subject: Why French Language Songs are Easy to Remember? [print this page] If you've ever taken the typical language class, you may well have found it overly-challenging. No matter how beautiful the language, there's always a way to make it boring and that way is usually exploited to its maximum in language classes. Learning new phrases and words in a song, however, is usually much easier. Most people can think of at least one French language phrase they know from a song, and there are several reasons that this is the case.
Most songs tell a story of one sort or another. Stories give language context and, without context, language has no meaning. For example, if someone has a desk full of work and says "I'm drowning", it means something much different than someone saying the exact same words in the middle of a lake. Context is everything. The stories that the songs tell give the words a context and make them much easier to memorize. You're not really memorizing the French language in this case: You're experiencing it.
Songs also have a melody and, even when we're very young children, we can remember melodies. They can act as queues for learning and recalling words and phrases. Combining something as difficult as learning a new language with something as natural as learning melodies tends to make everything a lot more intuitive. When the songs are simple, it makes it that much easier. It would be much easier, for example, to learn some Italian from a folk song than from one of Mozart's operas, simply because folk songs involve a lot of repetition and simple melodies, both of which facilitate easier recall of what's being said by the singer.
Online French offerings sometimes have these features, but few actually combine narrative elements, songs and language in effective ways. The best of the lot have stories punctuated by music and enhanced with other materials. The fact that the story gives you a scenario to associate with each different phrase makes it much easier for you to recall it when you need to. If you can't remember quickly, you can just imagine one of the characters in the story and say what they'd say if they were in your place. If you need to learn to speak French quickly, this is one of the best ways to go about getting the basic parts of the language down.
