English for Life Lesson 2: Music (13:00)

In this lesson, Justin and Chad talk about how and why you
should be taking advantage of English speaking music in your
life to have fun with the process, to improve your fluency, and to
deepen your cultural understanding of the English language.

We highlighted in Yellow our Natural Use of Sound Morphing

We highlighted in Green our natural use of the “American D” sound

(In American English, we pronounce the “t” as a “d”- see Tuesday’s video lesson with Chad
and Justin)

Your Mission: To get inspired to discover how you can better use English
speaking music to support your English fluency process.

Intro

Welcome to the English For Life Audio Lessons. We believe that making English a FUN,
CONVENIENT, and NATURAL part of your daily life is the best way to accelerate your
path to lifelong English fluency.

Your mission is to discover how you can use the things you already like doing to improve
your English, and your life. Remember excellence is not a twice a week hobby, it is
consistent dedication EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Over the weeks and months, these small, but powerful habits add up to huge
improvements in your English learning. We are here to help you reinvent your English, and
reinvent your life.

***

Justin: Hey, I’m Justin. I’m here for week two of English for Life. I’m here with the music
man himself, Chad Fishwick. How ya’ doing today Chad?

Chad: I’m doing really good Justin, thank you. How are you?

 
Justin: I’m great, thank you. So, you guys just finished the module about music and we
are excited to just talk about music and how you can apply it to your life. So, how do you
use music in your life, Chad?

Chad: Well, I love music. I play music, I love to play the guitar and I love to sing. So I
generally listen and play music every day, and that just really affects my life, in many ways.

Justin: And how did it affect your language learning, with Portuguese, because you’re a
Capoeirista- capoeira- the Brazilian martial arts dance.

Chad: Yeah, so Capoeira was amazing for my language learning process.

Justin: And you sing in Capoeria, by the way, yeah-

Chad: Exactly, Capoeria involves, it’s a martial art dance, and it also involves music, and
we have to sing in Portuguese so….

Justin: And that was your first contact with Portuguese wasn’t it?

Chad: That was my first contact with Portuguese, and it totally, just blew me away.

Justin: What does “blow away” mean?

Chad: When I say something blows me away, it just really- it impresses me.

Justin: Like the wind blows you away, so wow, it’s an impact.

Chad: It just impacted me, and it just blew me away, and I was able to practice my
Portuguese by myself, every day, singing Capoeria music.

Justin: And that really gave you a really great foundation to learn Portuguese right?

Chad: It did. I didn’t actually study Portuguese before I came to Brazil, but just knowing
many songs in Portuguese, I already knew about the pronunciation, the phonetics behind
the language. These words are very difficult to pronounce for English speakers.

Justin: Wow, so you’ve just touched upon- how- the impact that music has on language
learning, so English learners everywhere have the wonderful opportunity to encounter
music in their lives. Because English music is everywhere isn’t it?

Chad: Yeah definitely. I mean, you go into youtube and you can find probably your
favorite song in a second, with lyrics.

Justin: People listen to it, they don’t understand, but they love English music, English
speaking music. So, music is everywhere, it’s one of the best cultural bridges. It’s a bridge
between the English speaking world, and the rest of the world.

 
Chad: What do you mean by bridge in this case?

Justin: It connects the two.

Chad: So connect right?

Justin: Yeah, for example, it’s a bridge between; you have an island and the main land- a
bridge connects. So we talk a lot about right brain, left brain. So right brain again, is the
imagination, and I was just doing some research for this, and I saw that the right brain is
“the seat of musical appreciation.” So your appreciation for music is totally right brain. So
your love for music is right brained.

Chad: Definitely, even when I don’t understand music, I can really connect to it, and kind
of understand it, in my own way, even if I don’t know what they are talking about, what
they are singing about.

Justin: I think this is a very viable lesson for people. When you don’t understand the lyrics
to a song, but you feel connected, this is right brain learning. And this is how we really
want you to learn with English, and music is an excellent way to do this- your imagination,
your intuition, the emotional connection. Now that you already have the emotional
connection; it’s really easy to go into the logical side of it.

Chad: It’s kind of like, filling in the gaps.

Justin: Yeah, what does “filling in the gaps” mean?

Chad: Filling in the gaps, would be, like a gap is like an empty space.

Justin: Like a hole.

Chad: Like a hole, so if you already know what it is, now you just have to fill in the gaps,
and get that total understanding of it.

