what is up do you love music well today
you are going to get some expert tips on
how to use music to learn English let's
get started
so learning English does not have to and
it should not be boring I personally
love music and that's why it's my fav
song DUI speaking about the video with
my shots is wrong you know sorry about
that so as I was saying I absolutely
love music so over the last 11 years
learning six different languages music
has always been an essential part of the
learning process for me no this is a new
type of lesson than we're trying out so
if you enjoy it and it's helpful for you
please be sure to show your support by
hitting the like button subscribing if
you're new here and commenting it down
below this is how we are going to know
that you want us to make more videos
like this so music is really great for
making learning fun and effective and
most of all it helps you to remember
everything that you study like have you
ever noticed that a song that will come
on the radio that you haven't heard
since the 90s or the 80s or whenever
depending on your age but you can sing
along and we remember almost all the
lyrics that is one of the biggest
reasons it makes such an effective
language learning tool what's more music
can help you to learn vocabulary
expressions greatly improve your
pronunciation and your clarity you can
get the rhythm and the flow of the
language music is even a way that you
can naturally study the grammatical
rules for me personally in learning
different languages it has helped me to
master different verb tenses to learn
the conjugation to learn for example the
conditional and subjunctive tense
and this is without ever taking a formal
class or opening a grammar book music is
just that powerful and obviously not any
song will work song choice is super
important and this is actually something
I can make an entire different video on
by the way if that's something that you
would be interested in me making let me
know by commenting down below just hit
pause real quick or you could even tell
me down in the comments what is a song
that you love that you would love us to
make a lesson out of and in saying all
this you might think well Ethan you're
just really great at learning languages
or you must have some gift for it I
wasn't born with that well I have to
tell you I really have never been an
excellent student in any of my classes
growing up for example my brother was
always a much better language learning
than me and always got better grades in
his language classes at school however
for me I've always loved learning
different things like music and culture
of different countries and ultimately
that's what made me really successful
even not having a talent for language
learning alright so now I'm going to
give you four expert tips for learning
English with music and we will even
break down a song from Ed Sheeran a
little bit in today's lesson
all right so the first expert tip is
that you are going to need to choose a
good song for learning one that has a
good rhythm that you love listening to
that you are curious to know some of the
vocabulary and stuff and depending on
the difficulty of the song in your level
you might go really deep with learning
with a song or it might be something
that you can do rather quickly so what I
like to do is actually print out the
lyrics and mark it all up with a pen a
highlighter because for me I learn
better when I do things with my hands
but you might choose to do some of this
on the computer with a pen but I will be
showing you how I do this
in this very same video in just a minute
it's important that you come up with a
system for symbols for breaking down
this music so for example you might
underline the different vocabulary you
might square some vocabulary that you
recognize but you need to add it to your
active vocabulary you could circle some
different grammar that you're wanting to
check out either that you have no idea
about you don't know what that
conjugation is or that you recognize but
you're wanting to look at it a little
bit deeper in this context because it's
something maybe you've had a problem
with for example conditional subjunctive
that are really difficult tenses by the
way if that's you and that has probably
conditional and check out this video
that we have up at the top and then
you're also going to be really training
your ear because you're going to go
through while listening to this song and
try to mark together and you connected
speech any odd pronunciation or anything
that isn't pronounced the way that you
would expect it to be you can even start
to mark the different flow and rhythm of
the song like where are the stresses at
it's going to depend how good your
English is and how much of an ear for
music you have personally I am NOT the
best at this in other languages but I
tend to find that I can pick it up
rather naturally
by listening to the song a lot so it's
really important that you unwrap your
curiosity that is that you really bring
out the inner scientist within you and
you really have to focus during this
process so that you can really catch all
those little subtleties of the language
really take note of any interesting
collocations any odd use of expressions
or slang or even some different
grammatical rules is it being used
flexibly is it being broken is it just
for the song or is it something that
natives do all the time and when you
start to do this you really focus in on
it you're going to start seeing this all
over the place so maybe you listen to a
song and then you're watching a TV
series and you see this expression used
