I don’t know about you, but I LOVE listening to music! And…. I am pretty sure our students do too! What if there was a way to combine our love of music and use it for language listening practice in class?
I got it! How about Musique Mercredi?!?!?
This is a fun way to enhance your students listening skills in French, while keeping them engaged at the same time! Quelle bonne idée! N’est-ce pas?
Each Wednesday, a part of class is Musique Mercredi. It was the day that most, if not all students looked forward too! Why??? Because they always wanted to know what CrAzY French song Madame had picked out this time! 🤣
So how does Musique Mercredi work? Thought you would never ask! 😉
Each week, I would pick a French song for students to enjoy! It could be an old, new, crazy, silly, etc., song that students would watch the music video and then follow along with the lyrics.
(*If you teach upper levels, you could have students find new songs for you! I make this a participation grade for each of my students.)
*IMPORTANTE* Just a friendly reminder… when it comes to the song and the video you use in class… LISTEN and WATCH before you show it to your students! You definitely DO NOT want any unnecessary surprises or uh oh’s during class.
When it comes to choosing the music for the week, I sometimes would just pick a song or I try to have it match with the vocabulary and/or grammar that we are working on at the time. I would get the lyrics for each song online and take out words for students to write in as they listened to the song.
For example the lyric could be J’aime les fleurs. On the student copy it would read J’______ les fleurs.
With anything you use in class, I always mark where I got the video and lyrics from, so as to not only credit the sources, but to show my students how important it is to credit others as well. This could just be a simple link on the document to show where you got the resources from.
Some songs that I would use in class ALL the time, that my students enjoyed were:
- PZK – Chuis Bo
- M Pokora – Cette Année‐Là
- TAL feat. FLORIDA – Danse
- Louane – Je vole & On était beau
- La Fouine feat. Zaho – Ma meilleure
- Stromae – Papaoutai
- Aya Nakamura – Oublier
- Maître Gims – Bella
So if you and your students are in a listening funk… give Musique Mercredi a try! Bonne écoute!
This is an easy listening idea that can be used in any language! Just find songs that work for you in the language that you teach and come up with a catchy title! For example, Spanish it could be Miércoles Música, in German Mittwoch Musik, etc.
As always, I hope that you have found this information useful and helpful to you!
Merci,
Amanda