Justin: Yeah, you already feel the song, and English is your doorway into the meaning.

Chad: Exactly.

Justin: So, let’s talk about lyrics a little bit; what is the value of understanding lyrics?

Chad: Well, with lyrics, I think the first thing that you’re going to notice, is the vocabulary.
Definitely if you just look at a song, you can look at the lyrics, and you can get so many- you
can just discover so many new words.

Justin: Do you need to understand all of the lyrics? Do you understand all of the lyrics, to
music in English, to songs?

 
Chad: To tell you the truth, no. I sometimes I don’t even really pay attention to the lyrics.

Justin: There are many lyrics that I don’t understand. I read the lyrics sheet on the
internet and I’m like, “Wow, I didn’t know they were saying that.” So you don’t need to
understand, but it helps when you do understand.

Chad: So you gotta- so the first benefit you’re going to get is a lot of new vocabulary.
Second is, if you’re gonna try and pay attention to the lyrics, you’re really practicing your
listening skills and it’s not, like you just mentioned, native speakers don’t understand. So
it’s a very difficult process, it’s very difficult to listen and understand the lyrics in a lot of
songs.

Justin: It’s not difficult because you like the song already and it’s giving you meaning, it’s
giving you value, but it is hard work sometimes. But the over and over repetition, the
repetition gives you lifelong understanding of those words-your whole life- because you
don’t stop listening to those songs. You don’t forget a song you have an emotional
connection to.

Chad: Yeah it’s funny, sometimes I even teach my students like a phrase or whatever the
subject of a class is, and they’re like “Oh! Like from that song! And they just sing like a
whole song” and I’m like “oh my God, you just sang that whole song, perfectly, but you
don’t know any of the lyrics, you don’t know what it actually means.” And they’re like
“yeah, definitely.”

Justin: So they learn the pronunciation, without even understanding the meaning.

Chad: Yeah they learned the whole song; they learned every lyric from that song.

Justin: I see this all the time, I see like- I’ve met artists before, in like Spanish speaking
countries and here in Brazil, where they sing in English beautifully, perfect pronunciation,
but they don’t know what they’re singing, they don’t speak English, maybe they know what
they’re singing about, but they don’t-

Chad: Like you go “Hey that was a beautiful song, what inspired you?” “o que?”

Justin: So some of the other areas like grammar is something that you- definitely learn
grammar intuitively through music.

Chad: Exactly, I definitely agree with that.

Justin: Because it’s really easy when you know a song, you know the lyrics, you’re
connected to the song, and then you learn a grammar rule, and it’s like, “of course, I know
this- the song confirms this.”

 
Chad: Exactly, yeah. Exactly, grammar is, like you said, it’s very intuitive, when learn this
with a song, and if you start to study grammar, you just relate directly to a real experience
you’ve had-

Justin: And you can do that vice a versa too, which is okay.

Chad: Yeah of course.

Justin: Collocation is another one. Cultural use of meaning and words, for example last
week we did morphing. Morphing is when you bring words together, you mix them. Like
“what are you” becomes:

Chad: Whatcha

Justin: “Going to” becomes:

Chad: Gonna

Justin: Whatchu gonna do when they come for you. Bad boys.

Chad: If you saw the video from our last module about travel, we talked about that at the
end of the video, we even featured that song, “Whatcha gonna do?

Justin: We will link it here, but that song is very popular. It’s on a TV show called “Cops.”

Chad: Mhmm

Justin: But everybody knows that, “Whatcha gonna do?” because it’s absorbed in the
culture.

Chad: Exactly…definitely.

Justin: So you learn lots of expressions too, and it’s a really wonderful way to learn
English. So what about breaking the grammar rules?

Chad: Definitely, I mean, we were just talking about how it can help your grammar, but if
you are very focused on grammar, and you know a lot about grammar, and then you read
the lyrics to a song, you’re gonna be very surprised at how many times, and how often we
break grammar rules, especially in music.

Justin: I think we have different levels. So you have more colloquially, relaxed slang. But
then you have people who maybe break the rules with an artistic license, in a different way.

Chad: What do you mean by an “Artistic License”?

Justin: Well like I’ve heard Bob Dylan, say like, I don’t know, “I Ain’t Got Nobody” things
like that. Which he probably wouldn’t say in an interview, but it’s an artistic license,

 
because it’s coming from the South, and maybe it’s a little bit uneducated to speak like that,
but because he’s an artist, and lots of artists do this, I think they do it in Portuguese too,
and other languages.

