We all use songs in our classes. I believe in using songs in our classes. If you are teaching to young adults or adults, you generally go for real songs and singers. Last year, when I was doing a music activity in one of my classes, I realized something wrong.

We were listening to Fast Car by Tracy Chapman. It’s one of my favourite songs and it was a music activity embedded to a B2 level course book.

I really like Tracy Chapman and her songs.  I think that in English classes, a song has to have two features, usefulness and relevance to the curriculum and Fast Car was relevant to the syllabus but it wasn’t useful. Because, hardly any of the students could follow the song. It was really as fast as a fast car! Then I decided not to use all songs provided in the course books. I thought blues-rock, country-rock etc. wouldn’t be appropriate in classes.

I started to make my own music activities by using jazz songs. I know quite a lot of jazz songs and I was preparing activities and exercises according to syllabus and context. Students gained confidence and using jazz songs helped them benefit more from music activities. Norah Jones, Amy Winehouse, Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday are my favourite singers and I used their music and lyrics in my lessons.

I think using jazz songs is complementary and supplementary to using jazz chants and it really works!

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