Millie Grenough grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, USA, and learned Spanish from people and songs in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, México, Nicaragua, Panamá, Perú, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Spain.

Millie is a corporate coach and trainer, and a nightclub singer. She speaks and instructs throughout the world with a passion and enthusiasm that is contagious. For details on the multi-faceted work of Grenough LLC with corporations, non-profit organizations, educational groups, and individuals see www.milliegrenough.com.

Millie Grenough with ESOL teachers at seminar in Monterrey, Mexico

Millie has taught English as a Foreign and Second Language to people from more than twenty-five countries, in beginning through advanced classes, children and adults, one-on-one situations as well as large classes.

She is co-producer of the cassette MOSAIC: New Haven Sings of Peace & War and has developed teaching curricula for Head Start, Adult Education Programs, the Instituto de Estudios Norteamericanos in Barcelona, Spain, and the International Center at Yale University.

How did she get the idea to do English: Sing it!?

Millie reports that when she was in México trying to learn Spanish she had an extremely difficult time pronouncing words and remembering verb tenses. Once, when her sandals needed repairing, she says that she practiced for days to know what to say when she took them to be repaired. Finally, she went to the shoemaker and said, "Por favor, Señor, los zapatos están rotos." The shoemaker replied, "Señorita, no hablo inglés." She had said all the right words, in the right order, but it didn't sound like Spanish.

In desperation--and to relax--Millie began listening to songs in Spanish after she struggled with her homework. She reports that phrases from the songs began to filter in gradually without much conscious effort. Before long she realized that she was singing along with the repetitive choruses. "La Cucaracha" made pronunciation seem easy, and "Bésame Mucho" engraved the difficult subjunctive tense into her before-then-uncomprehending brain.

When she came back to the USA to teach ESOL classes, she had students from 15 different countries in her first class. There was no common language, except that many of them knew U.S. folk songs and the Beatles' hit songs. She chose songs the students wanted to know and developed grammatical exercises and talking/writing activities around the songs.

It worked.

Millie Grenough conducts English: Sing it! demonstrations and in-service training on using music to teach languages.

For information, contact Millie here