Puvana Gnanasagaran is a teacher trainer and lecturer at the English Language Teaching Centre (ELTC), Ministry of Education Malaysia. She works with in-service English teachers and writes about multimodal pedagogy, materials development, and practical ways of connecting contemporary culture to principled ELT. E-mail: gpuvana@ipgm.edu.my

 

When the room leaned in

A while ago, during a session with in-service teachers, I played a lyric video and watched the room change. Up to that point, the atmosphere had been warm but measured. People were listening, contributing, doing all the right things. But the moment the song started and the lyrics appeared on screen, the room leaned in. Teachers who had been reserved began pointing at phrases, noticing images, predicting meaning and, most importantly, thinking like materials writers rather than materials users.

That moment stayed with me because it captured a tension many of us know well. Teachers are often told to make lessons more engaging, more current and more relevant to students’ lives. At the same time, we are also expected to stay principled, purposeful and aligned to learning outcomes. In other words, we are meant to be creative, but not careless.

 

Why Taylor Swift works, and why that is not the point

This is where lyric videos, and Taylor Swift’s in particular, become interesting. Not because every learner is a Swiftie, and certainly not because pop culture automatically makes a lesson good. Recent work on pop culture in education offers a useful warning here: students often report higher satisfaction when pop culture is integrated meaningfully, but that effect is not universal. When teachers assume that everyone shares the same reference points, some learners can feel excluded rather than invited in. Relevance has to be built, not assumed.

So, when I talk about Taylor Swift lyric videos, I am not making a case for fandom. I am making a case for design. A lyric video gives us language, sound, rhythm, pacing, mood, typography and visual cueing all at once. That makes it a genuinely multimodal text, not just a song with subtitles. Recent work on listening also strengthens the case for this kind of input. In one study, captions supported multilingual English learners’ listening comprehension across different speeds and proficiency levels. In another, multimodal teaching in a rural EFL setting motivated learners by drawing on their senses as well as their cultural and personal resources. That combination matters because many of our students do not just need more English. They need more ways into English.

 

What lyric videos give us that flat texts cannot

There is also growing evidence that music-based language learning can support more than enjoyment. A 2024 study involving 360 EFL learners found a significant positive impact of technology-enhanced language learning through music on academic achievement, creative thinking and self-esteem. I would not treat one study as a magic answer, especially since every classroom is different, but it does reinforce what many teachers already sense in practice: music can open doors that more conventional materials sometimes leave shut.

That is why I think Taylor Swift’s lyric videos are worth taking seriously in ELT. They can help us design lessons that feel contemporary without becoming gimmicky. They can also help teachers move from “students like this song” to “this text allows me to teach metaphor, narrative, tone, viewpoint, intertextuality and response”.

 

Four questions before pressing play

The key, though, is choosing the video for the lesson, not building the lesson around the fandom.

When I use a lyric video, I ask myself four simple questions.

Question 1: What is the learning payoff?

What is the actual learning payoff here? Is it vocabulary, listening for gist and detail, figurative language, or a speaking task built around interpretation? If I cannot answer that clearly, the text is probably not ready for class.

Question 2: What will students miss without support?

A line may seem obvious to us but be dense with cultural baggage for learners. “Love Story”, for example, is teachable not only because it is catchy, but because it gives students a narrative they can follow and then unpack. Yet Romeo and Juliet cannot just be dropped into the room as if everybody already carries Shakespeare in their back pocket. The cultural bridge has to be built.

Question 3: What will they do after understanding?

This is where many song lessons lose momentum. Students listen, fill gaps, maybe check a few words, and the lesson stops there. A lyric video becomes far more useful when it leads to judgement, comparison or creation. If students can only answer factual questions after listening, the text has probably been underused.

Question 4: How can this be made local?

A Taylor Swift text should not flatten local knowledge or push local culture to the margins. It should open a conversation. The lesson becomes stronger when learners compare the text with a local song, a familiar story, a proverb, a film scene or a relationship dynamic they recognise from their own context.

