Pop songs in the classroom: time-filler or teaching tool?

Tegge, Friederike

doi:10.1093/elt/ccx071

Cited by 25 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Although many FL teachers, overall, have a positive view of the song-method and use it in their language classes for teaching vocabulary to adults, many of them point to external factors that render songs employed less frequently in the FL teaching. As evidenced by Tegge (2018), difficulty in finding suitable songs and in fitting songs in with the curriculum, time and effort required to prepare and implement song-based lessons, and the discrepancy between classroom time spent song-teaching and learning outcomes do not exhaust the list of reported disincentives to use songs. Below, we briefly present some recommendations on using songs for teaching EFL multi-word units.…”

Section: Pedagogical Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“The Song of Words”: Teaching Multi-Word Units with Songs

Tomczak

Lew

2019

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The need to integrate songs into English Language Teaching (ELT) has been recognized on numerous occasions. Song lyrics host multi-word units which learners can reuse as building blocks in their English, thereby reducing language processing time and effort, and improving their fluency as well as idiomaticity, thus bringing them closer to the native speaker norm. We report on two studies into the effectiveness of using songs for teaching multi-word units to high-school Polish learners of English. The same items were taught to two groups of EFL learners, but only one of the groups heard them in a song. Learners' vocabulary recall was measured at three points in time relative to the teaching: before, immediately after, and a week after. The group taught with songs showed a significant recall advantage over the other group, especially when tested a week from teaching. The results suggest that songs can be an effective vehicle for teaching English multi-word units.

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Section: Pedagogical Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“The Song of Words”: Teaching Multi-Word Units with Songs

Tomczak

Lew

2019

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“…Studies focused on student self-reports and teacher experiences revealed several benefits of using songs as a source of second language (L2) input (Kerekes, 2015; Lems, 2001; Richards, 1969). For example, listening to songs is a pleasurable activity that can be motivating for learners (Richards, 1969; Tegge, 2018). An international survey of language teachers’ use of songs in classrooms revealed that teachers often use songs to practice listening comprehension and introduce new vocabulary while creating an enjoyable environment for learning (Tegge, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, listening to songs is a pleasurable activity that can be motivating for learners (Richards, 1969; Tegge, 2018). An international survey of language teachers’ use of songs in classrooms revealed that teachers often use songs to practice listening comprehension and introduce new vocabulary while creating an enjoyable environment for learning (Tegge, 2018). Use of songs has been shown to reduce foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) and facilitate language learning (Dolean, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Three aspects of vocabulary knowledge (spoken-form recognition, form-meaning connection, and collocation recognition) were measured to provide a rigorous assessment of the potential learning that may occur through listening to songs. In addition, because people tend to listen to the same song multiple times (Abbott, 2002; Kerekes, 2015; Lems, 2001; Tegge, 2018), the effects of repeated listening to a single song on learning gains was also examined. Earlier research exploring repeated reading and repeated reading while listening (Horst & Meara, 1999; Webb & Chang, 2012a) found that repeated exposure to the same source of input can increase vocabulary learning.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Incidental Vocabulary Learning Through Listening to Songs

Pavia

Webb

Faez

2019

Stud Second Lang Acquis

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Research investigating incidental vocabulary learning through listening to songs has primarily relied on participant’s self-report surveys on listening behaviors and its relationship with their vocabulary knowledge (Kuppens, 2010). Only one experimental study has investigated vocabulary learning gains from listening to songs (Medina, 1993). From the results, the researcher concluded that learning does occur from listening to songs. However, the learning gains were not provided. The present study investigated incidental learning of three vocabulary knowledge dimensions (spoken-form recognition, form-meaning connection, and collocation recognition) through listening to two songs. The effects of repeated listening to a single song (one, three, or five times) and the relationship between frequency of exposure to the targeted vocabulary items and learning gains were also explored. The results indicated that (a) listening to songs contributed to vocabulary learning, (b) repeated listening had a positive effect on vocabulary gains, and (c) frequency of exposure positively affected learning gains.

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“…Studies with a focus on the psychology of learning and motivation have found that using songs in FLE may lead to lowered levels of foreign language (FL) anxiety as well as to a positive affective emotional attachment of the learners, eventually resulting in higher intrinsic motivation, a crucial variable in any FL classroom (see, e.g., Syed, 2001;Sposet, 2008;Loewen, 2015;Dolean, 2016;Tomlinson, 2017). Finally, using pop music lyrics also seems to be embraced by FLE practitioners (Alisaari & Heikkola, 2017;Tegge, 2018), especially due to aspects such as their wide availability and easy accessibility (e.g. on lyrics webpages or on video platforms; Marone, 2018) and as they represent authentic textual material (as often demanded by syllabi) that also connects to the lifeworld of their learners 1 It is evident that English as a target language has the benefit of being "the" language of pop culture .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lyrics and language awareness

Werner

2020

NJMLM

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Commercially successful pop lyrics are an important part of students’ lives, represent authentic language material, are easily accessible, and may thus constitute a helpful starting point for various aspects of foreign language education. Despite this, they seem to be underexploited,especially when topics such as grammar instruction are tackled. This may be due to their (traditionally ascribed) “low culture” status and the undesired presence of allegedly ungrammatical content, notably in terms of non-standard features. Based on a corpus of c. 550,000 words, this paper will present an analysis of the salience of such features in Englishpop lyrics. The results suggest that the material studied actually features a rich array of nonstandard grammatical phenomena, such as multiple negation, ain’t as auxiliary, me instead of I, copula deletion, etc. (as commonly proscribed in English language education). From a pedagogical perspective, it is therefore argued that using lyrics in the classroom may offer students a welcome opportunity to engage with various types of grammaticality, introducing them to authentic language in a naturalistic way. More specific issues to be addressed with the eventual aim of raising students’ language awareness through working with pop lyrics are that assessments of grammaticality are (i) very much context-dependent, for instance in terms of acceptability of certain structures and variants in different registers (e.g. lyrics vs. conversation vs. formal writing) and (ii) may also differ across varieties of English represented in the lyrics (e.g. various British dialects and sociolects, African American English as represented in rap, Jamaican Creoleas represented in reggae, etc.).

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Pop songs in the classroom: time-filler or teaching tool?

Cited by 25 publications

References 3 publications

“The Song of Words”: Teaching Multi-Word Units with Songs

“The Song of Words”: Teaching Multi-Word Units with Songs

Incidental Vocabulary Learning Through Listening to Songs

Lyrics and language awareness

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