5 Activities to Use Pop Music in your World Language Classroom
Harness your students’ natural interests for listening, speaking, and reading instruction
During online learning in 2020, I learned the power of pop music in my World Language classroom. My initial goal was modest: I wanted to fill in those awkward moments as students joined the online meeting and I silently stared at myself next to all those blank icons. So, I started playing a “music video of the week” at the beginning of each class while students logged in.
“Introducing students to pop music leads them to naturally explore their own musical interests in the target language outside of class”
As the year progressed, the music video of the week began to occupy a bigger and bigger place in my lessons; students were interested in the music and the musicians, and they wanted to understand what they were hearing. In addition to listening practice, we began reading the lyrics and viewer comments, writing our own opinions and music reviews, investigating the vocabulary and studying their grammar in the lyrics. Students responded enthusiastically to this approach, and on course-end surveys students repeatedly chose the music video of the week as their favorite activity.
I’ve always used some pop music in my teaching, but this experience gave me a new appreciation for the instructional power of this tool. My students love music; they listen to it all the time. Introducing them to target language musicians invites them to enter the target culture in a domain they are already interested in and opens the door to self-directed, lifelong learning.
A growing body of research shows a strong connection between students who choose to engage with the target language outside of class and future target language proficiency. Students who use the target language to listen to music, access social media, or play video games outside of class are likely to continue their study and develop intermediate proficiency or beyond. In academic circles, this tendency is known as “Extramural Language Learning” and you can read about it in this review of literature.
The takeaway for my classroom practice is clear: do as much as I can to encourage kids to explore their own online interests in the target language. Introducing students to popular music and artists is a huge way to do this, and leads students to naturally explore their own musical interests in the target language outside of class.
Here are a few of my favorite music-related instructional activities:
Understanding Selected Lyrics
Early in my career, I tried to work through every word of lyrics with students. This was tedious and isn’t necessary. Students can benefit from studying even a few lines of a song; this teaser will actually motivate a lot of kids to dive deeper in their own time. Guide students to interpreting a few lines of any target-language song for a quick, low-prep listening and vocabulary-building exercise.
I like to do “Le Plus Fort du Monde” by Black M early in my level 1 French classes.
After initially watching the entire video, I give kids a handout with a short cloze activity using selected lines from the song. We work in small groups and then in the full class to understand as much as possible on the handout before we start listening to fill in the blanks. (Here’s a link to copy an editable version of this handout.)
Mon ___ à moi c’est le ____ ____ du monde (0:10 timestamp)
Anh, ____ ____ que Superman, j’suis pas _______ (0:38 timestamp)
J’suis son plus grand supporter, c’est mon génie
Hm __ __ ____ rien sans lui, il m’a, il m’a tout appris
Mon _______, le daron, le ____ , le vrai patron (0:53 timestamp)
Personne ne peut battre ____ (2:20 timestamp)
As you can see, we don’t do every word of the song. Instead, I choose lines that are very comprehensible in the song, that are repeated multiple times, and that include either vocabulary students have learned or close cognates that are easy to figure out.
I then project the video and play the selected clips for students. I use this opportunity to demonstrate strategies students can use to improve their listening skills.
Listen several times. This may seem obvious, but I guarantee there are students in your room who have the impression they either ‘get it’ or they don’t; it doesn’t occur to these students that comprehension must be built. Explicitly teach students to review and listen again.
After listening a couple of times at full speed, slow down the video to .75 speed. (This can be accomplished by selecting the gear at the bottom of the video, then ‘playback speed’ and then the desired speed). This is a scaffold, but it also helps train your ear to hear the new sounds. Once you can understand the clip at slow speed, speed it back up to 100%
Stop the video immediately after the ‘blank’. This gives your brain time to process the information you just heard.
It’s important for students to recognize that listening comprehension does not happen by magic; it is a skill that can be built and practiced. Modeling and teaching listening strategies is an important part of world language instruction. Doing so with an engaging song is motivating for students, who are generally excited to be able to truly understand part of a real, target language pop song.
Even beginning learners can learn from and enjoy this activity. I love it when students come back to class and tell me that they’ve added the song to their playlist, followed the artist, and looked up the rest of the lyrics. Anything that gets kids engaging with the target language outside of class is good!
Sequencing lyrics for reading and listening practice
“Hearing new songs is the best part of French class. I love watching the music videos and learning new words. It showed me that it’s fun to learn a new language!”
Sequencing song lyrics is a wonderful activity for independent listening practice. I like to give pairs or individual students the lyrics, cut apart into strips. As students listen to the song, they must organize the sentence strips in sequence. This provides a concrete task associated with the listening and gives me evidence of students’ thinking and achievement. Kids don’t have to understand every word of the lyrics for this exercise to be effective, but it helps if they’re able to figure out a majority of the written words.
I like doing this activity with the Phineas and Ferb theme song (which is available in many languages including French and Spanish). A lot of kids have this song memorized in English, it’s full of cognates, and it has great visual cues. Plus, students love learning the words for “mummy” “surfing” and “Frankenstein”!
YouTube comments for reading, vocabulary, and writing practice
Even novice language learners can read and understand selected YouTube comments, and students find this exposure to the ‘real’ target language highly motivating. Scroll through the comments on a song your class is studying, and choose examples appropriate for your instructional goals. I like to give students time to figure out what these comments are saying before discussing them as a full class. Comments often include slang and text language to discuss, and I love having students find and correct commenters’ grammar errors! As a follow-up activity, have students post their own target language comments about the video on a class message board!
Google Translate Songs
Take advantage of the hilarious social media trend of translating and then back-translating a song using Google Translate. Your kids will laugh at the ridiculous mis-translations, and you’ll have the opportunity to discuss the limitations of online translation tools. Check out the Twisted Translations YouTube channel which has dozens of examples ranging from Broadway to Ed Sheeran to Disney.
Twisted Translation of a Disney song using Google Translate
My favorite Google Translate songs are done on the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon; these are always hilarious, but be sure to preview them for school appropriateness!
Artist Bios
Kids will enjoy reading Artist Biographies from fan websites or Wikipedia. I like giving students a form to fill out using information from the musician’s French Wikipedia page. For beginning students, limit the content to the artist’s Wikipedia summary ribbon. This high-context, familiar format is a good way to help new language learners develop good reading strategies.
In the words of one of my 8th grade students, “Hearing new songs is the best part of French class. I love watching the music videos and learning new words. It showed me that it’s fun to learn a new language!”
Now that’s music to my ears!
Check out my related posts on using talent competition shows in world language classes, how to find good target language songs, and my 11 favorite songs for use in French classes.
Do you have a great idea for using music in your world language classroom? Share in the comments!