in the TV series and that's going to
really help you a ton with remembering
and starting to use everything that
you're learning all right so let's get
our hands to read let's look at an
actual example of this with ed Sheeran
song singer alright so I'm here with
some different colored pens and the
lyrics that I have printed out
beforehand and we are just going to go
through and break these down a little
bit so the easiest place to start I
would say is by going through and first
quickly identifying what is the vocab
and expressions that you don't know so
we can just glance through this and
already see some that might be difficult
for most learners for example maybe
glass you've heard that before but
you're not exactly sure if that means
like a cup or does it mean like a window
glass so maybe we could put like a
square around that to mark that it is
something that we have seen before
but we might want to revise it or add it
to unki or another vocabulary
memorization software to be able to
review it later and add it to our active
vocabulary and then we'll just go
through like underlining some other ones
that could be difficult so disappear for
example getting ahead of the program
work
I mean no man's land set the tone sounds
like an expression get involved rushing
from head to toe and then this part is
especially complicated as we have blazed
flames fire brigade local rave and so on
so the next maybe will go through it and
look for some interesting grammatical
structures some things that either we
recognize and we are just trying to look
at it in the context or something that
maybe we don't recognize and we need to
look up what is that so start here
I've been sacked so maybe I'll put a
circle around that to market that it is
something that I am not quite sure why
do we say I've been sat and not I've
been sitting or I am sitting with you
this is actually grammatically quite a
weird structure so if you saw that and
you found it a bit confusing that for me
as well it seems like a bit of a strange
structure that he used here and then we
see wood here so we might wonder is that
conditional and I would probably circle
this whole thing because it's with which
so it's a which we wish they would
disappear so that's like a bit of
subjunctive there and then we also could
here which we know is another
conditional tense
so we'd circle that and that all kind of
goes together we wish they would
disappear so we could get down now
maybe we saw get down is another phrasal
verb so we underlined that and then we
come down and we see until then we got
nothing to say so we got shouldn't that
be we have got and you might just circle
that so that you can look into that
later and maybe you'll ask like your
teacher or you'll just do some
investigation online and then the next
thing I might want to do just because
obviously this is getting quite full up
different like underlines and circles
and squares
I'll take one of these colors that I've
got and I would actually listen to the
song maybe even listening to it on 0.5
or 0.75 and highlighting some of the
different things so just to give you an
example of that and then we'll actually
look at the pronunciation in a little
bit we see here Juana so he doesn't say
want to he says Juana and maybe you know
what that means or maybe you need to
look it up and then just to give you a
couple more examples that I already
looked up in the song and that we will
listen to in a minute want to you that
becomes want you most likely and hold
your body that D and y might become a
Jew so it becomes whole jure and just a
last example how this step into he
actually connects that so he doesn't say
step into he says step into so maybe we
could get down I don't wanna I don't
[Music]
to hold your body clubs to hold your
body
[Music]
take another step it did the no-man's
land take another sample didn't no man's
land
[Music]
and if I wanted to go even deeper with
this
I might start actually writing over here
some different definitions any notes
that I find and I can actually have a
really good lesson right on one piece of
paper with these lyrics and this whole
thing maybe would take you 10 or 15
minutes so just give me an example this
I might take this term no-man's land and
take a note that I looked that up and it
means a place where people can't live
like a desert or something and then
maybe I'll take some notes how can I
remember no-man's land I might try to
connect it to something in my native
language or try to think of a song or
something that will help me remember
that and I'm also going to do things
like adding it to my uncle Cabul airy
software and add some examples and
pictures anything else that's going to
help me to remember this and add it to
my active vocabulary
all right in this process I'm giving you
be sure to adjust it to work well with
your personal process you're going to
want to experiment with it play with it
you're probably going to even want to
listen to the song a couple of times
when you're trying to catch the
pronunciation because of course the
first time you're going to miss things
and if you would like another example of
this I actually wrote an article a while
back explaining my process for doing
this with a song in French so you can
find exactly what I did right up at the
top alright so tip number one was
obviously the biggest hairiest one we've
gotten through it and just hang in there
because these next three tips are really
going to help you to round out the
entire process and take your English the
next level with music you need to be
using some sort of vocabulary and
