S7E6: Using Songs to Explore Language, Culture and History with Tommy Bradford

English Teacher and fellow podcaster Tommy Bradford shares how he uses songs and music in his classes with his adult language learners.

---

Key talking points

✅ What inspired him to use music in his classes with his adult students

✅ Why it’s crucial to factor in learners’ level and interests when choosing songs

✅ Supporting learners in developing a deeper understanding of a song through guided research

✅ Three songs he frequently uses in classes, why he uses them and the meaning behind them

To learn more about Tommy’s work, follow him on Instagram here.

---

To watch this episode with closed captions, click on the video below or scroll down to view the transcript.

Transcript

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:23:18
Laura
TESOL Pop Season seven Episode six. Hello and welcome to TESOL Pop, The Mini Podcast for Busy Teachers. My name is Laura and joining me today to talk about using music in the classroom is Tommy Bradford. Tommy is a TEFL qualified teacher with over seven years of experience. In his work he teaches English with music and other media. By combining the two, Tommy explores the importance of language and culture with his learners.

00:00:23:23 - 00:00:25:22
Laura
Welcome to the show, Tommy. It's great to have you on.

00:00:25:24 - 00:00:31:00
Tommy
Thank you. Laura feels wrong that I’m on this side of the podcast, you know.

00:00:31:02 - 00:00:56:09
Laura
In today's episode we'll talk about what inspired Tommy to use music in his classes and how he uses songs as a resource. Tommy will share top tips on what to keep in mind when selecting music for our lessons, as well as close with a few of his favorite songs. As with many TESOL Pop episodes, today's episode is relevant to many teaching contexts so why not continue the conversation by sharing this with your teaching community?

00:00:56:11 - 00:01:02:05
Laura
All right, so let's get into it. Tommy, could you share us a bit about what inspired you to start bringing music into your lessons?

00:01:02:06 - 00:01:24:19
Tommy
Music has been always there. My dad played the guitar and I watched him play it. You know, it's like watching it's like watching a mini orchestra, you know? And I love, you know, when I saw it for the first time that he was playing the guitar, I was like, I want to get into that. Then I remember going to my local music shop, buying my first guitar.

00:01:24:24 - 00:01:49:06
Tommy
Then my parents ordered a guitar teacher. And, you know, from then onwards it was just like a love story with music, you know. And then it was like you said, it was about seven years ago that I started teaching English and to start with I was like thinking “What can I use? What's my what's my superpower, I realised my superpower is music.

00:01:49:08 - 00:01:56:11
Tommy
And I started using music with with, you know, a few of my one-to-one students. And they were like, wow, that's really amazing.

00:01:56:13 - 00:02:24:07
Laura
It's wonderful How you mentioned that music is your superpower and you've identified that as your unique selling point we would say in business, because as a independent business owner, you run your own classes, you find your own clients, you've leaned into something that's such a huge part of your life and use it to deliver value to your students and create interest and intrigue around things like grammar that can be quite repetitive and in coursebooks and what we've experience before in our previous school studies.

00:02:24:09 - 00:02:40:01
Laura
Could you give a few examples of how you're using music such as songs with your learners? Because I know you're not always bringing in your guitar and playing the song. You know yourself as a live gig, but if you're bringing a song into a class, what are some of the things you can do with it?

00:02:40:03 - 00:02:57:21
Tommy
Well, you know, the first thing is you take a song and then you dissect it. You know that you go through that before you even listen to it. You take the text and start reading the textbook. If you notice already, you can even sing it to yourself. And then once you done that, either need to go and listen to it, you know, and it's a immerse yourself in the song.

00:02:57:21 - 00:03:24:20
Tommy
You need to hear what the genre of the music is because genres have different stories, you know, rock and roll tells the story of of, you know, the late sixties, seventies, you know, a bit into the eighties. You got to hear that genre and you got to say, okay, what is the historical background of that song? You know, And you think about it, okay, so, you know, you're reading all of it, you're reading the text or you've heard a story that they're trying to tell you.

00:03:24:20 - 00:03:48:20
Tommy
You know, maybe you want to go and do a background search. You know, there are so many good websites, do a background search. What is the what does that website tell you? You know, what does that person tell you about the song that you that you didn't know before? And just to give you a just to give you a spoiler, Gimme Shelter is actually about the Vietnam War because it was produced in around 1970.

