3337 HOW YOUNG VIETNAMESE ADULTS LEARN ENGLISH VOCABULARY THROUGH ENGLISH SONGS Tăng Kim Tiên Khoa Tiếng Anh, Trường Đại học Công Nghệ TP Hồ Chí Minh (HUTECH) Supervisor ThS Đỗ Thị Hồng Nhung ABSTRAC.
HOW YOUNG VIETNAMESE ADULTS LEARN ENGLISH VOCABULARY THROUGH ENGLISH SONGS Tăng Kim Tiên* Khoa Tiếng Anh, Trường Đại học Công Nghệ TP Hồ Chí Minh (HUTECH) Supervisor: ThS Đỗ Thị Hồng Nhung ABSTRACT Having a rich source of English vocabulary plays a pivotal role in successful English learning Many Vietnamese students regard watching movies and reading books as effective learning methods whereas others show their preference for listening to English songs to widen their vocabulary Therefore, the objective of the research is to investigate how young Vietnamese adults from 18 to 25 years old learn English vocabulary through English songs by online surveying 50 students from different universities in Ho Chi Minh City The result of this study is to show how young Vietnamese adults learn English through English songs Keywords: English songs, vocabulary learning, young Vietnamese adults INTRODUCTION English is currently spoken by 1.35 billion people around the globe (either natively or as a second language) which makes it the most spoken language worldwide in 2021 (Statista) In 2016, there is approximately 53.81% of Vietnamese can speak English, it is just behind Singapore, Malaysia, India and South Korea (VN Economic Times 2016) Nevertheless, in 2020, "the world's largest ranking of countries and regions by English skills" Swiss Education First (EF) reported that Vietnam’s rank fell significantly (13 places) and was listed in the limited English proficiency category (score 473 out of 800) (Nguyen Quy 2020) In order to have successful communication, learners should be able to start and control the conversation, besides grammar, vocabularies are the foundation used to build up a sentence However, there are around 600,000 words in the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which leads to an unable-to-answer question “How to learn vocabulary effectively?” (Education First English Live) In the research “Building vocabulary using pop songs”, the author Kayyis 2015showed that there are some requirements that help to learn and teach vocabulary effectively: The teacher, the student, the material, the method and technique, and the media There is a fact that repetition strategies have long been used in learning and teaching vocabulary, whereas songs and rhythms have repetitive nature which makes them ideal vocabulary learning media for learners Moreover, 3337 songs are present mostly everywhere because they play a crucial role in human life, especially when it is easier to approach thanks to the internet In Vietnam, in 2019, there are 64 million internet users (Datareportal 2019) and 18% of them are people from 18 to 25 years old (Statista 2019), and the average time they spend listening to stream music is hour 11 minutes (Datareportal 2019) The first step of successful vocabulary learning by songs is that they can sing along with it which means they can remember the lyrics containing a certain number of vocabulary In conclusion, this research is to have more information about how young Vietnamese adults from 18 to 25 years old learns English vocabulary through English songs DEFINITION AND THE IMPORTANCE OF VOCABULARY “Vocabulary can be defined as the words of a language, including single items and phrases or chunks of several words which covey a particular meaning, the way individual words Vocabulary addresses single lexical items—words with specific meaning(s)—but it also includes lexical phrases or chunks” – (Tesol n.d.) It is suggested that there are many elements that contribute to the success of ELF learners Nevertheless, vocabulary has been known as the core component that forms four foundation skills: reading, listening, speaking, and writing of all language learners from the beginning Wilkins in Harmer (2002) stated that “Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.” and Oxford (1990) claims that vocabulary is considered as a “sizeable and unmanageable” factor for English language learners or native speakers, “because of tens of thousands of different meanings” HOW DO YOUNG VIETNAMESE ADULTS FROM 18 TO 25 YEARS OLD LEARN ENGLISH VOCABULARIES THROUGH ENGLISH SONGS? 