LyricsTraining is a great tool for teachers who enjoy sharing music with their ELLs. I've previously used youtube videos to teach verb tenses, vocabulary, and Anglophone culture, relying on my own materials to support that, which is ideal for the classroom, of course, but Lyrics Trainer is a great alternative for autonomous learning. It's basically watching videos and filling in the missing lyrics with a timer. Learners can pause or go back at any time, and at the end they'll have accumulated points for correct answers.
How would I use it?
The site is easy and fun to use. When creating the free account, you'll be asked if you are a language teacher. CHECK YES. This enables you to make exercises for your students beyond the preset levelled gap fills. Step by step: Let's say my student loves Metal. I can select it from the Genre search, and let's just say I go with Iron Maiden's "Book of Souls". After selecting the song, I'll have the option of intensifying the difficulty of the gap fill with a set percentage of missing words (Beginner - Expert), OR I can select the words to fill myself by scrolling down a bit more and clicking Exercise. This frees me up to tailor it to a language focus, like prepositions. Incidentally, there is also a Karaoke feature so learners can sing along! Here is a video on how to use Lyricstraining by Englishbob, who speaks clearly and at a reasonable pace for your students to follow on their own.
Speedbumps?
These should be adult students or young learners with liberal parents, who won't blame you for their kid learning the lyrics to "Satan Is Real" by Kreator - another option in the Metal genre. Also, as I mentioned before, it might be hard to accomplish this in the classroom as someone quite comfortable with the tool should be starting and stopping it. However, I am open to suggestions for how to make this a classroom activity. Your thoughts?
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