memorization software if you're not
already I previously mentioned unki
memorize Quizlet and there's so many of
these out there a really great
alternative to honky that using my
iPhone actually is flashcards deluxe
because unki has a really expensive app
on iPhone although it is free on Android
so depending on the different costs you
might choose something different
memorize is also free and another quick
tip here is that you want to always be
learning the words not just individually
but in context so you don't even want to
take the entire collocation that you
found so just to look an example from
this on we learned the word rushing so
I'm not just going to put rushing into
unki and put the definition I'm going to
put that and give the context of it
so in this song he says feeling rushing
is through you now that's going to help
you so much more to learn how to use
these words in context if you just
learned the word you might have some
trouble actually being able to use these
in
your everyday speech plus a lot of times
you will often have other words other
prepositions for example that are used
with it a really good example that I use
all the time with my spanish-speaking
students is it's not think and it's
think about so if you saw for example
think and you wanted to put in your
unqiue would want to put think about
something because you want to remember
that you always put those two together
[Music]
Thanks so tip number three you want to
actually create a playlist of all of the
songs that you are learning English with
I actually have one of these on Spotify
which I absolutely love Spotify because
it helps me discover so much new music
you can find different pre-made
playlists for example you might want to
look at the top songs right now in the
United States or in Australia and it can
really be great for finding the songs
that you're going to learn the language
with and I have a playlist on Spotify
for each language so I have you know my
French music my Portuguese music my
Catalan music my Spanish music and I'll
be in different moods and I might throw
on a different one for my learning and
the key here is repetition we want our
playlists of these so then we can break
down these songs really learn with them
and then listen to them again and again
and again and again and again because
the repetition that helps to carve it
into your brain so you'll remember all
that vocabulary so that grammar
structure will start to show up
correctly in your own speaking so then
your pronunciation will really improve
while you're singing and really building
those muscles of articulation in your
mouth the more you listen the more you
will start to understand
[Music]
all right and we are down to a tip
number poor can you guess what it might
be I already kind of mentioned it it is
of course singing so I know a lot of you
out there you'll probably like me that
you're like I'm not a great singer but
it still is really great to sing because
as I've said before it helps with
picking off the pronunciation picking up
the rhythm and flow of the language
because we kind of sing in a way that is
exaggerating the way that we naturally
speak especially if you pick some sort
of musical like Armijo or rap or any
other thing that kind of is mimicking
how we speak and when you sing actually
you want to really exaggerate every
single sound because it's like a gym
workout for your mouth you're building
those muscles of articulation as I
mentioned before for your listening you
might even start singing it on a slower
speed so you would listen the song on
point 5 or 0.75 speed and kind of sing
along until you have really learned all
the different lyrics how to do the same
rhythm that the singer is doing and then
you could slowly speed it up and this is
going to be such a great training
exercise it's something I have always
done with all my students that enjoy
learning with music and I have seen them
just make humongous progress in doing
this every single week what's more if
you play an instrument I don't but I
know a lot of language learners who will
combine this for example with their
guitar or other instruments and you're
killing two birds with one stone why not
learn how to play the guitar while
improving your English so you might be a
bit like me that you don't really
consider yourself a great singer but I
highly recommend that you do it anyway I
don't like seeing you around other
people so I try to find moments when I'm
alone for example in the shower even if
I'm just home alone doing some different
chores or another really great moment is
while cooking and I
don't know why but I especially like
listening to like French music or
Portuguese music while I cook and
singing along well and cutting up stuff
boiling stuff and it's kind of fun to
mix those two things together alright
thanks so much for hanging in there
today with me until the end but before
you go I have a present for you it is a
free memorize lesson which is going to
help you to learn a bunch of this
vocabulary from ed Sheeran song sing
I'll even throw on there some
pronunciation for use of some audio so
you can continue to practice that and in
the future maybe I'll even make a video
telling you some of my favorite other
tools for learning with music be sure to
LIKE and subscribe to our channel and
hit that little bell so that you can get
our newest lessons every single week and
as well I have another video I think
you'll really enjoy learning English
with music so thanks so much for joining
me as always and go out there and kick
ass with your English Oh
[Music]