3.1 How participants choose music streaming applications? Based on research by Chris Richards posted on the Washington post in 2019, he wrote that “Many musical encounters on YouTube begin with curiosity”, and then, YouTube starts to involve in users' experiences, and recommends related content to them As English learners, Youtube not only provides high-quality visual content but also supports subtitles, which help users who are not native to such content can understand the flow of the video As a result, Youtube has been the first choice of young people for so many years when they are asked about their favorite music streaming application, and students who joined this research survey are not an exception There are approximately 67% of them choose Youtube as their most-used streaming application when they learn vocabulary via songs 3.2 How participants choose Genre to learn English vocabularies? 3338 75.8% of people who joined the survey chose “Pop” as their favorite genre when learning English vocabularies While “Country” and “R&B and Soul” had the same record as about 39.4% According to Ballard, M E., Dodson, A R., & Bazzini, D G (1999), “Pop music reaches a larger audience than either heavy metal or rap music does” and its lyrics address many themes in daily life from love, sex, friendships, so on and “Country music emphasizes lyrics while de-emphasizing melody and tonal complexity, so the songs generally tell a clearer story than rock songs do” (DiMaggio, Peterson, & Esco, 1972) Therefore, with a slow melody which helps learners more easily to follow and the themes of the lyrics are familiar with their daily life, it can obviously be the first choice when students need to improve their vocabulary 3.3 How participants choose a song to learn vocabulary? Student will start with their favorite song to have more motivation (66,7%) rather than choosing a popular song so they can learn rival words (12%) or a song that has a slow melody which can be easier to follow (15%) Phisutthangkoon, K & Panich, M (2016) have found that when students’ favorite songs are played in classroom, they feel motivated, and they are willing to absorb new vocabularies and store the information in their long-term memory which leads to a better learning process 3.4 How participants learn new vocabulary from songs? When participants encounter a new vocabulary during listening to a song, 60,6% of them with check dictionary to know the word’s meaning and how to pronounce them while 36% of them try the shadow the singer’s pronunciation Along with that 51,5% of participant can only sings along with the singer some parts of their favorite song without looking at the lyrics and (by learning and remembering), and 42% of them confidently confirm that they can sing the whole song because they have learnt the lyrics by heart Furthermore, 46,9% of participants expect to learn to 10 new vocabularies from a song and 65.5% of them believe that this is an effective process to learn new vocabularies: 1st - Play your favorite song /a random popular song 2nd - Open lyrics 3rd - Try to sing along with the singer 4th - Check vocabulary meanings/ pronunciation 5th - Try to learn by heart the lyrics 6th - Try to sing without watching lyrics sometimes 3.5 What are participants’ perspectives? 3339 63.5% of participants believe that “listen and fill in the blanks worksheet” is one of the most effective ways to learn vocabulary in the classroom and 51% of them agree that learning vocabulary through songs is less pressure than traditional learning techniques in the classroom and 33% of them can confidently sing a song’s lyrics rather than doing a daily conversation in English Besides listening to music, “Reading English books” and “watching movies with English substiles” are the two most recommended learning activities by participants CONCLUSION In summary, learning English is a prolonged process that requires learners to invest their time and effort Therefore, English songs can be a wise choice to stay motivated while learning vocabulary Having a general knowledge of how young Vietnamese adults learns English, instructors can find a better solution in class to attract students’ attention and improve their engagement REFERENCE [1] Ballard, M E., Dodson, A R., & Bazzini, D G (1999) Genre of music and lyrical content: Expectation effects The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 160(4), 476-487 [2] DiMaggio €?, Peterson, R A., & Esco, J., Jr (1972) Country music: Ballad of the silent majority In R Denisoff & R Peterson (Eds.), The sounds of social change (pp 38-55) Chicago: Rand McNally [3] Education First English Live (n.d.) 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Vocabulary and Its Importance in Language Learning https://www.tesol.org/docs/books/bk_ELTD_Vocabulary_974 [11] VN Economic Times (2016, November 13) Vietnam among easiest countries for English speakers to visit http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/travel/166894/vietnam-among-easiest-countries-for-english-speakersto-visit.html 3341