00:03:48:22 - 00:04:25:13
Tommy
And it's about, you know, it's about how everything around the singer is going to is collapsing. Everything is on fire. People are angry. They're whatever it might be. So, you know, you've got to you do a bit of historical background and you think about the cultural background that's so. And then with that, all that information you’ve learned not only about the language, but you still learn about the culture, the history, and you can take this and you can go and listen to more of that, perhaps more of that same artist, the same band, and, you know, understand how perhaps the band evolved over a period of time.

00:04:25:15 - 00:04:34:22
Tommy
Why did they go from being a rock and roll band to a to this sort of band, whatever it might be? And that is how we get is what you get out of one song.

00:04:34:22 - 00:04:58:00
Laura
When you were describing how much you can get from a song and you reminded me of a time when I experienced songs, music in my own and learning and how much that stayed with me. And from what you just described there like as teachers we can look at the lyrics, we can review it for the meaning behind it, the cultural and historical references as well as the language.

00:04:58:02 - 00:05:19:16
Laura
And that can play out into the lesson right where we can do just for like general comprehension of the song with our learners detail and picking out the grammar and then going further and deeper into the song, getting them to explore. What do you think is the message here? Yeah, here's the context. What do you think this song is about and what do you think is the intention behind the singer?

00:05:19:21 - 00:05:34:12
Laura
Which I think is often missing from a lot of classes that that, you know, other step of inferring and exploring and responding to a creative piece of of text or music.

00:05:34:14 - 00:06:07:13
Tommy
And the other thing that is missing in many classes is the is if you do listen to a song, people completely misinterpret it. You know, there is a complete misinterpretation of what is said, what is being you know, what the messages people are saying, Oh, he's probably talking about this. Yeah, okay. You know there might be a song which has literally a 1 to 1 meaning, but not, you know, most times you'll find that a song has more than one meaning.

00:06:07:18 - 00:06:18:01
Tommy
It's important as teachers to encourage other students to go and say, Oh, is that maybe more than this meaning? Is there more than one, perhaps, one side to the story? Yeah.

00:06:18:02 - 00:06:40:12
Laura
Really activating this critical thinking skills. Right. And opening a space, a safe space where there could be multiple opinions and interpretations that learners can listen to respond to. When you're selecting songs, particularly for your classes, what sort of things do you bear in mind? Like what makes a good song to use for the language learner.

00:06:41:07 - 00:07:08:10
Tommy
Well, it depends on what the learner wants. That's the first that's going to be at the forefront of everything. What does a learner want? Does the learner like listening to heavy metal, you know, it does that. This is learning like listening to more softer music, you know, soft rock you know, or this the person preferred to listen to may be something which is, you know, from a particular culture or particular background.

00:07:08:10 - 00:07:40:15
Tommy
It depends on what the learner wants. And then once you've taken on to that, you know, taking that taken information on you, then go and do a bit of background research. You know, say, okay, this, this particular learner is of a certain level, prefers to listen to this sort of music. Is this something which is which is like which is within this level which they would appreciate, you know, And obviously the higher the level, the more scope you've got to choose from, you know?

00:07:40:16 - 00:07:59:17
Tommy
But they love it, you know, But if you say for the learners, that's why, hey, you know, I do like Bob Marley, and I do like listening to his music. But at the same time, my level’s only at A2, there could be a few problems. And, you know, so you got to you've got to find a middle way in between what the level is, what they like.

00:07:59:19 - 00:08:23:01
Tommy
And then you see, okay, find something here which you might appreciate, which you might like, and then you going to do this and but you have to make sure also not to demotivate the students in the sense that, you know, there are songs where there is the clarity of speech is really zero. You go to listen to a song,

00:08:23:01 - 00:08:49:22
Tommy
and you will understand nothing. Even as a native speaker, you think, if I gave that song, maybe they would. They would just, you know, they would log off straight away. Maybe they wouldn't come back, you know? So you've got to be you got to take these things into consideration and you've got to think about the clarity of speech level, of the level of the learner, what the learner would like to listen to, what they would appreciate.

00:08:49:24 - 00:09:12:06
Tommy
And once you have that, you should have and I'm not saying it's always the perfect, perfect mixture, but you should have a good enough song which fits almost, you know, that's a two out of three cut it, two out of three points. You think, super! That is good. We've got a winner. Two out of three points covered. I'll take that.

