TESOL Songsheets

(TESOL ideas)

22 by Taylor Swift



50 Ways to Leave Your Lover by Paul Simon



A Change is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke



Ain't No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell



All the Words in the English Language by The Animaniacs



As Long As You Love Me by Justin Bieber



Baby by Justin Bieber



Back to December by Taylor Swift



Blank Space by Taylor Swift



Bus Stop by The Hollies



Don't Let Me Down by The Beatles



Everyday People by Sly and the Family Stone



Frankie and Johnny by Sam Cooke



Get Ready by The Temptations



Hey Jude by The Beatles



Hit the Road Jack by Ray Charles



I Ain't Marching Anymore by Phil Ochs



I Knew You Were Trouble by Taylor Swift



I Should be Proud by Martha and the Vandellas



If It Hadn't Been For Love by Adele



Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian) by Paul Revere and the Raiders



(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone by The Monkees



Jesus Christ Superstar by Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice



Jesus Gave Me Water by Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers



Let Her Go by Passenger



Let it Be by The Beatles



Let It Go by Demi Lovato



Listen by Beyonce



Love Potion Number 9 by The Searchers



Money (That's What I Want) by The Beatles



Nations of the World by The Animaniacs



O-o-h Child by The Five Stairsteps



People Got to be Free by The Rascals



Poison Ivy by The Coasters



Respect by Aretha Franklin



Revolution by The Beatles



Secret Agent Man by Johnny Rivers



She's Not There by The Zombies



Shop Around by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles



Son of a Preacher Man by Dusty Springfield



Stop the War Now by Edwin Starr



Sweet Cherry Wine by Tommy James and the Shondells



Tacky by Weird Al Yankovic



The Games People Play by Joe South



The Man by Aloe Blacc



The Monster Mash by Bobby Pickett



The Presidents Song by The Animaniacs



Think by Aretha Franklin



U.N. Me by The Animaniacs



Valerie by Amy Winehouse


War by Edwin Starr



What Becomes of the Brokenhearted by Jimmy Ruffin



When I'm Gone (Cups) by Anna Kendrick



Word Crimes by Weird Al Yankovic



You and I by One Direction



You've Really Got a Hold on Me by The Beatles




I've been on a real kick lately to use songs more and more in my classes.  Although I use to think bringing in too many songs was the sign of a lazy TESOL teacher, I've been learning a lot of things lately that have changed my mind.  A lot of the literature I've read on young learners in particular has caused me to think I should focus less on the grammar, and more on simply trying to maximize their exposure to the language whatever why I can. (Much of the literature I've read on Young Learners says that they can not analyze grammar points as well as older learners, but can absorb a fair amount of the language simply by exposure.)  So, in addition to a steady diet of Graded Readers, I've been making it a point to do one song every lesson. 
In this day and age, when the lyrics to everything are already on the Internet, it's easy enough for anyone to design these sheets by themselves.  So I'm not sure anyone really needs me to post my own.
However, having gone through the trouble of making them once, I want to keep track of the songsheets I've designed just for my own benefit in case I end up repeating any of these songs.  And this blog is a good place to do it.  And if anyone else out there happens to find them useful, so much the better.
The songsheets are all fill in the blank.  The words needed for the blanks are all in a box at the top.  (Although if you wanted to increase the challenge level for any of these, you could easily just delete the word box.)
With the young learners classes, I typically start out by saying all the words in the box, and having them repeat after me.  Then, I check the meaning of words in the box by describing the words in random order (e.g. "This is the opposite of up", "This is what you call someone you love") and having the class shout out the answers.  Then I play the song, and have the students fill in the sheet.  We check the answers as a class, and then I write the answers up on the board.  (If they missed any  words, I play the song again).  Then when all the answers have been filled in, I play the song one last time just so they can listen and check anything they missed.  (The answer sheet is usually just for my own benefit, and I don't usually hand that out to the class.)
In order to avoid cluttering up the blog, I've hidden away all the songsheets back in August 2003, and will just use this post to index them.
Notes:
1).  The list at the top of the post is only for songs I use to practice general listening fluency and to provide general exposure to the language.  Songs I use to illustrate specific grammar points are already posted elsewhere on this blog, but  I'll index them here as well:
2nd Conditionals
* If I Were a Boy by Beyonce 
* If 6 Was 9 by Jimi Hendrix 
Gerunds
* Wishing and Hoping by Dusty Springfield
Modal Verbs:
* I Should be Proud by Martha and the Vandellas
Negative Verbs
* You Don't Own Me by Leslie Gore
Passive
*The Banks are Made of Marble by Pete Seeger 
Present Perfect
* I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For by U2   
Reported Speech
* The Letter by The Box Tops
*Then He Kissed Me by The Crystals
Will for Future Predictions
* Que Sera Sera by Doris Day 
Wish
* Sometimes I Wish I Were a Boy by Leslie Gore 

