SONGS AND DANCES

Dances you say? Well, they are kind of like dance, and remember, these young students respond to TPR. Whether they are learning English or not may be beside the point if everyone is having a good time. Students often have stressful schedules and are in school most of the day and even the night. They need some cheering up. So does the teacher.

I have studied some folk dancing and spiritual dancing and so I have employed some simply circle dances in my classes. I usually find a simply melody to accompany the circle movement. Some examples of these have been classes teaching colors and different countries. For colors, one student is blue bird or a red bird etc. and weaves in and out of the open arms (windows) of the students in the circle. In the “Many Nations” dance, students have cards with names of different countries, and on the back of the cards, the name of the nationality and what language they speak. After moving in a circle singing a melody, they point their cards at the four directions then come together in the center and speak their nationality and what language they speak. This dance was modeled after a native american dance.

Another native american (Indian) dance I used was to the song “Ten Little Indians”. Because I have been to many Native American “Pow-wows” I know the basic dance steps. I taught this to elementary students, grade two’s in fact and had them all dancing like Indians. I’m not sure if they completely understand the cultural significance of this but they had a good time.

As far as songs as concerned I could go on at great length about the kinds of songs I use and how I teach songs. I could even list the songs here and put an HTML to the lyrics. The internet is generally quite good for finding lyrics. I like to use the Beatles, and any song I think is relevant to what the students are studying at the time. For example, when students where learning “has spoken” forms of verbs I used the Cat Steven’s song “Morning Has Broken”. When students were learning about the seasons I used a Carol King song “You’ve Got a Friend”, which has a memorable line called “winter, spring, summer and fall”. I wrote this verse on the blackboard and the class sang it together. For “Morning Has Broken”, I had hand outs. After reading the song together we just listening to it twice. We chanted verb tenses like sing, sang, sung, brake, broke, broken. When I talk this song before, I used an OHP to show the lyrics, then I gave one sentence to many students at random and played the song back. When the student with the sentence heard that line, they were to stand up.

Once, teaching the Beatles song “Yellow Submarine”, I turned it into a sentence order game. The song was jumbled into individual sentences, and as students listened to the song, they were to put the song into the correct order. I did this with several Beatle songs, like “Yesterday”. For “She’s Leaving Home”, I made an OHP cloze or fill in the blanks test. While the song was being played, students look at the words on the OHP, then filled in the blanks.

I now have students, and younger English teachers, coming to me with their favorite songs. I am more than willing to use these songs because they are familiar to students, mostly from movies or TV, and they are interested in them.

These activities can be kept to fifteen or twenty minutes. Long than that is generally too long. I have also used many, many “golden oldies” or scout songs as warm-ups to the class. I write it on the board and everybody tries the words as I explain new words, some translated into Korean. We then all sing it together. After going on to something in the textbook or another activity, we can come back to song on the board before we go on. This is a method I usually enjoy. Sometimes I have to work hard to get them to sing or even to repeat the words. If it’s a melody they all know but don’t know the English words, it’s a little easier.

Singing helps me relieve stress and Koreans as a whole are lovers of song, so I have no problem using songs. I try to use songs that are popular in the “singing rooms” too. The more generally loved a song the greater it’s acceptance. One Korean English teacher organized an English pop song contest and when I went into these classrooms for the first time I got to here what song that class had been practicing. They sang so sweetly and beautifully that I was determined to use songs in the classroom from then on. The textbook has songs but these are not always so interesting.