Listening activities for songs

Here are some tried-and-tested ideas when listening to a pop song.

Activities need not require hours of preparation time and some of the best activities are spontaneous and simple. Below are a few suggestions. They are categorised into pre-listening, while listening and after listening activities.

Pre-listening activities

Give learners the title of the song and ask them to predict words and phrases that they expect to hear.
Give learners the words of a song with an 'either/or’ choice for certain words in each line. Learners choose which word is more likely in each case and then listen and check if they were correct.
Dictate a list of words which appear in the song in a random order, and add one extra word which doesn’t appear. Learners write the words then listen to the song, ticking off the words as they hear them, to discover which was the extra word.

While listening activities

Learners listen and delete extra words which they do not hear.
Learners listen and fill gaps (open cloze or multiple choice).
Learners listen, draw a picture to represent what they hear and then explain their pictures in small groups.

After listening activities

Learners listen to a song and make a note of six to eight words that they hear. Then they use these words as the basic vocabulary for composing a poem in pairs. It doesn’t need to be a serious poem, they can make it humorous or corny!
Learners write another verse for the song in pairs or small groups.
Learners brainstorm all of the words that they think they heard and then listen again and check to see how many are correct.

I usually play an audio and make students a gap fill exercise. I almost forgot to make them do pre and after listening activities. thank you for this.

Well, actually there are numerous activities and they are so simple to do, but in fact I almost forgot to give my learners those kind of activity. Insightful, thank you

Wow, It really help me and blow my brain. Thank you .

I adore such activities

I really like use songs in my english classes as a teacher to improve thah communicative skill

it is really useful

Dear Ms. Katherine Bilsborough
My name is Khasanova Shahzoda, I am from Uzbekistan, this country is located in Central Asia. I really admired your article, experimenting with your strategy, I improved my listening skill. I think this strategy can be used when you are free and not limited in time, why do I think so? In many educational institutions, lessons last 45 maximum 50 minutes, and if there are 25-30 students in each class, then as a teacher can check the work of all students during this time, I personally could not meet this time. Therefore I think you don't need to categorize them, you can just take one part and explain it well. However, your article is very helpful.
Thus how do you think it is possible to combine all the categories and meet the time?
Thanks for your reply.
Sincerely, future teacher Khasanova Shahzoda

I agree with you

I love these activities.thanks a bunch

Glad they have been/ are useful scarlet.erg :)

Anne

TeachingEnglish team

it is very interesting

These activities are impactful indeed. They are ones that as an educator, you can see the invaluable measure that they can add to any lesson. They can be used as a cross disciplinary means of teaching which will allow content to be more meaningful to students. This will certainly have that long-term learning experience that we ideally look for