I've always wanted to be an actor, but ESL pays better...

Things that aren't true:  The TITLE to this post!  
Moving along,

Use this easy tool/process to remove the lyrics from a song (most songs), then have students sing along themselves, recording their own voices.  Great for oral communications skills!

This also works for video clips (for the NON-singers among us).  Remove the voice audio from a video clip, then students record their own speech as the new audio.  This is an excellent exercise in speaking because students must not only nail the pronunciation, but the timing and expressive voice/inflection!

This is NOT an ESL student example, but is an example from a language learner.  She is an American learning Japanese and did a dual language dub of a Japanese animation.  Note her attention to pacing, inflection, and timing.


Use Audacity for recording if you want students to be able to better time their recordings to the original track or video clip.

Both exercises engage the student's talents with technology, create a fun method of practice, and result in a product the students really care about--and will record and re-record over and over to make it better.  That's good stuff!

Some good movie clips to use would be American culture classics like Grease, City Slickers, Wizard of Oz, Singing in the Rain, and It's a Wonderful Life.  Students may want to choose newer films...let 'em go for it!

REMOVE the LYRICS Exercise

Oh, and here's a GREAT video that highlights the troubles a Vietnamese speaker has while speaking English--but while SINGING, he's got it all PERFECT!  Using a tool like this, his speaking could be as accurate as his singing.