The Benefits of using Music in the Classroom - A review

Over the last weeks, we have deeply discussed the use of movies in the EFL classroom. Today, we will review the reasons why music is such a powerful tool in the learning process. The following video presents a summary of the benefits obtained when including music in your classes. As Boyd (1995) has suggested, music will not only help your students to remember content or vocabulary more easily, but it will also make them feel more relaxed and ready to learn!

Check out the next video based on Boyd's article:






References:
Boyd, Chris. (1995). Music and Learning: Integrating Music in the Classroom. Retrieved from: http://education.jhu.edu/PD/newhorizons/strategies/topics/Arts%20in%20Education/brewer.htm

Movies to Teach an Specific Content

Students love movies!! We already saw that movies can work as a source of inspiration and they can encourage your students to read. Today, we will explore another way to use movies in your EFL classroom: Movies to teach an specific content in your lessons.

There are several movies that you can share with your students at the moment of studying an specific content, like Math, Astronomy, Biology, Arts, Music or Literature. As an English teacher you are not going to teach English only, but several other topics too!! An English teacher can work together with his colleagues that teach other subjects and share a common topic to teach with them in you English classes!! For example, if the Science teacher is teaching Astronomy at the moment, you can teach Astronomy in your English classes too. Studying a common topic from different perspectives and with different approaches can provide an enriching learning experience for your students, 

As a clear example of a subject that can be taught in English we have History. Throughout their time in school, your students will learn everything about an endless amount of historical events or periods that were important for the development of their country or for the rest of the world. In your English classes, you can take one of those historical events and teach it with a different approach using a movie! Be careful though, because not all movies are a 100% faithful to real events in History. Thus, you should always provide your students with accurate information after or before watching the movie you choose. 

In the following photo album you can see a series of movies that can be used at the time of studying an specific historical event or an important figure in History.

Photo Gallery by QuickGallery.com

Movies for Motivation and Inspiration

Is there any teacher that has not felt that their students were sad or with no energy? Have you felt that your students do not want to work, do not want to write or learn, because they think that those things are worthless? If you have tried a motivational speech under those circumstances, my dear teacher here you have a new option. If you want to show your students how great learning can be, how many wonderful things they can achieve as students or you just want to cheer them up in the middle of a depressing day by showing how important is not to give up, a movie might be an interesting and attractive way to do this.

We have already talked about how children and teenagers (and adults of course) love stories. Consequently, sharing a motivational and inspirational story with your students can help them see new perspectives and open their eyes to new ways of seeing their lives. In order to illustrate how magical a movie can be I would like to share a personal experience. It was my first year in High School, and our Language teacher tried to explain how necessary and important writing was for us as students. I have to admit that for us, writing was not an activity that we loved (at all! ). The worst thing of all at that moment was that our teacher warned us that throughout that year we would have to write A LOT (Imagine our faces when he said that).

In our next class, after this speech, our teacher came back with something new: a movie. All of us felt very enthusiastic about it, and we silently watched the movie. It was a very inspirational story about a teacher that was just starting to give classes in a school were students had very serious problems at home and with their lives. Thus, they did not care about learning and they were very disrespectful with this new teacher. In despite of this, the teacher kept trying, and in the end she was able to gain their students' confidence in a very special way: she showed them Ana Frank's story and she invited them to start writing a diary just like she did. At first, the students were not very interested, but after a few days, they starting writing every single day! Through this diary, the new teacher knew all the problems her students had, and everything change from that moment on.

The movie I am talking about is called "Freedom Writers" (2007), it was based on a real story, and our teacher made us write a diary too after watching this movie. Amazingly, our teacher had the same effect on us that the new teacher in the movie had, and we wrote in our diaries every single day. In the end, we ended up writing better and facing this task with more energy and love.

"Freedom Writers" (2007) is just one of many inspirational movies we can find out there. Just to give you a couple of them, here you have a list of the TOP 10 INSPIRATIONAL TEACHER MOVIES according to AboutEntertainment
Additionally, here you have one of most touching scenes from this movie. Enjoy! and start believing in the power of stories.

Music for Classroom Management

As it was previously mentioned, music in the EFL classroom might be used for multiple purposes such as teaching new vocabulary, grammar, idioms, or pronunciation. Today we will be discussing about how music can be useful for one specific aspect that worries all teachers: classroom management. 

Every now and then, teachers need to calm down their students a little bit to carry out activities in a proper way. However, it might also be the case that teachers need to energize their students because they are feeling a bit down or just because they are bored or sleepy. Music is a perfect tool to help teachers cope with these situations!

For example, if your students are misbehaving and you need to lower the level of energy they have try with a soft rhythm, and for sure your students will feel calmer with the peacefulness of the music you play. Generally, it is very common  to notice that after Physical Education classes, students enter their following class (eg. English class) being filled with energy! So all you need as a teacher is to manage that level of energy that your students have through music, and you will have a much nicer teaching/learning experience.

On the contrary, if your students are bored and sleepy, you as a teacher need to increse their level of energy, and music is a powerful tool to do this! Thus, try to play music with a fast beat, and with cheerful melodies, and surely your class will feel happier and willing to work.

