Songs are very powerful. They reach every corner of society. They cross barriers of race, class and age. We all like them, we are born with a taste for them, and have rhyme and rhythm in our souls.

I have always, to one extent or another, used music and songs in my classes. I am a singer, guitarist and songwriter, and over the years have found this an ideal combination to use in teaching English. The reasons for using music and songs are obvious: a pleasant change from book-based teaching, a common interest among students and teachers, and an excellent medium for the presentation of language. Also, the vital skill of listening is central. In this article, I would like to share some ideas of how songs can be used creatively in the classroom, whether you have any musical talent or not.

When I started using songs in the classroom, it was first by using other artists' material, either pre-recorded cassettes or performing the song myself, usually with some accompanying worksheet or lyric sheet. From that time, I progressed, taking the step of including some songs I myself had written previously. Since then, I have moved into a position where I now use 80% of my own material. This has had a mutuallly-beneficial effect - the students have benefitted through the new material and a feeling of personal touch (that the songs were written for them), and I have benefitted through the tremendous boost to my songwriting. There are, I believe, several important principles at work here. In the first place, the more we use our talent, the more it develops. When my songwriting is at its peak, I have been writing 3 to 4 songs each week. Secondly, the mutual enjoyment of our talent has a wonderful effect.

There are two basic motivational forces in life: pleasure - we do what we like doing - and necessity - we do what we have to do. Because everybody enjoys songs so much, classes can be made more interesting as a result of using them. They motivate students to learn. There's only one trouble - when you start using songs, the students will never let you stop! So be warned.

You may, as you read this article, feel that you have no musical talent. If this is so, please read on, because I would like to show you how you can, nevertheless, use songs very productively in the classroom. You may, on the other hand, have musical talent, or perhaps some other creative talent. The principles I have shared in the paragraph above apply to any creative talent. The more it is used, the more fruitful it will become, and the more, then, it can be used.

Basically, songs can be used in the following ways:

1. Using songs as listening material, with gaps in the words/lyrics for the student to complete when they listen to the song.
2. Using songs as drilling, pronunciation and fluency practice - principally songs which the students can learn and sing along with. This is ideal with adults as well as children.
3. Using songs as short texts. You can ask comprehension questions, raise discussion points, etc. Essentially, you can use song texts in the same way as you use any other text. They often have the advantage of being short and concise, and also often have a strong idiomatic content.
4. Using songs for teaching vocabulary.
5. Using songs as 'cloze tests', either by giving the words but in mixed order, or simply omitting the words.
6. Songs to elicit grammar points.
7. Songs simply for discussion points.

Most teachers should have access, in this day and age, to a word processor. Given some working knowledge of word processing packages, it will not be difficult to reproduce the kind of thing I have done, using any song. So I am now going to give some practical advice on how to go about producing easy-to-use accompanying worksheets for songs. You will see how these simple worksheets make absolute sense practically, pedagogically, not to mention ecologically.

1. You must first set-up the page, using an A4 page set-up and breaking the page down into six - so that we can fit 6 worksheets per A4 page. This can easily be achieved by using tables. I suggest lay it out so that there are 3 columns and 2 rows per A4 page. Note: If you are only using the song for listening, you may be able to break the page into as many as 12 or 16 units.
2. Select the table text to be, by default, Times New Roman size 8 (or another suitable font which would be clear at this size). Note: I have never had one student complain about not being able to read this size font, and have, at times, even gone down to size 7 without any problem.
3. Type the lyrics/words of the song into the first table space. At this stage, do not copy the text into the other spaces.
4. There will be a space between the last line of the song and the dividing line between two table rows (i.e. in this case the middle of the page). Place a frame into this space, not exceeding the table grid lines.
5. At this stage, you now have the basic set-up ready. Now you have to decide what you are going to do with the song. By way of example, let us assume you want to do listening practice with a gapped text and also a vocabulary exercise. Go through the text. Delete any words or phrases you want to have as gaps, replacing them with a space that is numbered and underlined.
6. Type the instructions into the first line inside the frame. (See the example on the next page.)
7. Type the vocabulary questions inside the frame, together with any other exercises you feel appropriate.
8. Lastly, 'copy and paste' the lyrics and frame into the other six spaces.

You now have an A4 page with 6 identical song worksheets with suitable exercises. Just make a few copies - 5 copies are sufficient for as many as 30 students - and cut each page into six.

Look at the example page that follows. I have chosen songs you don't know (so that you may, later on, go and buy my tape or CD!) to illustrate how you can use songs to present and practise language in exactly the same way as you would use a book.

The way I have shown you is:

• practical
• economical
• easy to file for future reference - you can always keep a few uncut A4 copies in your file and have enough for immediate use.

This can be done for any song you want. This whole exercise is not time-consuming when you get used to doing it. With practice I find I can put together a song worksheet (complete with six 'mini-worksheets') in a maximum of about 15 minutes.

And don't let anybody tell you that small (7 cm. x 14 cm.) worksheets will get lost. Without any prompting from me, my students make little envelopes, glue them into their workbooks, but they keep every single one. If you give them the lyrics to one of your own or some other artist's song, they will treasure them, I promise!

[Editor's Note: If you want to make copies of someone else's lyrics, you must first obtain formal authorisation, so as not to infringe copyright laws. If you use your own songs, you get round this difficulty.]