Using music to teach the four skills.

Using music to each the four skills

This workshop, presented by Janet Louise, is about teaching the four skills using music. The majority of teachers believe that the use of music in their classrooms is only to teach listening comprehension. Throughout all the school year, students are exposed to a variety of selected songs by their own teachers. The aim of which is to improve students’ listening to English language. On the contrary, music can be used to teach all the four skills: listening comprehension ,reading comprehension, writing and reading. What a teacher has to bear in mind, though, is that not every song is ideal to use in the classroom. This means that teachers have to go through the following steps to select a specific song to teach:
- Intelligibility: may the students understand the language of the song? Keep in mind that with a certain amount of written explanation and vocabulary presentation on the blackboard can help the students understand more than expected.
- Appropriateness: many songs are morally inappropriate to young children. Thus, students and the community must be respected. In addition, teachers have to choose songs that actually have positive moral and ethical message or which challenge the students to think at a more mature level.
-Appeal: the song must be appealing and engaging to the students. If it is just because the teacher likes it, there is no reason then to use it.
- Language objectives: the songs must emphasize particular linguistic, curricular or thematic objectives.
- Length: the song must fit available class time.
By doing so, the selected song attracts students’ attention and teaches some natural and interesting language without offending anyone.

Summarised by:
Jamal LATRACHE