Ok I can already hear you all saying “not me, I can´t sing” well that´s OK, I am not going to ask you to perform on stage or worse still audition for the X-Factor. No, it´s really simple as all of my tips and tricks for learning English are. This is just going to be fun and nobody needs to ever hear you (You can even put on headphones to block out your own voice, although I am a big believer in listing to yourself speak the language you are trying to learn as this speeds up the learning process and lessens the inhibitions you may experience :-))
So this is what you have to do:
- Choose a song you really love, it can be a current song that is always on the radio, your favorite children´s song or even a Christmas song, it really doesn´t matter as long as you like it.
- At first just listen to the song a few times to get a feel for it. You may find yourself singing along to the chorus here, that´s cool. If not that´s cool too, just listen.
- Find the Lyrics to the song. Here is a great website to help you www.lyrics.com. You can also look on youtube for karaoke versions of your chosen song.
- Read the Lyrics out loud a few times and then start listening to the song again. Do this about 5 times, read the lyrics, listen to the song and repeat.
- Listen to the song without the lyrics and now you will already find yourself intuitively singing along.
- You can continue to follow this method until you know the song or you can now start trying to sing along by using the lyrics as you are listening to the song. Personally I find listening and reading the quickest method but it really doesn´t matter both work really well.
- Once you can sing the whole song then try to feel the emotion in the song or if it tells a story, which a lot of songs do, try to understand the story. By doing this you will start using the words differently, you will start emphasizing differently and feeling what you are singing.
- You will then start noticing the words in other English texts you hear, perhaps in school, in the news, in book etc. You will automatically intuitively understand the words.
Learning English through singing is great, just another way that backs up my methods to learn English that claims:
“Learning a language is magic, let your intuition help you and you will be successful very quickly!”
Fiona Simpson-Stöber
So why does it work?
There is actually scientific evidence that suggests somebody trying to learn a second language can acquire skills such as learning grammar and spelling by listening to songs. This is because songs stay in our heads and we tend not just to learn one single word, we learn the whole phrase being sung and seen as songs are made up of sound patterns that often repeat themselves the learning effect is a high one. Furthermore we learn the correct pronunciation through listening to the song repeatedly.
The biggest reason that it works is because you can do it anywhere and at anytime and most importantly it won´t take up a lot of your time so you can easily integrate it into your day a couple of times, and as long as you are using the language and giving your brain a “NEED” for it you will succeed 🙂 !
Enjoy learning English with Fiona!
your
Fiona Simpson-Stöber