Or Would You Rather Be a Mule?

During my stay in Taiwan, and since coming home, I haven't spent as much time listening to my iPod as I did before my adventures abroad began.

Part of that, I know, is due to wear-off of novelty. I got my iPod in February or March of last year, largely because I was sick of being the only person my age on the subway without one. I quickly became addicted to it; there's just something magical about carrying your whole music collection around you, to be able to bathe yourself in Enya or the Andrews Sisters or anything else you like and drown out the noise of the wider world. For quite a while, my iPod and I were inseperable, to the point that I would even come into synagogue with my earphones around my neck (this was not so much a flouting of synagogue convention as a lack of anywhere else to put them).

The other part of that was being suddenly relieved of having to use New York City transit. Before I got my iPod, I often felt as if I had never known a quiet subway ride. My iPod allowed me to tune out the beggars, the break dancers, the candy bar barkers, in a way my half-hearted attempts at subway reading never had. But in Taiwan, I never felt any great need to tune out. My apartment was a mere two blocks from school, and even when I was on the bus or the subway, I found the Taiwanese were seldom noisy in transit.

Before I left for Taiwan, though, I loaded up my iPod with songs I thought would be useful for adult listening exercises. Picking a good song for ESL/EFL purposes is no easy task. A song that seems simple enough to a native speaker may not be so to someone learning English. Generally speaking, I have a few rules that I apply to songs for EFL:

1) No instrumentals, for obvious reasons--although some light instrumental music may be useful as background music while students work on something not related to the music itself. Nonetheless, an EFL classroom is not the place to try to create a love of Mozart.

2) No mushy love songs. Not because I don't like mushy love songs, but because they're not terribly useful for EFL purposes. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" may have gotten the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, but it lacks any vocabulary or language structures that are useful in an EFL setting.

3) Ideally, the song should have a narrative of sorts. It doesn't have to be a very complicated narrative (I once observed an excellent lesson done using "Norwegian Wood" by the Beatles), but it should have at least some identifiable story. The narrative aspect can be used in various ways--having students act out the song, or having students guess what will happen next after each verse.

4) Really fast songs should be avoided. ELLs (jargon for English Language Learners) tend to think English is spoken at warp speed. From my experience watching French videos in high school, I think this perception is universal among students of any foreign language, and in no way reflects at all on English in particular. But nonethless, most EFL students are not remotely ready to be exposed to Snoop Doggy Dogg.

5) Similarly, it's good to avoid songs that are way too slow. Adults often take English classes early in the morning, just after getting up, or late at night, after a long day at work. Any song that will likely put students to sleep should be avoided. "Casey Would Waltz with the Strawberry Blonde" won't do.

6) The song should have a clearly repeated refrain, since this creates one element students can sort of look ahead to if they're lost. This is good for doing a kind of prediction exercise, in which students first try to fill in a lyric sheet with words missing before they hear the actual song to check their predictions.

7) Humor is desirable. But it has to be the right type of humor--a kind that isn't dependent on cultural references or contexts students are unlikely to know. This would probably ban Weird Al Yankovic and the Capitol Steps from the EFL classroom. Even "Henry the Eighth" may be too out of context (at least in Asia, where students aren't as likely to have heard of the historical Henry VIII and won't get the joke).

8) Songs that use overly complex vocabulary are out. This eliminates a lot of songs I might want to use for their cultural value, but that are just too complex for most EFL classrooms. I would love to introduce people to Dinah Shore's rendition of "Buttons and Bows", but I also know it's better not to get the class mired with lines like "My bones denounce the buckboard bounce" or "I'l love you in buckskin and shirts that I've homespun". Similarly, "Mairzy Doats" may be amusing to American children, but I think EFL students would only get confused trying to piece out a line like "A kiddledee divy doo, wouldn't you?"

9) Similarly, songs with a lot of extremely complex metaphors are out, at least at lower levels. "I am a Walrus" is not a statement beginning EFL students need to contemplate.

10) Ideally--I would say, most importantly--a song needs to be usable to teach an identifiable chunk of language--be it a set of vocabulary or a grammatical structure.

Today, I did a little thinking about songs I could use well in an EFL setting. My repertoire so far includes the following, which all seem to meet most if not all of the criteria:

"And Then He Kissed Me" by the Crystals. I actually saw this used in one of Shane's textbooks aimed at teenagers. Good for teaching reported speech, and has a narrative that students can put into the right order.

"Come a Little Bit Closer", by Jay and the Americans. Fast but not too fast, tells a humorous story that is relatable probably anywhere outside of Saudi Arabia, and has a line suitable for introducing or reviewing the causal infinitive ("I heard the guitar player say 'Vamoose, Jose's on his way.'").

"Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree." Good for teaching use of indirect objects without direct objects ("I wrote my mother, I wrote my father, and now I'm writing you, too").

"If I Had a Million Dollars", by the Barenaked Ladies. Practically an EFL classic at this point because it is catchy, relatable to students' own lives (everyone can at least imagine being rich). Good for the second conditional. Lacking in narrative, and has only one concept (Kraft Dinner) that requires cultural explanation.

"It's My Party and I'll Cry if I Want To." Excellent narrative, vocabulary is not too complicated. The significance of "wearing his ring" requires a great deal of cultural translation not just to EFL students, but to anyone under 45 or so.

"Judy in Disguise." Good for some review of clothing and appearance vocabulary.

"On the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe." This Judy Garland gem from the film The Harvey Girls is great for train-related vocabulary and gives the opportunity to present some American cultural context without being too alien or overwhelming. I imagine this will be great in Russia, where people still travel long distances by train and students can readily brainstorm about their most recent train trip. Also has a great line that can be used for introducing the use of would for repeated actions in the past ("I would lean across my window sill, and hear the whistle echoing across the hill"). I have a simplified, recorded version; the actual version from the film, unfortunately, has lines like "I was the Lillian Russell of Cherryville, Kansas" and "We're a couple of schoolmarms from Grand Rapids, Mich / but reading, writing 'rithemetic were not our dish").

"Swinging on a Star", the song Bing Brosby made famous by singing in Going My Way. A good song for use or practice of the second conditional, as well as animal and body vocabulary ("A mule is an animal with long, funny ears").

"Vacation" by Connie Francis (not to be confused with "Vacation" by the Go-Gos). Not a lot of really exciting vocab or structures, but good for introducing the topic of vacations (EFL students spend an inordinate amount of time planning imaginary trips to exotic locales, to practice geography vocab) or as a way of winding up a class about vacation activities or the above-mentioned geography practice.