PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES:

It’s always a good idea to start with a conversation with your students so that they know what
to expect and so that they can familiarise themselves with the topic, the grammar or the
vocabulary:

o Introduce your students to the band, or the song; ask them if they know the song
or the band. Wikipedia, including wikipedia’s simple version, usually has
information about most well-known bands (for example, The Beatles), and even
some songs (such as Yesterday), but maybe one of your pupils has even seen the
band live and can talk from experience.
o You can gamify this activity by playing a few seconds of the song or
handing out the lyrics and asking students to identify the song or the
band
o Ask the students about their musical preferences, if they sing in the shower, if
they can play a musical instrument, if they go to concerts… etc.
o Talk about different genres.
o You can even talk about the song’s topic (love, the environment, beauty,
jealousy, politics… etc.).
o Notice that if you do this activity, you’ll need to prepare beforehand;
you can’t just say: “this song is about losing a partner, let’s talk
about that” but rather you have to pose more specific questions. For
example, Bill Withers sang: “Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone” so
in this case you could prepare your students by asking them: “on
what occasions do you have the sensation that the weather is
worse?”
o For more advanced levels, give the students only the title of the song or a snippet
of the lyrics and ask them what the song might be about, or ask them to predict
words and phrases that they expect to hear based on the topic.
o Another idea for more advanced levels is to play the song and have your students
write down any word they hear, and then ask them what they think the song
might be about based on what (little) they have understood.
o Prepare your students by covering specifically the grammar or vocabulary the
song is designed to practise.
WHILE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES:
o Fill the gaps: open cloze or multiple choice… the students fill the gaps in a song
while they listen.
o For beginners, you can give the students a list of the words which
they will have to put into each of the gaps, for intermediate level you
can just give them a gap.
o “Yesterday, all my _____________ seemed so far away”
o Choose the right word: the students listen to the song and choose the word that
they hear.
o For beginners, you can give the students two different words that
mean the same thing but which don’t sound similar.
o “Yesterday, all my problems/troubles seemed so far
away”
o For intermediate level, you can give the students two different words
that sound similar, which is harder to distinguish:
 o “Yesterday, all my doubles/troubles seemed so far
away”
o Listen for words:
o Give the students a list of words and tell them that ONE of the words
is not in the lyrics. The students listen to the song, ticking off the
words as they hear them. They should end up with one word.
o Find the mistakes:
o Give the students the lyrics of a song with mistakes in it so that the
students can correct them.
o For example… “Yesterday, all my problems seemed so
far away”
o or… “Yesterday, all of my troubles seemed so far away”
o or… “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed far away”
o Put the lines in the right order:
o Give the students the lyrics of the song, but in the wrong order. Here
you can cut the lines up into strips which then need to be
reconstructed:
o Now it looks as though they’re here to stay
o Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
o Oh, I believe in yesterday
o Put the words in the right order:
o Much more difficult, but very good for practising grammar:
o “my away yesterday, troubles far so all seemed”
Listening

o Give students a word list. Students number as they hear them.

o Ask the students about their musical preferences, if they sing in the shower, if they
can play a musical instrument, if they go to concerts… etc.
o
o Matching:
o Give the students the first half of each line and ask them to match
them with the second half. For intermediate level you can divide
each line into three parts:
Yesterday… …it looks as though… …yesterday
Now… …I believe in… …so far away
Oh… …all my troubles seemed… …they’re here to stay

POST-LISTENING ACTIVITIES:
Obviously a good way to finish the activity is to ask the students if they liked the song, but
also…

o Sing it! Either sing along to the original version or find a karaoke version to sing
along to!
o Ask for the meanings of specific words; for example “from the context, what do
you think the word troubles means?”
o What is the song about? (in the case of “Yesterday”, it is about the end of a
relationship, a separation)
o Ask the students to draw a picture (in the case of “Yesterday”, a man crying
alone)
o Ask the students to write a poem based on the lyrics of the song, or a summary if
it is a story or a conversation between two people.
o If the topic of the song is controversial, organise a debate.
o And finally, ask the students to write another verse. In the case of “Yesterday”,
they could give the song a happy ending:
o Tomorrow, she’ll come back to me, that much I know.
We’ll have dinner and we’ll watch a show.
Oh, I believe in tomorrow…