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Popular Songs for Beginners | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Music, Movies, TV & Radio |  | |
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5382 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 1 of 5 04 March 2012 at 7:20pm | IP Logged |
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I'm an English language assistant for elementary school and one of the teachers asked me
to suggest popular music (as in, not little kid songs) that the kids would understand. They're 9 to 11 and have had a few years of English but each year is mostly a review of the last so they're still A1. He wanted Michael Jackson but the lyrics are too hard. Others suggested The Beatles which works well (Hello, Goodbye, Dear Prudence, etc). And I thought at least the chorus for "Get Up Stand Up" would be good. Any others? And feel free to suggest popular songs at this level for other languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5025 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 2 of 5 04 March 2012 at 10:42pm | IP Logged |
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Definitely "All You Need is Love" by the Beatles. It was made purposefully to be simple. I personally think the song is inane, but for the purpose of beginner language, it's easy to understand.
On the same oldies trend, what about "Rock Around the Clock"? The kids might need a small bit of coaching for a few words, but really it's just a fun numbers review. Oh, and try some Elvis, such as "Don't Be Cruel." I did a web search for songs to use with ESL, and there are several resources put together already. So you may not have to work very hard to find the information you want. I thought of one more! How about "Hold on Tight" by ELO? It's a simple, positive song that wouldn't have any content problems for children that age and the most repeated verse in English (you hear it at least twice) is done once for kicks in French. Video: ELO: Hold on Tight (with lyrics) Edited by jdmoncada on 04 March 2012 at 11:20pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6588 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 3 of 5 04 March 2012 at 11:59pm | IP Logged |
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Does it have to be sung by a native speaker? If I Ever Let You Go by Spiha is ridiculously simple:)))
For Finnish, I found Uniklubi and Teräsbetoni quite simple. Teräsbetoni play power metal though. Though really there were too many songs I loved enough to translate regardless of whether they were difficult or not. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5382 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 4 of 5 06 March 2012 at 7:51pm | IP Logged |
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Good suggestions! Looking at Electric Light Orchestra I think
Mr. Blue Sky works well also (especially since we've recently done weather). That song by Spiha works fine - can't even tell they're not native so no problems. Though better for older students since the little ones are rarely into metal :-) I like the Lyrics Training site though what it marks as "Easy" is frequently pretty hard (easy once you've been introduced to all grammar and have a good base in vocabulary maybe). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6588 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 5 of 5 06 March 2012 at 9:17pm | IP Logged |
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Oh yes, lyricstraining is a fantastic site. I think their difficulty criteria are more about being easy/difficult to *play*. a song might have simple lyrics but be sung fast or unclearly. and vice versa, in languages with a phonetic spelling (like Spanish, Italian) you can guess the spelling of unfamiliar words if they are sung clearly.
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