Michael Business Law
Pop lyrics: Thinking out loud
Pop lyrics can be a great way to improve English because they often contain:
1. examples of common grammatical constructions
2. common idioms and standard collocations
3. poetic and literary language
BUT… they can also be a minefield, and that’s because sometimes: 
4. they are meaningless 
5. they contain grammar mistakes or sentence fragments
6. it’s not obvious if a phrase is common in everyday English or very unusual and/or literary.

For that reason, it’s good to ask, and generally Italki people like to answer questions about pop lyrics. 

“Thinking out loud”
I came across a song recently which I think can be useful for intermediate and advanced English language learners.  It’s called “Thinking Out Loud”, by Ed Sheeran.  The lyrics are generally meaningful, not too literary, and they contain some idioms and very good examples of common grammatical constructions.

I’ll start by introducing a couple of phrases for discussion, and if there is any interest, let me know and we can explore the lyrics further.

a) “Thinking out loud”. (the song title)

To think out loud = to say exactly what you are thinking about at the same time 
“Hmm… that’s a difficult problem.  Just thinking out loud, I would say that the most difficult aspect is….”
“Don’t take what I say too seriously – I’m just thinking out loud.”

So this is an expression you might use to indicate that you are still formulating your ideas.

b) “When your legs don't work like they used to before…”

This is the first line of the lyrics. This romantic song is about how the singer will continue to love his partner even when they are old and not as healthy, and specifically here where his or her legs do not work (function) very well.  

You can refer informally to a specific part of the body “(not) working” well, just like we might say e.g. My computer doesn’t work properly at the moment.

Can you invent your own situations and sentences which use either of these expressions? Thanks for reading.

30 окт. 2016 г., 18:55
Комментариев · 4
2

Thank you for the nice comments from Sudeep and good example sentences from Laura.

I listened to the video at TestUser's link about the merits of learning through pop songs.  The presenter was assuming that students were wondering about using songs for learning English by themselves.  I agree with that for the reasons I've also mentioned here. But some songs can be good material for guided learning, which is what I am trying to do here.  

By the way, most native English-speakers consider Shakespeare too hard to enjoy.  However, the British Council have published a whole series of lesson plans on Shakespeare designed for B1 students upwards. So in my opinion, it's not what you teach, it's how you teach it.

31 октября 2016 г.
1

Thank you Michael for this discussion and let us, learners keep practicing. I do not think lyrics are a good way to learn a language, sometimes (in Spanish songs) lyrics are meaningless and there are sentences you would never use in real life. So they can be tricky. 

Here is my attempt on the examples you gave us to practice:

1 My workmate suffered from a heart attack a year ago, but now she is sorking again, it seems that her heart is working again. 

2 You should stop thinking out loud at work, if you do not want to be fired.

31 октября 2016 г.
1

 Thank you @Michael for a beautiful song:) It is a nice  and interesting discussion!!! "Thinking out loud" is the best method to discover one's  emotion as well as to express it to someone, as we watched in the song video. So if we have any kind of emotion for anyone, we should express it before our legs don't work like they used to before!!!

I read the lyrics and found out some sentences---

Will your mouth still remember the taste of my love?
Will your eyes still smile from your cheeks?

Kiss me under the light of a thousand stars

I think, these sentences are not expressing any meaning literally or in a simple way but these are emotionally very expressive term indeed!!! I mean, how one can build a highly expressive sentence using some separate objects like in the second sentence!!! How on earth our "Eyes" which never  "Smile" can use "Cheeks" for doing so!!! But still, it expresses the best lovely emotion among the three. 

31 октября 2016 г.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GM0jG-aTcs very well explained the reasons why we shouldn't focus on learning a language through songs. Nevertheless, I find myself interested in understanding the lyrics of an English song I like. 
31 октября 2016 г.
Michael Business Law
Языковые навыки
нидерландский, английский, французский, немецкий, итальянский, русский, испанский
Изучаемый язык
немецкий, русский
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