2). The list above is a combination of songs I've chosen for my own reasons, and songs the students have asked me to do.
There is some difference of opinion in my staff room regarding student song requests.  One colleague has noted that students tend to request songs they already know by heart, thereby decreasing the value of the listening practice.  (He noticed that with songs students have requested, they often can fill in all the missing words before the song is even played, and he stopped taking student requests after this.)
Another colleague told me he thinks it is his purpose to introduce the students to new songs that they would not otherwise have encountered, and so also does not take student requests.
While I recognize the value of both of these arguments, I have also read a lot of material that talks about the value of allowing student participation in choosing classroom materials, so I have tried to honor student requests.  I also, particularly with the young learners, view the purpose of songs in the classroom as primarily to increase exposure to the language, and listening skills are secondary, so it's  not always a problem if they already know the words.
However, for the reasons my colleagues have mentioned above, I do try and split the difference--one day doing their song requests, one day doing my songs.
The musical tastes of my 11-15 year old students are not always in sync with my own, and there are any number of songs on this list that I would have completely avoided if left to my own devices.  They should probably be obvious from looking at the list (Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, One Direction, et cetera).
There are also songs on this list which I do not consider ideal for language practice because of the banality or repetitiveness of the lyrics, but have done anyway because of my commitment to honor student requests, like the song Baby by Justin Bieber, which for most of the song is just the same word repeated over and over again.  But I had a class plead with me to do that song a couple years ago. I agreed to do it, but I couldn't resist making the songsheet up slightly tongue-in-cheek, by making the missing word in several stanzas simply be "baby".  Before playing the song, I told the students "There's a certain word you're going to be using a lot on this song.  I'll give you a hint--it starts with a "B".  I also didn't much care for "As Long as You Love Me", also by Bieber, for the same reasons, but made the songsheet up anyway.   (Because these Justin Beibers songs are so repetitive, I didn't think they were ideal for language practice.  But to be fair, some of the songs I've included can be just as repetitive--like Think by Aretha Franklin.)

3).  The song When I'm Gone is also a student request.  It actually lead to a bit of an "Abbot and Costello" moment in my Young Learners class.  The students were complaining that all the songs I used were too old, and one of the girls said, "Teacher, next time can you do the song When I'm Gone."  To which I responded, "Okay, I guess, if you dislike it that much.  When are you going to be gone?"  There were several more back and forths between me and the whole class before I finally figured out When I'm Gone was the name of the song.

4). Related to the above point, not all of these songs have gone over great with the Young Learners.  Although you never know what will be popular and what won't be.  Hit the Road Jack by Ray Charles was a surprise hit in one of my classes.

4).  I used to be limited to only the songs I had in my CD collection.  (Part of the reason there are so many Beatles songs on this list.)  But recently we've gotten computers in every classroom, and just about every song you could ever want is on youtube, so that means pretty much the sky is the limit for any song I want to do.
A couple of these songs, however, have multiple versions on Youtube.  Hit the Road Jack and Think have some versions where the lyrics are slightly different than my songsheet.  In both cases, my songsheet is based off of the single version of these songs.  (Although Hit the Road Jack appears to have a couple different versions claiming to be the official single release.)  Secret Agent Man also has a couple different versions flying about--possibly because of the difference between the single version and the TV theme version? 

5) Word Crimes by Weird Al Yankovic is slightly different than the other songsheets. It was designed for advanced older learners instead of younger learners, and in an effort to keep their attention I deliberately made it as challenging as possible. (They weren't expected to successfully get all the words, but just to have a go at getting as many as they can.)  There's a pun included in that song, "cunning linguist", which does violate my rule of thumb about never using any songs in the classroom that have inappropriate lyrics, but I let this one slide because I was relatively sure my students would not catch the reference.  This assumption proved to be correct.

6) Nations of the World by The Animaniacs is great for helping classes with some of their geography (in English), despite the fact that the song isn't completely accurate.  (It includes a number of places which aren't technically countries, and omits other places that actually are countries.  SEE HERE for more information.)  But I still figure that on the whole it does more good than harm in terms of exposing students to English names for countries.  And it's a fun song.