Learning a new language can be a challenging but rewarding experience, and there are many different approaches to language learning. One approach that is becoming increasingly popular is using music as a tool for language acquisition.
Learning a language with music can be a fun and engaging way to improve your skills, and it can be especially helpful for developing your listening comprehension, pronunciation, and vocabulary.
So let's go through a step-by-step process for effectively learning languages with music.
CONTENTS SUMMARY
4. Study the Lyric Translations
5. Translate the New Individual Words
1. Find Artists That You Like
The first step is to find artists that you like. We all have unique tastes, so this will make the process of learning the lyrics much more enjoyable.
We have blog posts with recommendations of artists for various languages, each with their country of origin, genre, and a short wiki-like introduction to the artist.
We have hundreds of artist recommendations for Spanish and we are working on adding more for other languages as well.
Recommendations of artists for Spanish French German Italian Portuguese Romanian
2. Find Songs That You Like
We have blog posts with recommendations for songs as well for various languages. Each song recommendation has a snippet of the lyrics and lyric translations, the YouTube video embedded, and a wiki-like introduction to the topic of the song.
We have hundreds of song recommendations for Spanish and we are working on adding more for other languages as well.
Recommendations of songs for Spanish French German Italian Portuguese Romanian
For Spanish, we also have a list of song recommendations for individual genres for Pop Reggaetón Bachata Cumbia Salsa Regional Mexican Rock
3. Learn the Lyrics
Once you've chosen your songs, start listening to them regularly and try to memorize the lyrics. You can do this by listening to the songs on repeat, following along with the lyrics from the internet, and singing along. As you become more familiar with the lyrics, you'll start to notice patterns and common phrases that you can use in everyday conversation.
This is where LyricFluent can be very useful because you can listen to the song from the embedded YouTube video, and follow along with the lyrics line by line.
You can go slowly in learn line-by-line mode, or you can learn in the 'normal' mode where the video plays and the lyrics change with the video. You can still pause and play as necessary and can click on any word to translate it.
4. Study the Lyric Translations
After you've learned the lyrics, it's time to start studying the translations. This will help you to understand the meaning of the words and phrases you've been memorizing. You can find lyric translations online or try to translate them yourself with Google Translate.
Again, the LyricFluent app can be very useful here. The app offers reliable full lyric translations. And you can also click on any individual word to see its translation, and hear the pronunciation as well.
If you're an advanced learner, you can enable our 'Immersion' mode which removes the lyric translations, and you can challenge yourself to translate the lyrics yourself. You can still click on any individual word to translate it, to help you along the way.
5. Translate the New Individual Words
It's great to understand the general meaning of the song, but you may still find some individual words or phrases that are new and unfamiliar. Look up their meanings and write them down so you can refer to them later.
Again, with an app like LyricFluent, if you click on an individual word, you will see a translation of that specific individual word. So you can understand the meaning of each individual word, as well as the full sentence.
As a bonus, when you click on an individual word, you can also hear the pronunciation of the word as spoken in normal speech. This can be very helpful if the song is too fast, or if the artist sings the word in an artistic way, rather than how the word is actually spoken.
6. Sing Along
Singing along to music is a great way to practice your pronunciation and intonation, and it can also be a lot of fun. Start by listening to the song a few times to get a feel for the melody and rhythm, and then try to sing along with the lyrics. Don't worry too much about getting everything perfect – the important thing is to practice and have fun.
Improving your language skills is greatly facilitated by speaking the language. While you may initially experience some reluctance to speak when learning through other methods, music possesses a unique ability to draw you in and make you want to sign along.
So don't hold back, as singing along serves as excellent practice for perfecting your pronunciation and reinforces vocabulary and sentence structure through repetition.
7. Repeat Repeat Repeat
Finally, the key to learning a new language with music is repetition. And that's where music becomes amazing content for learning languages.
Music is made to be addictive and repetitive so that you listen to certain songs over and over. So keep listening to your chosen songs, add them to you playlists, sing along, and go back over the translations until you feel comfortable with the vocabulary of that song. The more you repeat the words and phrases, the more they'll become ingrained in your memory.
LyricFluent provides 8 lesson types for each song, in addition to the learning modes, and this was done purposefully to offer many ways to repeat a song and memorize the lessons. The different lesson types also increase in difficulty, so they are perfectly set up to help you master a song.
Conclusion
So if you want to make learning a new language with music more enjoyable, try using the LyricFluent app. While it's possible to learn a language with just a song, pen, and paper, using LyricFluent makes the process a lot easier.
One of the benefits of LyricFluent is that it provides professional translations of every lyric line, as well as translations of individual words. This eliminates the need to search the web for reliable translations or struggle with Google Translate, which can be prone to errors.
LyricFluent also helps with pronunciation. You can replay a line or lyric as many times as you need to hear the individual words and understand the sentence pronunciation. If a word is pronounced too quickly or unclearly in the song, you can click on it to hear it spoken like in normal speech.
Lastly, the app helps with motivation by tracking your progress and displaying leaderboards. This serves as a reminder of how far you've come and how much progress you've made.
Give LyricFluent a try and enjoy the benefits of learning a new language with music!