Stepping out of my Comfort Zone

I don’t sing. I don’t play a musical instrument. I just don’t. I come from a long line of amusical, tone-deaf people. When my sister and I were younger, our mom wanted us to learn to play the piano. That poor teacher! Lessons with us must have been torture. It just wasn’t meant to be and, luckily for her, at some point even our mum realised that she might as well have been throwing money out of the window.

It is no surprise then that music has never been a big part of my teaching. Yes, we have listened to songs, filled in missing words, organised lyrics, you know, the usual stuff. What I have done very very rarely is ask students to sing in class.

This is a classic teacher mistake: not doing something because it would make us feel uncomfortable, thus ignoring the needs and preferences of our learners. But this evening, inspired by a colleague (Thank you, Kira!), I gingerly took a tiny step out of my comfort zone and, well, it was a revelation.

We had spent the lesson talking about the second conditional and finished by listening to this:

After the first listening,  I suggested singing along. This was met with some surprised looks and, as we began, there was some nervous laughter from a couple of them but this soon died down. And we all sang. By the end of it, the initial feeling of self-consciousness seemed to have disappeared and had been replaced by excitement. Truly, there was a burst of energy and laughter, and my question of whether they would like to sing again was met with a resounding yes from all. Looks like we’ll be singing a lot this spring!

Although there aren’t many academic studies that provide evidence to support the idea that singing is useful in learning languages (e.g. here),  anecdotal evidence does abound; I have met many students and teachers who swear by it. Even The Guardian report on the benefits of singing!

Here is the challenge. Is there something that you don’t do in class because it makes you feel a teeny bit uncomfortable? Go on, I dare you to take the first step!

Photo: That is one step I don’t recommend you take. The spring sun has finally started to melt the frozen sea in this part of the world and the ice could be treacherous.