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For me, learning can be anxiety provoking– learning new concepts, being tested, and the pressure of needing to get a good mark. All this combined! Now imagine how our ESL learners might feel. It can be an overwhelming experience. I wanted to share with you what has helped me to ease those worries, and that is music. So how can we bring music into the classroom to relax our learners?
Here is one YouTube video, by Cheryl Porter, an American vocal coach and opera singer. 10 Minute Daily VOCAL WORKOUT!
This video may be good for basic or intermediate ESL learners to help warm up their vocal cords and all the muscles in the mouth, so they are ready for pronunciation. The good thing about this video is that it can be slowed down to a playback speed of 0.5 which would be more appropriate for our learners. If you search Cheryl Porter vocal exercises on YouTube, you will see she has many videos and all of them can be slowed down in speed. There are so many of them, you could play a new one each week.
Another good video is from Dr. Dan. Top Breathing Exercises to Improve Your Singing Voice, and he also has exercises to work on fricatives. Specifically, at 13:30 of this video clip he talks about sibilant fricatives. Again, it would be better to slow this video down to a 0.5 playback speed, this way all learners can understand.
Dr. Dan has other videos just like Cheryl Porter and they are all free on YouTube. The other great thing is learners can take these exercises home with them and practice on their own while relieving stress and hopefully creating an upbeat mood.
The article Use of Music and Songs as Pedagogical Tools in Teaching English as Foreign Language Contexts by Kumar, Akhter, Yunus and Shamsy says that “Music can aid in creating a positive attitude by offering an easy-going learning atmosphere, hence mitigating the affective filter. This impact of music in creating a helpful atmosphere for learning language has been investigated and proved by different other researchers”.
I hope everyone can give these videos a try, paving the way for a pleasant classroom experience!
Footnote: If you’re curious about research on creative tools for language teaching, check out Kumar et al. (2022), which explores using music and songs in the EFL classroom. I’m keeping this post informal, but it’s an interesting read! https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/3384067
4 Comments
Hi Diana,
I appreciate your post about using music in the classroom. We tend to overlook musical and artistic intelligences in our classes, but your post is a nice reminder to try and work them into our lessons. I think a lot of teachers, myself included, take a less than holistic approach with our pedagogy, but we need to get outside of our usually narrow approaches. We have so many different students with different histories, learning styles (or, even lack thereof) and strengths, and that gives us so much scope for activities. Your post made me think that maybe I’m underserving my students by emphasising certain learning styles and intelligences at the expense of others. Also, thank-you for the link to the article.
You’re welcome Derek! I’m glad you liked the article. Yes I try to incorporate all learning styles when I teach. Tactile learning and musical influences. I think it keeps the brain active and it prevents the students eyes from glazing over! It really kicks up the energy in the room.
What a fantastic post, Diana!
You nailed the connection between anxiety in learning and ESL students. It’s true – music can genuinely change the vibe in the classroom!
Cheryl Porter’s vocal workouts are fantastic for boosting confidence in pronunciation, and Dr. Dan’s breathing exercises are great for easing stress.
I’m looking forward to trying these techniques out daily before we sing ‘O Canada’ and seeing how the students respond.
Thanks again, Diana, for sharing your insights!
You’re welcome Narjes! I hope your class enjoys the videos!