English through music?

Audio: 4 min. 09 sec.

Can music improve your English?

The world is filled with music playing on television, radio and in shops, and a lot of that music is in English.

As the most spoken language in the world, English has a lot of influence on different cultures and as a result many songs worldwide feature English lyrics.

Since you can hear music in this language everywhere you go, there must be a way to use it to develop your English skills, right?

This blog will help point out the best ways to use music to supercharge your English study, as well as point out the common mistakes people make when learning from songs.

Lyrics as new vocabulary

The most obvious improvement music can provide to your learning is that it can cover a wide array of topics, which means that you can learn many, many new words.

However, this is not as easy as just listening to the song a few times until you learn these words – song vocabulary is often very poetic and can be challenging to understand just by hearing it.

It is easier if you use the Internet and have a dictionary on hand.

Don't feel pressured to understand every single word in a song; depending on your level, it is more effective to just pick out a few words that you like the sound of but are unsure of meaning-wise.

I would recommend starting with the chorus since it will contain the most repeated words, but don't forget that the main benefit of using music for learning is your personal passion and preference, so feel free to just learn your favourite line or the bit that sounds nicest to you!

Make sure, however, that you aren't just spending an hour or two learning these words only to forget about them later.

Note down these new words and organise them in a clear way, such as by artist or by album.

You could even make this a daily or weekly task for yourself and keep a kind of “song diary” with all the words you have looked up.

Singing for pronunciation

The other clear use music has for language learning is to help with pronunciation practice.

However, it is worth thinking about this in a more detailed way.

As well as saying words, phrases and sentences correctly, you can also use music to effectively practice rhythm and volume.

Rhythm is the natural “flow” of language, and singing in music usually follows a rhythm, meaning that you can improve your speaking by breaking out of the monotone, flat way of talking that language learners often have when they first start learning.

Obviously, the way words are sung is NOT the way that we tend to say them in everyday conversation, but it will allow you to test what it is like to have your speaking joined together in one continuous stream.

Volume seems like something that does not need practice, but the truth is that many language students tend to be quiet when they speak English at first, especially if you are learning by yourself.

When singing, however, you HAVE TO project your voice, so you can see what your English sounds like when it is much louder than normal.

Pronunciation practice is always easier when you do it loudly, so singing along to something can give you an idea of what it is like to be loud.

With pronunciation, something you should be careful of is the fact that singers will sometimes deliberately sing a word differently to how it is normally said, either by shifting the sounds slightly or by using different intonation and changing the word stress.

This is why you should always check these words with a good dictionary so that you can review the correct pronunciation of the new word as well as its meaning.

Using music to boost your English means that yes, you can consider karaoke a kind of study activity, but make sure that you follow the key points of this blog to get the most improvement  out of your musical learning!