Chad: And it kind of makes their song, or their music just sound more authentic as well.
Like, for example, Bob Marley, he’s from Jamaica. So their English is exactly the same as
the English we’re speaking right now, but the fact that he uses this, is kind of very unique
to him, and I really love the way that he speaks English.

Justin: This is exactly what music is, its gives the cultural, local element, right? So it gives
it life! And grammar is like this universal rule, this universal set of rules, how you’re
supposed to speak. But they don’t speak that way in Jamaica; they don’t speak like that in
the South. I’m sure in Australia they speak their own English (dialects).

Chad: Totally different, we have, in Australian music, we just, maybe I can link you to
some cool, some of my favorite Australian artists, at the bottom of this page, but you’re
gonna see that even Australia has their own way of speaking, their own way of breaking the
grammar rules.

Justin: So music is definitely one of those areas where it transcends the grammar, it
transcends the rules, and this is beautiful about music. It gives you an intuitive learning
experience, it connects you emotionally. So it’s really important that you wake up to the
learning opportunity that you have all around you with music. And then you just start
hearing these songs everywhere. What would you suggest for Fluency+ Members to apply
English music to their life, to wake up to this wonderful learning opportunity and learn
English with it?

Chad: Well, I have used these kinds of methods a lot, especially for learning Portuguese,
which we’ve mentioned. I love to sing, whether I’m in front of many people, if I’m by
myself. Which is just a great way to practice pronunciation.

Justin: The car or in the shower.

Chad: In the car, in the shower. Yeah in the shower, I sound like an opera singer, man I’m
really good. But for some reason, when I sing in front of other people, it doesn’t sound so
good.

Justin: I think you’re selling yourself short.

Chad: What does selling yourself short mean?

Justin: You’re not giving yourself enough credit.

Chad: Okay. Aw thanks man. But anyway, singing is amazing for your pronunciation. I
see this with every new song that I learn in Portuguese, I could just see my pronunciation

 
would increase dramatically. Probably you already focus on songs that you like- getting the
lyrics, that’s very basic. I guess you should already be doing this, if not, start now. Find the
lyrics to your favorite song.

Justin: Do you suggest people maybe learn how to play an instrument?

Chad: Yeah, if you already play an instrument, or if you don’t, start doing it because not
only is it gonna help your English, it’s really fun, and really opens you up to many other
things as well.

Justin: I think it opens up a different part of your intelligence up. Like I’ve read
something about neuro-plasticity, how your brain is plastic, and when you play music,
some crazy things happen in your brain, and your brain changes.

Chad: Yeah, I mean music is obviously a totally different genre to learning a language, but
you can kind of put them together and they work really well.

Justin: So it’s never too late to dream, I think it’s great for your English, it’s great for your
life.

Chad: Yeah definitely man, I think you’re never too old to learn an instrument. Pick up a
guitar, play a couple- you can learn a couple of chords in a few days. And with a couple of
chords, you can probably play a hundred songs. How Many Songs Can You Plan With 4
Chords?

Justin: And another thing about music, that’s really impressive, is that you associate
things you like with English, and this is one of the most important things about English for
Life, about the Real Life English Method, to associate things that you like to do, with
English. And the more difficult parts of English learning become easier. This is an
essential.

Chad: I definitely agree with you 100% and music is so cool because once I- when I sing,
for some reason I just feel, happy. It releases some kind of positive energy and I- it just
makes my day better.

Justin: And those are the best learning experiences, when you’re enjoying it, when you’re
positive, when you’re in a good frequency, you learn.

Chad: Definitely, you’re kind of like in a higher level, and you just feel very open, and it’s
very easy to understand new things as well.

Justin: And those things get recorded in your brain, the vocabulary, the collocation, the
grammar, the pronunciation. So it’s a winning combination.

Chad: So, don’t forget the importance of using music for your language learning.

 
Justin: Yes, it’s one of the most important things you can do to make English a part of
your life, to have fun, and to engage your imagination. Check out the homework
assignment, which is gonna help you do exactly that. So, lookin’ forward to seeing you guys
next week. Have a good weekend. Take care.

Chad: See you guys!

• Check out Chad’s Favorite Australian Artists

• Go to our Music Resources Page

Vocab/Idiom Review
• Blow me away- to impress/impact
• Fill in the gaps- fill in empty spaces/ holes
• Sell yourself short- not giving yourself enough credit