Like another student said, “We associate certain issues with different genres.”Įmphasize a critical media-literacy approach to the lyrics. Use two sets of lyrics about similar themes from different songwriters or different genres this helps students see how different authors approach the same material and how genre conventions influence the composition and interpretation of texts. Inviting students to be co-creators of the curriculum demonstrates both that I am interested in what they think and value and that their out-of-school literacy practices (like listening to music) are significant. Here are some ways to work with story songs:Īsk students to bring in lyrics from songs they really like or that they listen to often. Over time, I’ve used NSL texts in different classes and I’ve approached the curriculum in a variety of ways to achieve different goals.
As one of my students said: “I listen to music all the time, but this made me realize I need to look past the surface to find the deeper meaning.” Using NSL as literary texts, my students became more confident in the language of literary criticism and in their own abilities to analyze and write about a fictional text.
Sometimes, after we discussed a set of lyrics, we listened to the music. Then, students worked in groups to identify the literary elements and devices we had discussed earlier in the semester wrote reading commentaries exploring particular themes and extrapolated from the text to craft analytical essays and support their ideas using specific examples. While song lyrics are often compared to poetry, I chose to use Narrative Song Lyrics (NSL), a term I applied to those that resemble short stories and utilize traditional techniques of storytelling, like plot, character, setting, and conflict, just to name a few. (While there is something to be said for meaning-making alongside my students, I chose this time to use songs I personally knew well and liked.) Most importantly, since I was teaching a unit on short fiction, I chose songs with lyrics that told a story. I chose songs that weren’t very well known, even if the songwriters and performers were, in hopes the texts would be new to students. Having realized early on that they struggled to get through even the shortest fiction texts, I introduced song lyrics to see if the brevity and emotional richness of the lyrical texts would help students practice the literary-analysis skills I was confident they possessed. (I use the term “textual analysis” here to bridge the two types of analysis emphasized in students’ writing in the class: literary and rhetorical.) The school I was working in at the time boasted a diverse, multilingual student population but suffered poor retention and high overall failure rates, especially in English despite my students’ enthusiasm, many had already failed the class at least once. I began using song lyrics to teach textual analysis a few years ago while teaching a fiction unit in a Writing through Literature class. John’s University Humanities Review, and numerous edited collections: Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Teaching English in the Two-Year College, English Education, English Journal, The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning, St. She is the author of the book Teaching Racial Literacy: Reflective Practices for Critical Writing. Mara Lee Grayson is an assistant professor of English at California State University, Dominguez Hills, whose work explores race rhetorics and equitable composition instruction.
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