– B2-C1 (intermediate to advanced) –

Practice Your Listening Comprehension

Practice Your Reading Comprehension

I can’t believe I missed two weeks worth of blog posts this Christmas season already! Well, at least it was for good reason. After all, look at this beautiful site that is now made public for all you English learners to use!

Wow. It feels good to be back….

Anyway, enough chit-chat! It’s time to get down to the Christmas nitty-gritty with our first song recommendation of the season: Wrap Me Up by Jimmy Fallon and Meghan Trainor.

I know a lot of my students enjoy watching Jimmy Fallon on his late-night talk show, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (you can watch clips on YouTube). But I don’t know if they, or you, know that this comedic host is also a chart-topping musical artist. In fact, his latest single–in preparation for a Christmas album that will be released next year!–is a catchy holiday tune that I just can’t get out of my head! (It’s okay, though, because I love it!).

This song, entitled Wrap Me Up, is a collaboration with the American pop star Meghan Trainor. Known for her nostalgic doo-wop spin on modern pop, she and Jimmy Fallon have created an instant holiday classic that is full of educational potential for English learners.

WHAT TO LEARN

In addition to the fabulous sound of this song, there are a variety of things that you can learn when you listen to and/or read the lyrics of Wrap Me Up:

• informal American English

• present simple

• past simple

• conditional

• phrasal verbs

• contractions

• question structures

• terms of endearment

• the verb “get” in context

• Christmas vocabulary

So, what do you think of the song? Also, I’m curious… Do you have a favourite Christmas song? Maybe you listen to other holiday music because you don’t celebrate Christmas. What music is that? Let me know in the comments below. See you there!

To learn about more Canadian holidays, including vocabulary related to these holidays, check out the Holidays link in the Tags section of our blog.