New app to teach Israeli students English through music

• Author: ZEV STUB
• Published date: 03 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

"There is so much research out there that shows how music can help students learn," says Michael Peled, founder and CEO of Singit. "For example, if you show any Israeli the word 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' from the famous Mary Poppins song, they immediately recognize the word in print and pronounce it correctly, because of the way they heard it repeated in the song as kids. I found that mind-blowing.

"Getting kids to interact with the words in real life through music is a very effective learning tool, and we are finding that dyslexic and special education students are responding especially well," he said.

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Peled's app was recently approved by the Ministry of Education after more than a year of testing with thousands of students and will start being used by students in fifth through ninth grade in some schools starting later this month.

Students can listen on any digital device to music from a huge library of songs and follow along with the lyrics on the screen. When they encounter a word that they don't recognize, they can click the word. With the help of AI and Machine Learning technology, the system learns the needs of each student and offers additional songs with the words he didn't know. After hearing the song, students are given an automated test that tests them for the words they clicked on to ensure improvement.

"It is like using Spotify," Peled says. "We partner with a company called LyricFind that provides access to more than five million songs from all genres and time periods. Most schools won't want to offer access to many types of songs, due to explicit lyrics and the other educational considerations of each school, but that will still leave more than 100,000 songs they can hear."

MEANWHILE, teachers can send students customized assignments and grammar tests, or even create assignments automatically using customized tools. Educators can also access all relevant data and insights about a student's performance from their phones or computers. "You can send students a question from your device to theirs in about 30 seconds," Peled says.

Pilot tests show that the app increased students' interaction with the English language by 62% even after school hours, the company said.

"A few dozen schools around the country, including ten special education schools, have already purchased the app, and will begin using...