Would you like to have examples to see what kind of songs can you use for these classroom management techniques? Here you have two, especially for little children :) The first one shows a song to help your students focus on the class and be quiet, and the second one offers you a song to motivate your student and make them feel more energetic (additionally, it is a very appealing video with some characters that are specially loved by children!)

Novel Based Films in the EFL Classroom

Over the last two weeks, we have been talking about why music and films are highly useful tool when teaching English as a foreign language. This week an specific and very popular type of films will be analysed: Novel Based Films

Undoubtedly, there are huge advantages when using films based on novels in the classroom. First, teachers can use them to reinforce the work that has been done with a novel read in the class. For example, if the novel is too complex in terms of content/English for students, it would be extremely useful to share some of the most important passages of the novel depicted in the film, in order to make your students understand what are the most important events in those passages/scenes.

Secondly, using novel based films can enriches the introduction to a new reading in the class. Supposing that a teacher had to introduce a new novel to his/her students, a good way to do it is by sharing a few scenes from the filmed version, in order to contextualize and motivate your students to feel involved in the story.

Thirdly, and as one of the most important advantages of using novel based films, teachers can motivate their students to read. Bearing in mind that many children and teenagers and becoming really interested in novel sagas, teachers must take advantages of this, and use films to encourage their students to keep reading. Definetely, students love seeing the stories they have read on the big screen, so they will definetely enjoy activities, in which maybe the teacher asks for recognizing differences between the novel version and the filmed version of the movie.

This week's example will be one of the most beautiful film adaptations of Jane Austen's classical novels. If you are working with teenagers that are very into love stories, share this film adaptation with them. Enjoy this clip!

Why Using Films in the classroom is Useful and Beneficial for EFL Students?

It does not matter how old we are, we all love stories. Students get to see a lot of stories in written formats when they study at school, but sometimes stories portrayed in films are forgotten in instructional contexts, and this is a terrible mistake because children, teenagers and adults love them!

To begin with, it is necessary to clarify something very important: using films for teaching English is not a waste of time! Many teachers are reluctant to use these tools in their classrooms because they think that they waste a lot of time when watching a film. However, we must remind those teachers that they do not have to use an entire film to teach English, they can just use video clips from a film they have chosen and that is perfect both for teachers and for your students, because you use your time wisely and your students do not get bored easily when using short clips.

To follow with, the benefits of using films in the EFL classroom are as valuable as the benefits of using music in this instructional setting. First, students have the opportunity of having contact with English in a "real context". Although stories presented are mainly fictional, English is still used in the same way native speakers use it. Secondly, films can provide teachers with an attractive way of teaching new vocabulary!! If you present your students a video clip with subtitles, you can share new words with them, and work with those words in future activities. Thirdly, films promote students' motivation in the classroom! As teachers, we can do lots of activities based on the films they like, or that they feel identify with, and in that way they will be more willing to participate actively in the class.

Additionally, an extra-remark is needed here: subtitles in English can always be extremely useful to help students understand what the characters are talking about. Students usually have a hard time when trying to understand native speakers of English who speak fast, and usually in films native speakers DO speak very fast! In order to help your students to cope with this situation, add English subtitles to the video clips you will share, and they will not feel so lost.

In order to share a good example of a video clip that gathers all the benefits that have been previously presented, here you have an excerpt from the famous film "Catching Fire", the second film of the novel-based saga "The Hunger Games. If your students are teenagers and love this saga, they will totally enjoy doing an activity based on this video-clip:

Why using music in the classroom is beneficial for language learning?

Although this blog is about using films and music in the EFL classroom, today we will start by analysing in a deeper way why music can be an excellent tool at the moment of teaching a foreign language.

To begin with, it is necessary to say that music is an essential element of our lives; everyone has their own favourite songs and artists, and we always listen to music to relax or to have fun. These aspects are also present when using music in the EFL classroom, and as teacher you can provide your students with a more friendly environment in the classroom, and also you will show them that it is possible to have fun while learning a new language.

Secondly, when it comes to analyse the use of music to teach specific aspects of English, it is possible to notice that music can help students to acquire new vocabulary in a more natural way, because new words are used in a certain context which is provided by the song(s) you are using. Additionally, music is also extremely useful to practice pronunciation. Thus, you can have your students singing a song and at the same time you are showing them how words in that song are pronounced. 

Thirdly, using songs in the classroom can bring the class together, due to the fact that music has always been an important element of social interaction, Consequently, when your whole class sings a song (and obviously you sing with them too), they are all sharing a very special moment in which they can interact with each other and in which they can see that they are equally important in their group. Moreover, it has proven that group singing increases the level of oxytocin, a substance that when is liberated in our bodies "enhances feelings of trust and bonding, which may explain why still more studies have found that singing lessens feelings of depression and loneliness" ("Singing changes your brain", 2013)

To sum up, we can say that the use of music in the classroom can help language learning not just in terms of the acquisition of formal aspects like vocabulary or pronunciation, but it can help students to feel more relaxed in the EFL classroom, and it also gives them the opportunity of having a good time at the sime time that they share a wonderful experience of social interaction.

If you want to see how a real teacher uses music in the EFL classroom, watch this video and pay attention to the marvelous experience that this teacher has had with her students. Enjoy!

REFERENCES:

Singing Changes your Brain (2013, August 16). Time. Retrieved from: http://ideas.time.com/2013/08/16/singing-changes-your-brain/