Spotify

= Spotify =

[|http://www.spotify.com] is a programme that allows you to listen to music if you have an Internet connection. There are no restrictions in terms of what you can listen to or when and Spotify allows you to share songs and playlists with friends. At the moment it is free if you are invited (let me know if you want an invitation and I will do my best to get you one: email me at //graham.stanley@gmail.com//)

As a teacher, if you have access to the Internet in your classroom (i.e. teach in a //connected classroom//) ,then you have instant access to an enormous collection of music that you can search on by genre (by typing in //genre:sou//l, etc.), by year (by typing in //year:1996//) or by keywords. The last option is very interesting for us: If you want to find a song with lyrics that feature a particular word or phrase you can simply type this into the search box (see example below - songs with //would// in the title) 

If you don't teach in a connected classroom, then don't worry - you can always use audio recording/editing software such as Audacity to make a copy of the song.

Some ideas for Classroom Use

 * 1) Juke-Box Jury **

This is an activity based on an old [|BBC TV show]. Play the first part of a selection of songs (chosen by the students) and ask them to give them a mark out of ten. Ask the students who give the highest /lowest marks to a song to say why they like/don't like it and encourage the conversation to develop.


 * 2) Concordancer **

Search on a particular word / vocabulary item that comes up in class and choose a song and start playing it. Tell the students they are to write down the phrase they hear with the chosen word in it. Directly after the singer has sung the phrase containing the target word, play another song and ask the students to do the same thing. Do this 3-4 times and focus on the examples used in the songs to talk about usage/meaning etc.