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Using Song Lyrics to Improve Listening Comprehension

Using Song Lyrics to Improve Listening Comprehension

Date: Mar 23 2009

Topic: Listening

Author: nad1a

Lesson

It's probably no news to you that songs lyrics can be a great listening exercise and practice. You can improve your comprehension and pronunciation and, also, learn a couple of new words and structures. So over here, I would suggest a way to combine your interests in music with learning English.

One thing you can do is, have gap-filling exercises with songs lyrics. You listen to the song and try and find the missing (erased) words in the lyrics.  It's easy to find ready-to-use exercises of that type online.

But if you're interested in a specific song you can't find exercises for, you can either prepare one for yourself, get the lyrics and erase some of the words in it, or have a sort of dictation, where you listen and write what you hear and then check your work. 

1. Listen to the song to understand the main meaning, what it is about etc
2. Listen to it trying to fill the gaps.
3. Check your work and listen to it again.
4. Take out the unknown or interesting words. Search the internet for more collocations and associations with those words. Make your own sentences with them.
5. Listen to the song again (and sing along if you're in the mood :-)) You can do that while reading along and then without the written lyrics, trying to see if you can understand everything you hear.


Actually, you can use this approach with all kind of listening material. You can practice with narrated stories or conversations, interviews. Of course, you will need the scripts and the recorded audio material. Luckily, you can easily get hold of the lyrics of almost any song, or the scripts of any movie or a show online.

This may sound like a lot of work, but after all, you want to learn, right? And apart from that, if you really like the song or the artist in question, you won't necessarily feel like you're doing any work at all. :-)

 ***

I've made a collection of some Similar exercises .

 

More lessons on Pronunciation

Comments

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nono524

India

hi some one help me please

08:53 AM Jun 22 2009 |

froilan_pascu

Philippines

Thank a lot this is very helpful Laughing

03:48 AM Jun 22 2009 |

halooma

halooma

Germany

I did this exercises many time and it 's great I can

remember the words  when I sing the song..

 ^^

 

04:53 PM Jun 19 2009 |

bint_uae

United Arab Emirates

yeah it works indeed

11:37 AM Jun 19 2009 |

Mary**

Mary**

Iran, Islamic Republic Of

Yeah it works :)

09:31 AM Jun 17 2009 |

Acile

China

I have only try!!

07:02 AM Jun 17 2009 |

didichello

Turkey

i want learn english, and i studed a lot of grammer books but my level is still elemantry ;( i try listen to music

08:10 PM Jun 15 2009 |

celik37

Turkey

you kıss me you send wrıte  

07:19 PM Jun 15 2009 |

khled;;;1/2/1424

Saudi Arabia

how learn

 

11:05 AM Jun 15 2009 |

khled;;;1/2/1424

Saudi Arabia

wellcome i am new

 

11:01 AM Jun 15 2009 |

Catherine0924

China

It is surely a great way to learn English.Learning while having some fun.Interesting!

04:48 AM Jun 15 2009 |

dxboy

United Arab Emirates

hi i'm from dubai and i'm learning english in usa then i'm going to study my majoractually i need someone to chat with cus my english is too weak

11:51 AM Jun 13 2009 |

natalka8846

Poland

It's my favourite mathod to learn english :). I love music and usually I'd like to listen it all the time. I try to understand lyrics and if I can't translate any word, I check it in dictionary. Then, if I like this song very much, I listen it many times memorizing lyrics. It's a good way to practise english structures.

09:11 PM Jun 10 2009 |

hemeda

Egypt

KissKissKissKiss

06:26 PM May 31 2009 |

tony.yy

tony.yy

China

It is a very good aproach to pratice your english.I think the favorite english thing is ok for your exercies.I often use some of short conversations and musice in movie and writedown the english on the paper.I get a big progress after dozens of times

 

04:23 AM May 30 2009 |

aeossv87

Haiti

it's good

07:04 PM May 29 2009 |

esraa gamal

Egypt

it is a very good idea

cause by that way i will  boost my english vocabulary ana accent at the same time and ist's interestng

02:34 PM May 29 2009 |

Cheng Sandy

Taiwan

yeah, it's very useful i think Laughing

 specially, listen favorite songs :))

 

03:36 PM May 27 2009 |

^Farah^

^Farah^

Indonesia

i was trying this lesson when im in elemtary school until now, wow, its really great exercise to increase our english listening

04:47 AM May 26 2009 |

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