 

Three viewings, one deeper lesson

In practice, I have found a simple three-part routine works well.

 

First viewing: Gist

I begin with a first viewing for gist. No worksheet yet and no overloading. Just three questions on the board, such as: Who is speaking? What is happening? What feeling stays with you at the end? This keeps the first encounter human. Students respond to the text before they are tested on it.

 

Second viewing: Noticing

The second viewing is for noticing. This is where the lyric video really starts earning its place. Students track repeated phrases, imagery, contrast, or lines that seem emotionally important. With “Anti-Hero”, for instance, learners can notice how repetition builds tone and self-positioning. With “Blank Space”, they can work with persona, exaggeration and irony. The text on screen helps weaker listeners stay with the song, while stronger students can start noticing language choices rather than just basic meaning. That matters because captioned or text-supported video is not a crutch. It can be a scaffold.

 

Third viewing: Meaning-making

The third viewing is the one I care about most. I ask learners to do something only a human reader can really do. They might explain why one line feels performative rather than sincere. They might compare the relationship in the song to one in a local story. They might rewrite a verse from another character’s perspective. They might choose a line and justify what kind of image should accompany it and why. This is where the work becomes richer. The lesson shifts from receiving language to shaping meaning.

 

From materials user to materials maker

This is also why lyric videos can be so useful in teacher development.

They are manageable. They offer teachers a ready-made multimodal text, but they still require selection, adaptation and pedagogical thought. A 2023 Malaysian study found that teachers were willing to take on the role of materials developer but not always ready, particularly because they wanted more practical guidance, examples and hands-on support. That gap between willingness and readiness is deeply recognisable. Many teachers do not lack ideas. They lack a safe entry point. Lyric videos can be one such entry point into that role because the teacher is not inventing from scratch. The challenge is not to create interest from nothing. It is to shape attention.

For teachers who want to start simply, I would say this: pick one song, one language focus and one response task. That is enough. You do not need to teach the whole song, the whole artist or the whole cultural universe around it. You just need to create a lesson in which students notice something, make sense of it and then do something purposeful with it.

What I find most hopeful is the shift in teacher thinking that this kind of work can encourage: moving away from simply downloading a “fun song activity” and towards asking what a text can offer, where learners may need support, and what meaningful work can grow from it. For that reason, I no longer see lyric videos as fun extras, but as texts that deserve the same careful selection, scaffolding and follow-through we would give to short stories, visuals or articles.

 

Not a gimmick, but a gateway

And perhaps that is the bigger lesson here. Pop culture is not the shortcut. Thoughtful design is. Taylor Swift just happens to give us a very usable starting point.

When a lyric video works in class, it is rarely because the students love the singer. It is because the teacher has turned a familiar piece of media into a space for noticing, feeling, questioning and making meaning. That is not a gimmick. That is pedagogy.

 

References

Chen, M., Mohammadi, M., & Izadpanah, S. (2024). Language learning through music on the academic achievement, creative thinking, and self-esteem of the English as a foreign language learners. Acta Psychologica, 248, 104318.

Ibrahim, S. A. M., Aziz, A. A., Said, N. E. M., & Ismail, H. H. (2023). Malaysian English language teachers’ willingness, readiness, needs and wants to develop graphic oral history ELT materials. International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research.

Mahalingappa, L., Zong, J., & Polat, N. (2024). The impact of captioning and playback speed on listening comprehension of multilingual English learners at varying proficiency levels. System, 120, 103192.

Tao, S., & Yang, Y. (2025). Pop culture in the classroom: Associations with student learning outcomes and the underlying psychological mechanisms. Behavioral Sciences, 15(6), 731.

Tseng, Y.-H. (2025). Motivating rural EFL students in multimodal teaching. Linguistics and Education, 87, 101425.

 

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