Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 2; March 03

Song title memory challenge

Ages Any
Level Elementary–Upper-intermediate
Time 10-20 minutes in one lesson, 10 minutes in the next

This is a two-lesson sequence in which students learn the vocabulary from popular English song titles by using 'keywords' or images as reminders.

Preparation For lesson two, either make a class set of the 'list of clues' (see Step 6) or put the clues on an OHP transparency.

Procedure

Lesson one

1. Find out from your class 10 to 30 English language song titles that many of them know and list them on the board.
2. Clarify the meaning of each title. (This will almost inevitably involve some use of their mother tongue.) Also, try to ensure that everyone can pronounce each one reasonably well.
3. Tell your class that in the next lesson you will test them on their memory of these titles and add that you are now going to give them a means of doing well when the test comes.
4. Go through the titles one by one and, for each, elicit suggestions for a symbol, a keyword, an abbreviation, and/or a simple picture that could help them remember that title. (For instance, two sets of lips and/or the acronym 'K,K' might help them to remember the song 'Kiss, Kiss'.)
5. Ask everyone to copy down what's on the board and do the same yourself.
6. Tell them, as homework, to find and use some way—any way-- of memorizing which clue goes with which title. Your post-lesson work is to make a class set (or an OHP transparency) of the clues (but not the titles).

   Lesson two

7. Form mixed-proficiency pairs or threesomes and hand out your lists of clues (without the original titles that go with them).
8. Tell the class to try to write the title for each clue. Add that partners can quietly whisper answers to each other.
9. Ask each pair/threesome to exchange papers with another. Add that they are going to correct each other's work.
10. Get the attention of the whole class and elicit the correct song title for each clue.
11. Pairs/Threesomes take back their own test sheets and add their scores together. (If partners have cooperated well, each member's score will be the same, or nearly so.)

Following on

• Ask which pair/threesome had the highest combined score. Invite these students to come to the front of the class and take a bow while you applaud wildly and encourage others to do likewise.
• Ask students to say what they had done in order to try to memorize the titles. (Students may need to use their mother tongue for this.)

Variation

• Work with film titles.
• Step 3: Ask students to suggest different ways of memorizing the titles.
• Ask students to suggest ways of using the method to learn any list of vocabulary.

Tip
Step 4: Encourage students with ideas about pictures to come up and draw them themselves.

For related activities, see 'Memory poster circles' (in the book) and 'Review from associations' (somewhere in HLTMag either already or to come).

Seth Lindstromberg