Tips for teaching English with songs
by Naomi Simmons
Go to www.teachkidsenglish.com
Dear parents,
In our last newsletter, we talked about how songs can help your child learn and remember English effortlessly. If you did not read this article, you can read it by clicking here.
The most important thing to remember is that the songs need to be repeated as many times as possible. Repetition is the main way of fixing language in the memory. Luckily, young children love repetition. This is why they ask us to read them their favourite story over and over again, without ever tiring of it – even though we as parents do and often despair of reading the same story 100 times!
The other thing to remember is that we want the children to remember the meaning of what they are singing as well as remembering the words. The best way to do this is with actions. So if the song is about toys, encourage them to do an action for each toy word as it is sung, for example, mime bouncing a ball for ‘ball’, mime turning a steering wheel for ‘toy car’, mime hugging a teddy bear for ‘teddy’, etc. For animals, it is useful to add sound effects too. If the song is about animals, they can make a barking sound for ‘dog’, a roaring sound for ‘lion’, etc.
You can also use picture cards or real objects. For a song about colours, you can place different coloured pencils on the table and ask your child to pick up or point to the correct one as they sing the colour words. Picture cards are also very useful. They can point to or pick up the correct picture or word card as they sing. Picture and word cards are available free with 3 and 12 month membership with teachkidsenglish.com. Alternatively, you can buy them as a download by clicking here.
Here is a good method to use to help your child learn with songs.
These tips work best for the songs included in the teachkidsenglish.com course. However, you can still use this method with other songs.
- Play the song recording right through. If you are a member of Teach Kids English, your child can also look at the animation, which clearly shows the meaning of every word.
- Play the song again. This time your child shows they understand the meaning of the words by doing an action or pointing to a picture of each object.
- Now ask your child to sing the song along with the recording. Do this a number of times, until your child knows the song from memory. Encourage them to do actions or make sound effects while they sing. Join in and sing the songs with them too.
- When they know the song from memory, move on to the karaoke version of the song. Ask your child to sing the song along to the accompaniment.
- Praise their attempts. Encourage them to perform the song to other members of the family and friends.
It is important to go back and repeat songs learned previously. Go back to previous units in the course and sing as many songs again as possible. Repeat them until they are able to remember the words to sing with the karaoke version. Remember that with teachkidsenglish.com, you can always repeat any activity already completed.
Members can access all the songs online. You can also buy and download the song files to your computer, MP3 player or burn them onto a CD. To buy the song downloads, click here to visit our shop.
Good luck and do let us know how you get on!
Go to teachkidsenglish.com
Join teachkidsenglish.com.
Buy the song downloads.
