Sandra Heyer
One way to extend the lessons in True Stories Behind the Songs and More True Stories Behind the Songs is to follow up the song in each unit with a supplemental song that connects to the theme of the unit, plus an activity to go with the supplemental song. Each month I’ll share a song-based activity that has worked well with my beginning and high-beginning students. This month, let’s look at how to further connect the song in the unit and the supplemental song by enhancing both songs with the same activity: Singing or Speaking the Chorus.
If you teach beginners, your efforts to encourage students to sing along with a recording may have had mixed results. Finding a popular song that works as a sing-along is a challenge: The lyrics have to be comprehensible, the tempo not too fast, the rhythm fairly predictable, and the melody universally appealing. (Of course, motivation is a big factor; students will persist in their efforts to sing a song they really love. That dynamic, however, presents its own challenge–finding a song that everyone in the class loves.)
Singing in a beginning-level class is more likely to be successful if you choose songs that have a simple chorus and ask students to sing only those lines of the song. This approach has two advantages: it limits the amount of language students need to produce and gives them multiple opportunities to repeat it.
Create a Singing the Chorus Activity in 4 Easy Steps:
Step 1: Choose a song with a chorus that is easy to sing.
Step 2: Copy the lyrics of the whole song from the Internet. Highlight the chorus with color or a contrasting font–italics or boldface, for example.
Step 3: Students listen to the song while reading the lyrics.
Step 4: Play the recording again. Students sing along with the chorus.
The theme of Unit 5 in True Stories Behind the Songs is “Work and Pay.” The first story recounts the origin of the song “Pay Me My Money Down,” and the second story is about workers at a Chicago factory who got surprising bonus checks. The featured song is Bruce Springsteen’s version of “Pay Me My Money Down.” The simple lyrics of the chorus make it ideal for a sing-along. (My class of adult learners, who come to evening English classes after a full day’s work, enthusiastically sang with Springsteen. One woman continued to sing the chorus even after the song had ended.)
Example 1: Singing the Chorus of “Pay Me My Money Down”
Pay me, pay me.
Pay me my money down.
Pay me or go to jail.
Pay me my money down.
A perfect complement to “Pay Me My Money Down” is the song “We Do the Work” by Jon Fromer. The lyrics are not on the Internet–you will need to transcribe them after you download the song–but that is fairly easy to do, and well worth the effort.
Below are the third verse of the song and the chorus, which is repeated four times. For a call-and-response effect, have your students sing only the first, third, and fifth lines of the chorus (the lines in bold) while the recording plays.
Example 2: Singing the Chorus of “We Do the Work”
We dig the ditch.
We serve the meal.
We give the care.
We load the steel.
We teach the kids.
We lend a hand.
We do the work.
This is our land.
We do the work.
We do the work.
We do the work.
We do the work.
We do the work.
This is our land.
A variation on Singing the Chorus is an activity called Speaking the Chorus. It is based on a technique Marilyn Abbott describes in her article “Using Music to Promote L2 Learning Among Adult Learners” (Tesol Journal, Vol. 11, No. 1). For this activity, students read song lyrics aloud, maintaining the rhythm of the song and emphasizing the syllables that are accented when the song is sung. I was honestly a little surprised at how successful the activity was when I tried it in my classroom. The steps for creating a speaking the chorus activity are similar to those for singing the chorus.
Create a Speaking the Chorus Activity in 5 Easy Steps:
Step 1: Choose a song with a simple chorus.
Step 2: Copy the lyrics of the whole song from the Internet. Highlight the chorus with color or a contrasting font–italics or boldface, for example. Highlight the syllables in the chorus that are emphasized by underlining them.
Step 3: Students listen to the song while reading the lyrics.
Step 4: Students speak the chorus.
Step 5: Students listen to the song while reading the lyrics again. (After speaking the chorus, students might spontaneously sing along this time.)
The theme of Unit 7 in True Stories Behind the Songs is “The Great Depression, and the featured song is “Happy Days Are Here Again,” one of the most popular songs of that era. The song’s chorus, with it strong downbeat, is perfectly suited for reading aloud.
Example 3: Speaking the Chorus of “Happy Days Are Here Again”
Happy days are here again.
The skies above are clear again.
Let us sing a song of cheer again.
Happy days are here again.
An ideal supplemental song for this unit is Pharrell Williams’ Oscar-nominated “Happy,” a contemporary feel-good song. The lyrics of its chorus, like those of “Happy Days Are Here Again,” are easily spoken. Again, the words to be read aloud are in bold, and the syllables to be emphasized are underlined.
Example 4: Speaking the Chorus of “Happy”
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof.
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth.
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you know what happiness is to you.
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like that’s what you wanna do.
A recommended follow-up to this activity is viewing the official video for “Happy” on YouTube–a great way to end the lesson on (literally) a happy note.
