Tom's Diner
Here are some thoughts about using song Tom's Diner in an ELT setting. The notes were originally written on a forum discussion in which a group of my trainees were starting to discuss planning a lesson on music.
Using a song is not doing the topic Music. The topic Music is about violins, booking concert tickets online, writing fan mail, linking to a youtube video and reviewing a concert (blog entry for example), etc.
If you want to link to the present progressive vs. simple present that has been touched on in recent lessons, Tom's Diner is recommended. I usually use this song for prepositions, but its use of the present progressive and simple present is valuable for input and analysis.
As this lesson also constitute's cultural input, reading up on this well-known song is essetial. Wikipedia has an entry that you should probably triangulate.
You could introduce Tom's Diner with some pictures of this cafe in NY using pics from the web. You can even use Google Maps if you have the facilities. Search for Tom's diner NY NY, and hone in on it. Try "street view".
The first time you play the song, the focus task could be to simply count the number of -ing forms that they hear just to get them tuned in to the text they'll be working with. And one of the key foci of the lesson.
Most of the verbs can be mimed. I imagine having each verse or section of the song on separate cards and asking pairs to mime them to get some vocabulary of nouns and verbs from the other students. They would need dictionaries and the teacher(s) would need some good ideas about what "midnight picnic" and "kissing their hellos" etc means. These may be areas for discussion and interpretation.
Then they could do the miming task. And later make their own timelines for their verses of the song to illustrate the tenses used. If the cards mentioned above were actually A4, students could create their time lines under the verses they've been allocated.
At some point they'd need to listen again and put their verses in order. Students could then pin their verse/timeline cards on the wall in order.
As a production activity, ask them in pairs/groups to write some other little verses in the same style as the song, e.g.,
I am walking through the forest when I see my old friend, etc
I am sitting in the classroom looking out the window etc
The students might like to recite or perform (singing/miming) or publish (class blog) their creations.
Another production activity would be to make their own video clip of the song (or part of it) using Windows Movie Maker. These can be easily uploaded to Youtube, as we (too?) often see when searching Youtube for something. The pictures students use for this may be photos they take themselves or from the web or a combination.
Lyrics training . com
At lyricstraining.com you listen to a song via its video. The lyrics scroll by but they are gapped - you are required to type in the missing word, and if you don't, it pauses. Try this currently famous song.
Frank Mills
Another song that can be used effectively in language teaching is Frank Mills. See notes here.
The short link to this page: http://bit.ly/maelt_music
An interesting blog post about the decline of LOVE in songs as revealed by corpus studies.
See a mindmap entitled If music be the food of love,
a quote from Shakespeare. It was created in Mindmeister by a group of masters students at KAA FF MU.
Lyreach.com
You can type a phrase such as would never want to into Lyreach to find songs that have phrases or grammar words that you are teaching.
A-Z lyrics database
This gadget scrolls lyrics of your chosen song. Click on the logo at the bottom of this gadget, choose your song and the embed code that appears below. To embed it here, click on HTML button when in edit mode, and paste the code in. Thanks to Jiří Vašíček for sharing this.