What if you spent a night at ‘Hotel California’? A ‘song-telling’ activity for advanced learners

We are all more than aware that music is a great tool in the classroom. In particular, Murphy (1992), who analysed the discourse of pop songs, stressed their effectiveness in the foreign language classroom for their highly affective and dialogic features. He also added that pop songs present vague references (he also referred to them as ghost discourse) which allow listeners to use them in personally associative ways. Ding dong. Yes, it does ring a bell to you too, right? These are some of the reasons why we love using songs in class.  

Starting from the ideas above I decided to create a lesson plan based on the song ‘Hotel California’. (Yes, I went back to the Seventies). It was pretty successful because my learners had had bad experiences (well, not as bad as in the song, of course) at hotels during their holidays. 

Happy to share some of my ideas with you!

WARM-UP ACTIVITY

(In order to engage Ls).

Show Ls this text and these two pictures and ask them to match the text with the picture they think it is describing. (Remember to ask, 'Why?')

*The word 'colitas' might put you in trouble, sorry!

https://www.flickr.com

www.flickr.com 

SONG TELLING ACTIVITY

1) Ask Ls to answer the following questions in pairs.

1. Who do you think the person speaking is?

2. Where is s/he?

3. What is s/he been doing? Why?

4. What do you think s/he going to do? What would you personally do? 

2) Now you can tell Ls that our ‘friend’ is actually going to stop over at a hotel. 

Show Ls the following picture and ask them to brainstorm ideas about what can possibly go wrong there. (E.g. no hot water, too much noise, etc.)

picture taken from www.google.com 

3) Ls listen to the song 'Hotel California' and check whether the problems they brainstormed are the same or different the singer experiences. 

4) Ls listen to the song again, this time with the support of the lyrics.

Elicit or explain new vocabulary.

5) Tell them that the singer was not happy with the hotel services. Thus, he decided to write a complaint letter.

I found useful phrases for writing a  (Cambridge CAE exam) complaint letter in this website. Hand out the worksheet you can download from the page. Ls go through the expressions in small groups. Provide them with translation if necessary.

6) Ls complete this text with phrases from the handout. 

FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITY

What will the manager of the Hotel California do when he gets the singer's complaint letter? This type of task will let Ls be autonomous and go for either a writing or a speaking activity.

My students really enjoyed this lesson and I hope so do yours. If you use these activities or change them a bit, please let me know!

Bye for now ;)