00:09:12:06 - 00:09:13:17
Tommy
Let's try it out

00:09:13:19 - 00:09:35:04
Laura
That's so wonderful how you talk about that cycle of like listening to your learner, understanding their needs, selecting songs that are relevant to that, that level, their interest and listening again, even when you're using the song like is it is it working? Are they enjoying it? Is it accessible? If not, as teachers it's important that we reflect and learn from things that don't work and then use that to feed into

00:09:35:04 - 00:09:47:12
Laura
the next lesson. I'm really excited for you to share some of your favorite picks when it comes to songs. I know you have a few songs that you regularly use in your classes. Would you mind introducing your first choice?

00:09:47:18 - 00:10:08:21
Tommy
Anything from the ABBA catalog is is definitely worth listening to. I chose Dancing Queen, you know, I mean, simply put it, it's a it's an uplifting song about about 17 year old, I believe it's who who's who really wants to dance. You know, they want to have a good time. And, you know, it's such an uplifting song.

00:10:08:21 - 00:10:35:00
Tommy
And with many of ABBA songs, it's clear as it's clear as day, what they're talking about is clear because they are very, very well spoken. They're very well pronounced words, choice and dancing queen. But, you know, anything from the ABBA back catalog, you know, it can be anything. Just remember though, you got you should you should really try and choose something which fits two out of three criteria I've talked about earlier.

00:10:35:02 - 00:10:57:06
Tommy
Then we got possibly one of my favorite Beatle songs ever, you know, And, you know, when I think about the Beatles, Beatles, for me, they are sort of, they started off as a rock and roll band, but then they turned into sort of poppy rock, you know. But the song I've chosen is it is rock and roll. It's Day Tripper

00:10:57:06 - 00:11:24:06
Tommy
But just from the title, what you probably think you know, someone is going off on a date trip. Well, that's what I thought. But like I said, decent background information to do the historical background, and then you'll find out that Day Tripper by The Beatles is a completely different has a completely different meaning to what we think that's yeah so I'm not going away any any spoilers now and then for advance learners is my choice.

00:11:24:06 - 00:11:48:22
Tommy
The Rolling Stones with Gimme Shelter. You know, it is it is a classic. It's classic rock from around 1969/70. And it talks like I talked about earlier, it talks about the Vietnam War and how everything around the singer is collapsing. And so those are my three songs. But it's not to say that things like Bob Marley can't be on that top five.

00:11:48:24 - 00:12:09:17
Tommy
Not to say things like Wilson Pickett can’t up there as well. It is incredibly hard when you put on the spot, say three songs, choose them without, you know, without erring you're thinking, I don't know. You know, I don't want to offend anyone with it. So, you know, that's not on me. You know, I'm going to put.

00:12:09:19 - 00:12:33:02
Laura
It to put you on the spot. But the fact that you've talked about earlier, like we can use any music as long as it's relevant to our listeners, it's appropriate for them, it's appropriate for their level. It's clear. It's got clear is a clear recording. I mean, some of the old recordings aren't always that clearly recorded. So thinking about these things and the language you can take from it and what are the things you can explore such as the story is really valuable.

00:12:33:02 - 00:12:44:20
Laura
So I'm really looking forward to hear what listeners may suggest and how they use songs and some of their favorite songs that they bring into the cases and how they used. You did a fantastic job in selecting three. Thank you so much, Tommy.

00:12:44:22 - 00:12:56:11
Tommy
It's been a pleasure. And you know, like I said at the beginning, like I said, it feels really strange being on this side of the microphone. You know, I prefer being on your side. You know.

00:12:56:13 - 00:13:15:23
Laura
You did a cracking job. You find you're fine. Great. To learn more about Tommy's work, go to his Instagram, Tommy Bradford's English school. I'm going to include the link in the show notes or in the description below. You can find that easily where you can see lots of inspiring post videos about his work and how he brings music and culture into his classes.

00:13:16:00 - 00:13:35:10
Laura
If you have a question or an idea to pitch for TESOL Pop then you can contact us via the website tesolpop.com. Finally, you can support the work we do at TESOL Pop by leaving a rating and review wherever you listen to the podcast by sharing today's episode with your teaching community or even by buying a coffee at ko-fi.com/tesolpop

You might also like

Good to know

This blog space and its associated multimedia content contain affiliate links. To learn more about how affiliate links work, please read our disclaimer here.