Here’s a puzzle for your learners: Write the following words on the board and get your students to arrange them into two song titles:

• Again
• Got
• Got
• I’ve
• My
• See
• Skin
• I’ve
• To
• Under
• You
• You

In order to let your students check their answers, play the following clips:

(NB Don’t you don’t have to let your students see the screens while you play the clips. YouTube is a fantastic resource for music - the element of video can be ignored for this purpose).

In this posting, I would like to show you how we can use YouTube to find songs that contain pieces of target language (i.e. grammatical structures or items of vocabulary) in their titles.

1. Go to YouTube

2. Click on ‘advanced search‘ and you will see this page:

3. There are 4 search windows on the left hand side. If you want to find songs containing a specific word, type that word into the top search window. If you want to find a phrase (’I've got’, for example), type it into the next one down.

4. On the right hand side of the page, select the ’specific categories’ option and you will be given a drop-down menu. From this, click on the box that says ‘music’.

5. Click on ’search’ and you will be able to browse all of the songs that are found.

Here are a few song lyrics containing specific target language that I found using this technique:

Used to

• This used to be my playground
  
• I’m not the man I used to be
• I used to love her but it’s all over now
• A pain that I’m used to
• I can’t get used to losing you

Ain’t

• It ain’t over ’til it’s over
• Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone
• He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother
• It ain’t necessarily so
• Ain’t nobody’s business if I do

‘Going to’ and gonna (more information here)

• Going to the chapel and we’re gonna get married
• I’m going to a town / I’m gonna see some folks
• Are you going to Scarborourgh fair?
• Don’t worry about a thing ‘cos every little thing’s gonna be alright
• We’re going to the zoo
• You’re gonna lose that girl
• We’re going to Ibiza / We’re gonna have a party
• Do you know where you’re going to?
• Never gonna give you up

The present perfect continuous*

• I’ve been loving you too long to stop now
• I’ve been thinking about you
• The piano has been drinking, not me
• I’ve been waiting for a girl like you to come into my life

(* To find songs with present perfect continuous structures, I typed the word ‘been’ into the search window.)

Posted by admin on Saturday, May 17th, 2008 at 11:57 pm.