Can you improve your pronunciation by listening to music?
We say, yes!
Music is a wonderful way to practice listening to English and you can use what you hear to help you improve your pronunciation. Music has rhythm (a repeated pattern of sounds) and so does English. In fact, the natural rhythm of English is usually even stronger in songs!
Here are some steps to help you practice working on your pronunciation while listening to music at home:
Choose a good song.
If you like the song a lot, you’ll get more practice because you want to listen to it a lot.
Choose a question you want to answer about the song.
You want to be able to understand the main ideas of the song before thinking about pronunciation. So, think about asking yourself a general listening question like: “How does the singer feel? Are they happy? sad? mad?” Listen closely to decide the answer to the question. [You might already understand the main idea of the song.] Don’t read the lyrics (words of the song) just listen.
Choose a short part of the song.
Choose a verse or the chorus. Just a little bit to start.
Listen and write it down.
Play that part of the song three times, and each time you listen write down as many of the words you hear as you can. If you want to listen more than three times, that’s ok too.
Look up the lyrics online and compare.
See how you did! You can search online for the name of the song + lyrics. Look at what you wrote and highlight the words in the song that you didn’t hear, or you heard wrong.
Listen again.
Now that you have the lyrics in front of you, listen again to see if you can hear the words you missed. Usually the words will be grammar words – helping verbs, prepositions, or articles.
The most important part: Sing!
Finally, the most important part. Practice repeating the lyrics over again - try to do it without reading them while you say them. Try to remember them. Then listen to the song again and when it gets to that part, sing along!
Why don’t you try this and let us know how it goes.
If you try it, let us know what song you used and if the practice worked!
If you want some help working with pronunciation using music, you should sign up for our Pronunciation Jam course. In this course we’ll do a little bit of grammar, some vocabulary, some reading, but mostly we’ll be listening to music, practicing speaking, and having a lot of fun making our pronunciation better.
Contact us if you have any questions!