Hello guys, today I want to talk to you about learning English with music. This is one of the most traditional ways of learning English. But imagine, 30, 40 years ago… No internet! Imagine when there was no TV! Songs were almost the only way to hear a native person, if not speaking, at least singing.
How my father learned how to speak English
This is the story of my father! He was born in 1942, so when he was a kid he only had access to the English language through movies and music. There weren’t English schools back then, mostly private tutors and they were expensive. So my father used to listen to Frank Sinatra and The Beatles songs. He listened and wrote down the lyrics, the way he could pronounce the words. He learned how to sing the songs and then he went to a nun(freira)! Yes, that`s right! A nun who could speak English! She helped him understand the words. My father would only have classes in a proper English school much later! When he needed to practice conversation, a few months before we moved to Hong Kong. But by then, he was already fluent in English!
How music influenced my learning
To tell you the truth, I don’t know if it was because of my father´s influence, or because I love music so much. What I know is that, when I was learning English I followed the same path! I searched. read, listened and sang along with all my favourite songs! Although I did have more opportunities to get in touch with real native English material, it was still tough. Do you remember the walkman, cassette players and recording songs from the radio? I remember Michael Jackson was releasing one of his first video clips when I started studying English! Yes, that was before the MTV!
My favourite band to sing along was, by far, “Supertramp”. I know the lyrics by heart until today!
Listen to music you love
My advice to you is: listen to music, all the time! Get the lyrics on the internet, find its meaning and sing along with your favourite songs. It is so much easier today, you can even put karaoke on youtube and sing along! That’s definitely one of the most complete ways of training vocabulary, speaking and listening at the same time! Try it out.
The best part of it all is that you will understand what your favourite band is actually trying to say! So you will be able to feel the music in a completely different way!
Below is the link you can access to practice English with your favorite songs!
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