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Do you know what Chengyu means? Well, if you aren't a Chinese learner, you probably don't know.
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If you want to learn English, then you have a wealth of resources available to you. One of the resources that not many people think about, however, is the use of music. In fact, music is a brilliant way to learn English. Let us explain.
Why learn English with music?
We are going to put aside the fact that there is a treasure trove of English music out there to discover. You probably already knew this. Learning English via music is so much more than just having it easily accessible.
Music is packed to the brim with brand new vocabulary and sentences. Yes. A lot of it can be quite repetitive, but this is one of the better things about music.
By listening to music, you can learn brand new vocabulary. At the same time, you are going to be learning grammatical structures. If you listen to more modern music, then you will be learning modern-day vocabulary. Often this includes slang. This means that you are going to be learning how to communicate with people.
Repeating lyrics in 'song form' is also great for drilling that vocabulary into your head. It is much better than reciting list after list of vocab words. Anybody could learn the lyrics to a song within a few times of listening to it, right?
Finally, music can help when it comes to your accent. Have you ever noticed that non-native English speakers lose their accent when they are singing? There is just something about singing that can help to shape the accent to be similar to an English speaker. You will probably never be able to shake it in your day-to-day life, but listening to music will almost certainly make your accent a bit easier to decipher!
How to learn English with music
Now you know the benefits, how do you actually learn English using music?
Well, for starters, you are going to need to choose the right music to listen to. There are some people that will suggest that you listen to rap or hip-hop due to the number of words that are used, but we do not suggest you go down that route if you do not enjoy the music. Only listen to tunes that you genuinely enjoy. It will make the whole experience a lot more pleasurable.
Listen to the song a couple of times before you do anything else. Just absorb those lyrics. Listen to them. Try to understand what they are saying, but it isn't a big deal if you don't.
Once you understand the song, then you can read along to the lyrics as you listen to it. If there are any words that you do not understand, then make sure that you look them up! You can make notes if you want, but as long as you keep singing along to the song, we don't find that this is necessary.
After that, just sing along to the music (it doesn't matter if you are a good singer or not). As you do, you will start to really drill those words into your mind. Make sure that it is active listening rather than passive listening. Having music on in the background isn't going to help you in the slightest.
Rinse and repeat with other songs, and you will be picking up English vocabulary and grammar rules pretty quickly.
