. (1993). Mozart and spatial reasoning. "Nature,(365)"                         611. 
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