If you’ve lost your faith in love and music, the end won’t be long
I do not want to talk about how “The Good Old Days” by The Libertines could be used in the English classroom, but I want to talk about one of my favourite English lessons from school. The topic was Ireland and in this context we dealt with the Irish Rebellion. Obviously, this is an interesting topic, but what made it even more interesting was how my former English teacher introduced the topic. All she needed was a CD-player. Here are the songs she used:
After listening to the songs we talked about the topic they dealt with and afterwards looked at the lyrics. We had talked about the history of Ireland before, so we had some background knowledge. Nevertheless, the songs made the problem become more effective. In my opinion,especially songs have such an effect. Most of the time the interpreter brings across certain emotions that can be very useful for the English classroom as pupils can identify with these emotions or the band/artist. Furthermore, songs are closer to the life of the pupils than a text from a history book. Of course, not everybody shares this opinion. I can only speak for myself, but I really enjoyed when we used songs in our English classroom and I will certainly use it in FLE. I do not think that they are appropriate in every context, but especially if you can find a song that deals with historic or other difficult topics, it can be really useful to make the topic more interesting and palpable. Additionally, if you are dealing with topics like friendship and love, you could make your pupils choose songs they would like to analyse. This will create a positive atmosphere in the classroom as the pupils are dealing with something they decided for. In the age of YouTube you can furthermore include the music videos if they are useful for the topic.
So here is my appeal: USE SONGS IN FLE!!!
