Using technology to teach listening activities

Lyrics training 

If your learners enjoy listening to music, this is an ideal site to send them. Lyrics training will help your for listening activities.

Using music to help study a language is very powerful. your students will learn through music that they listen daily and will be center on student's musical interests.

As you watch the video of the song you choose, the lyrics are presented below, in one of three different ways: 1. ‘karaoke’ style – so you can read or sing along; 2. with gaps for you to type in the missing words; and 3. with gaps for you to select from ‘multiple-choice’ options. You only see the lyrics line by line, as they’re sung, and this is the ‘hook’ with the second and third options: you have to try to type or select the correct words before the next line starts. If you’re fast and don’t make many mistakes, your score will be higher. 

However, I would be careful to only recommend it to the right group of learners. The videos aren’t filtered, so there is some content which is inappropriate for younger learners, and there’s currently no way to control that.

Despite all this, if you have learners who are old enough, and who like the music on the site, then they will probably benefit from the repeated exposure to the language that they listen to. In addition to that exposure, the Lyrics Training website’s simple activities will help them notice patterns in language, while the competitive element can make it fun at the same time.