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[TingBuDong]

Me and a friend have put together an English Music Club at our university to teach students English songs that are known and well-liked in the West (i.e. not "Yesterday Once More"). We give out the lyrics, play the recording a couple of times, and then sing with the students without the recording (I play guitar and my friend plays autoharp). So far we have taught:

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps
REM - The One I Love
Tom Petty - Free Fallin'
This week will be Pearl Jam - Last Kiss

Any appropriate song ideas? Songs that are easy to sing, don't have too many words, and will be liked by Chinese students. I need to think of more female-led songs, many of these songs are a bit low for our students to sing (90% being girls of course).

[tw]

I taught Roberta Flack's Kiling Me Softly and quite a few girls liked it very much.

For guitar song, Extreme's More Than Words is a great song, though a bit long and tedious.

[Teatime of Soul]

Working in a Coal Mine - Devo

Lyrics

[SnoopBot]

The best thing to do... Go to the nearest KTV and look at their English song collection often they are USA Country Folk songs, Elvis and the Beatle's hits. (Most will already know the words and not be shy to sing them)

Chances are if they are in the KTV they are well-known and popular with the students. You can introduce new songs, but throw in some of these pop songs too that they all know.

You can get a good idea of the conservative Chinese music trends from the KTV's.

This is what I did when I taught a Western Music/Culture University class.

Also use songs from blockbuster movies - like the Titanic theme song.

I used popular music from different periods of Rock and Roll, 50's to 2000.

I had examples of classifications too, soft rock, pop rock, acid rock, classic rock ETC with definitions on these classifications on a word wall with examples.

I described the differences between the different styles, terms and beats.

Above are some of the ideas I used.