How do you use music? (as a method) (Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies) Language Learning Forum

How do you use music? (as a method)
Tags: Music \| Learning Technique/Method
Share with: Delicious Digg reddit Facebook StumbleUpon
Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies

19 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3 Next >>

Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4909 days ago
2151 posts - 3960 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

Message 1 of 19

05 June 2012 at 1:38pm | IP Logged

There has been a discussion of music on the Super Challenge thread, and I thought it might be a good idea to open up a separate discussion. (I put in this forum rather than the music forum because I intend to start a discussion about how people use music as a method, rather than about specific music.)

I always try to listen to music when I am learning a foreign language. The main reasons are:

It makes language learning more interesting
It is a good way of building listening comprehension
It is good for building vocabulary
It gives you insight into the culture(s) of your target language

Some people might think that in order for it to be beneficial, you should listen while reading the lyrics. However, I think it is more useful to listen without looking at lyrics at first, to develop your listening comprehension. The total language content of a song is not much compared to spoken audio for the same duration, so if you are just working on content you aren't learning very much. When I use TL music, I listen to an album many times over before I begin to look up words. The first several times through, I catch very few words, but with each listening I catch and understand more and more.

So here is a method I propose. I don't follow all the steps every time, but it's a general pattern I fall into:

Find music I like in my target language. I go for a variety of styles, but aim at music which is fairly intelligible. From a cultural education standpoint, it would be worth getting several good examples of well-known music: e.g. current hits and classic hits.
Listen dozens of times to the album. Listen carefully at times, just have it on in the background at other times. Listen until you can hum along, and sing along (depending how advanced you are). At this point you are learning the songs, and practicing comprehension. I tend to listen to one album at a time, many many times over. I usually only get another when I'm beginning to get tired of one.
Pick a few of your favourite songs, and try to transcribe them.
Now grab the lyrics, and check your transcription.
If necessary, translate the lyrics you transcribed.
Further listening now serves to reinforce what you've learnt.

I got the transcription idea from a thread on a Bollywood website: Bollywhat. I don't do it myself very often, but it is a great way to develop your comprehension. The person who suggested it said that at first his transcriptions took ages to do, and were dreadfully off. His first few attempts took over an hour each: listen, pause, rewind, listen again, etc. But it got easier and easier the more he did it. And of course, his ability to follow the lyrics of Hindi music improved dramatically.
5 persons have voted this message useful

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6597 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, Finnish^C1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

Message 2 of 19

05 June 2012 at 2:05pm | IP Logged

I consider it an essential part of language study, as important as, say, grammar. I'm unlikely to reach fluency if there are no or very few songs that I like in the language.
-as I said over there.

A couple more ideas:
-lyricstraining.com. A fantastic site. If we ever start a music challenge, we should show it some love :D
-Find alternative versions of the same song to understand more. Live versions, covers, acoustic, remixes even. I generally don't look at the lyrics before I've heard at least a live version. unless the song is at lyricstraining :D
5 persons have voted this message useful

Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4909 days ago
2151 posts - 3960 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

Message 3 of 19

05 June 2012 at 3:05pm | IP Logged

Serpent wrote:

A couple more ideas:
-lyricstraining.com. A fantastic site. If we ever start a music challenge, we should show it some love :D
-Find alternative versions of the same song to understand more. Live versions, covers, acoustic, remixes even. I generally don't look at the lyrics before I've heard at least a live version. unless the song is at lyricstraining :D

Great ideas, Serpent! I've used lyricstraining a little bit. I discovered my favourite French CD there: Guillaume Grand. I especially like the idea of alternate versions of the same song. It would also be good to find L2 covers of songs in your own language, for example, I have a version of "Another Day in Paradise" in French: "Un Jour de Plus au Paradis".
1 person has voted this message useful

caam_imt
Triglot
Senior Member
Mexico
Joined 4862 days ago
232 posts - 357 votes

Speaks: Spanish*, English^C2, Finnish
Studies: German, Swedish

Message 4 of 19

05 June 2012 at 3:58pm | IP Logged

This is good stuff! some nice ideas there. Too bad a lot of my favorite music (metal) is
sung in English. But I guess it all depends what you are listening to. I haven't studied
Swedish yet, but I posted here some lyrics of a band I like and got told that the
language was too poetic/nonsense. I suppose one should be careful with certain stuff as a
source of learning. But I do agree this could be quite beneficial in
intermediate/advanced levels.

@Serpent: You have heard Stam1na right? I don't know if you like it, but it surely gives
quite intensive training in Finnish (specially the song "Hammasratas"):)
1 person has voted this message useful

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6597 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

Message 5 of 19

05 June 2012 at 4:43pm | IP Logged

Yes, seen them live twice:) I prefer Mokoma and Kotiteollisuus really... love a couple of songs though, like Paha arkkitehti and Arjen sankari :)

There's A LOT of great metal in Finnish and German.

Music is very beneficial at the beginner level as well :)
2 persons have voted this message useful

caam_imt
Triglot
Senior Member
Mexico
Joined 4862 days ago
232 posts - 357 votes

Speaks: Spanish*, English^C2, Finnish
Studies: German, Swedish

Message 6 of 19

05 June 2012 at 5:33pm | IP Logged

^true that. Can't say no to music no matter my skills :)

I know there is some stuff available in Finnish and German, it's just that sometimes I
seem to find only folk or black metal. Not that I don't like it, but after so many
listens I would like something a bit different, like power or melodic death metal (à la
Gothenburg style). Do you know anything like that that is not sung in English? Can you
recommend me some Russian stuff? I know no band from there.
1 person has voted this message useful

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6597 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

Message 7 of 19

05 June 2012 at 8:05pm | IP Logged

Well, there's for example Teräsbetoni and Heavy Metal Perse :) There are also plenty of bands that aren't neither folk nor black, like Mokoma, Kotiteollisuus, Ruoska, Maj Karma... See the lists by genre here :)
I've been trying not to listen to music in Russian for almost 10 years, so I can't help you much here... there's Ария and Кино, for example... from there you can use the similar videos feature on youtube :)
1 person has voted this message useful

caam_imt
Triglot
Senior Member
Mexico
Joined 4862 days ago
232 posts - 357 votes

Speaks: Spanish*, English^C2, Finnish
Studies: German, Swedish

Message 8 of 19

05 June 2012 at 8:38pm | IP Logged

Thanks, I didn't know Ruoska nor Maj Karma. I'll give them a shot.

1 person has voted this message useful

This discussion contains 19 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3 Next >>

Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum

This page was generated in 7.1250 seconds.