Lyrics Training - A fun way to practise listening!

LINK: http://www.lyricstraining.com/

WHAT 

Lyrics Training is a website where students could listen to a song of their choice, and type in the lyric of the song while listening. In other words, this website practising listening skill through songs.

Practically, songs are one of the students' source of English. Luckily, English songs are popular worldwide. Students are expose to different genre of songs and memorize the lyric and learn simple vocabulary. Songs are naturally fun. Using it in classroom, why not? Something that is fun is always engaging.

Beside, students may want to enjoy doing this activity, fill in the lyric, while at the same time sing the song. If they stuck at words, they could look the meaning up and learn it. It encourage autonomy in learning where students could practise this on their own, for the purpose of improving their knowledge of target language.

EXAMPLE

Song: The Way You Are

Singer: Bruno Mars

HOW

• Choose Song - Type the name of the singer or the song title in the search box.
• Select the Game Mode - Beginner, Intermediate, Expert.
• Listen and Type - Start typing the lyrics. 
• Help -  The 'help' button shows how to rewind, skip etc.
• Sign up - If you want to.

ADVANTAGES

1. Fun - Anything that is fun, attract students and encourage them to learn.
2. Preference - They have a choice of their own preferred song. 
3. Level - There is a level of difficulty. It promotes different level of proficiency and making the task comprehensible for learners at appropriate level.
4. Autonomous learning - Students can practise on their own at home. 
5. Vocabulary - If you sign up for the website, there is better option where you could view your scores and the vocabulary of the songs. I find this helpful because learners could review the vocabulary and learn new words.

DISADVANTAGES

1. Appropriate song - Teacher may have to guide students of choosing the right song that really benefit students for learning. Some of the songs are good, but the content does not really contribute to learning.
2. Appropriate lyric -Some of the music videos or lyrics may not be appropriate for certain culture perspectives. 
3. In term of score, there might be a question of validity because there is a penalty if you spend a long time through the song where it could be a matter of typing speed.   

CONCLUSION

Listening to songs in the target language is a fun and creative way of learning that particular language. Fortunately for English teacher, there are numerous sources of English songs that is suitable for language learning. Rather than listening to a song and doing a task on paper, technology makes life interesting. So, start now, promote this website to your students. :)