Would you like to know how to use your favorite music to improve your English?
In this post you’ll get 3 practical tips to do that!
Susanna’s Tips:
- Step 1- Find music that you like. Listen to the lyrics and just enjoy them. Don’t try to understand every word.
- Step 2– Listen to the lyrics. Write down the lyrics that you think you hear and compare your lyrics to the actual lyrics. Try lyrics.com to get all of the lyrics for your favorite song. Choose a song that is older and that has clear lyrics and clear pronunciation.
- Step 3– Go on You Tube to find karaoke versions of your favorite songs. Bring your native speaking friends out to a party and try karaoke with them!
Great Singers to Try:
- Adele
- U2
- Frank Sinatra
What Songs Should You Avoid?
Avoid rap and hip hop because the singers don’t sing very clearly.
With these songs, you will end up learning and using derogatory language and other forms of slang.
Susanna Zaraysky is an expert on learning languages via music. She is the author of Language is Music ( El Idioma es Música in Spanish), Idioma é música in Portuguese, Легкий способ быстро выучить иностранный язык с помощью музыки in Russian.
She has studied 11 languages and speaks eight of them (Russian, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Ladino, Serbo-Croatian and Italian). In May 2014, look for Susanna’s TEDx talk about saving endangered languages and language learning through songs. Susanna is co-producing, Saved by Language, a documentary about how the endangered language of Ladino/Judeo-Spanish saved a boy’s life in the Holocaust. Follow Susanna on Facebook.
