Excellent Language Learning Through Song, But Use With Caution
Community Review for LyricsTraining
My Take
Lyrics Training is an excellent tool for teaching Social Language to English Language Learners. However, I would use this website with caution as many contemporary songs include language and videos that are highly inappropriate in a K-12 school setting. Furthermore, videos are blocked by our district, so students viewed pre-selected videos on my laptop. While it was a bit of an inconvenience, it was a success with a select group of newcomers who needed the boost. If the content would be limited to clean versions of songs and videos, I would highly recommend the approach to teaching language.
How I Use It
I used Lyrics Training to help in a newcomer ELL class. Students listened to music, read lyrics and sung along. They end the lesson by completing a fill-in-the blank activity as they listen to the music and enter the missing words. Music is very engaging to most students, but to ELLs they are intrinsically motivated to learn lyrics to modern songs in order to enhance their social experience.