Principles of using English songs in teaching English to first year students at Ho Chi Minh University of industry = Các nguyên tắc sử dụng bài hát tiếng Anh tr

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ---  --- VŨ THỊ HỒNG VÂN PRINCIPLES OF USING ENGLISH SONGS I

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

-  -

VŨ THỊ HỒNG VÂN

PRINCIPLES OF USING ENGLISH SONGS IN TEACHING

ENGLISH TO FIRST YEAR STUDENTS AT HO CHI MINH

UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY

CÁC NGUYÊN TẮC SỬ DỤNG BÀI HÁT TIẾNG ANH TRONG GIỜ DẠY TIẾNG ANH CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT TẠI TRƯỜNG

ĐẠI HỌC CÔNG NGHIỆP THÀNH PHỐ HỒ CHÍ MINH

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field : English Teaching Methodology

Code : 60 14 10

Hanoi – 2012

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

ĐẠI HỌC CÔNG NGHIỆP THÀNH PHỐ HỒ CHÍ MINH

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field : English Teaching Methodology

Code : 60 14 10

Supervisor : Dr Tô Thị Thu Hương

Hanoi – 2012

TABLE OF CONTENT

DECLARATION 1

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENT iv

LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES vii PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 3

3 Scope of the study 3

4 Method of the study 3

5 Design of the study 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1 Reasons why English songs should be used as teaching materials 5

2 Materials in foreign language learning and teaching 7

3 Principles of developing teaching materials 7

3.1 Materials should achieve impact 8

3.2 Learner’s attention should be drawn to linguistic features of the input 8

3.3 Materials should provide the learners with opportunities to use the target language to achieve communicative purposes 8

3.4 What is being taught should be perceived by learners as relevant and useful 9

3.5 Materials should take into account that learners differ in learning style and affective attitude 9

3.6 Materials should help learner feel at ease and develop confidence 10

4 Previous studies on using songs to teach English 11

4.1 Teaching grammar 11

4.2 Teaching Vocabulary 13

4.3 Teaching Pronunciation 13

4.4 Teaching listening 14

4.5 Teaching speaking, writing and reading 16

CHAPTER 2: A STUDY ON USING SONGS AS TEACHING MATERIAL IN TEACHING ENGLISH TO FIRST YEAR SUTDENTS AT HUI AND SUGGESTED PRINCIPLES OF USING SONGS TO TEACH ENGLISH 17

1 Research approach and questions 17

2 Participants 17

3 Data collection instrument 18

4 Procedures of data collection 18

5 Data analysis 18

6 Results of data analysis 19

7 Discussion 23

8 Suggested principles of using songs in teaching English 24

CHAPTER 3: PRINCIPLES OF USING SONGS IN TEACHING ENGISH TO FIRST YEAR STUDENTS AT HUI: AN APPLICATION AND EVALUATION 32

1 Putting the principles into use: teaching English to first year students at HUI 32

1.1 Some description of the pilot classes 32

1.2 Procedure 33

1.3 The application of the principles of using songs 33

2 A SAMPLE LESSON PLAN 34

3 Evaluation of the feasibility and suitability of the proposed principles in teachingEnglish at HUI 36

3.1 Procedure and data collection instrument 36

3.2 Data analysis and discussion 37

PART C: CONCLUSION 40

1 Summary Error! Bookmark not defined 2 Limitation of the study 41

3 Suggestions for further study 41

REFERENCES 41 APPENDIX 1 VII

APPENDIX 2 IX

APPENDIX 3 X

LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES

Pie chart 1: The usefulness of English songs in language teaching

Pie chart 2: The frequency of using English songs in language classroom

Pie chart 3: The effect of teaching English with songs on students‟ language

proficiency

Pie chart 4: The effect of using English songs on students‟ learning motivation Pie chart 5: The degree of language improvement thanks to the use of English

songs

Table 1: Aims of using songs in language classroom

Table 2: Activities with songs

Table 3: Difficulties when using songs to teach English

Table 4: Language components and skills improved thanks to the use of English

songs

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

As a result of the globalization, English nowadays is playing a more and more important role in helping people to communicate with others from all over the world As the common language of the whole world, English is an essential requirement for those who want to study abroad, work in a foreign country or company, or even to find a good job in local companies English is also the key for our country to integrate into the world and to catch up with developed countries in terms of economy, education, science and technology Being aware of this importance of English, all schools in our countries are putting more and more emphasis on teaching this language Like other universities, English is being taught at our university as a compulsory subject; therefore English counts for as many credits as the majored subjects Right when entering the university, freshmen are required to take a placement test to classify the level of English, and then they will be placed in different classes according to their English level, namely A1, A2, basic English 1, basic English 2 Among those, A1 and A2 take

90 periods for each class, basic English 1 takes 60 periods and basic English 2 counts for 45 periods For students whose result at the placement test is below mark 5 will have to study from the lowest level - A1 This means they have to study at least 285 periods Contrary to the long duration of learning English is the lack of motivation as well as interest in learning English of the students at our university This is quite easy to understand because most of the students at our university are non-majored English students Their English proficiency is quite low as a result of the passive, test-oriented learning style at their high school that

is just focusing on the main subjects taken in the entrance examination to the university In addition, teaching and learning method is also a cause of the students‟ demotivation of learning English Regarding the teaching methods, most

of the English teachers still keep the traditional teaching approach which focuses

on grammar and translation Not many communicative activities are organized in

class The traditional class – teacher centered still remains, hence students just sit silently and listen to teachers The English lessons are said to be boring, tiring and sometimes even tense Being aware of this negative learning and teaching condition, many teachers in our university are trying to change their teaching method by integrating different teaching approaches and using more interesting teaching aids such as pictures, flashcards, PowerPoint, games, stories and songs Among those, songs seem to be the most popular to students and also more frequently used by teachers than others However, the effectiveness gained through using songs is still not high as expected Although songs have been proved to be a very interesting teaching materials and have been applied in teaching in many European countries, this method still seems to be a new one for Vietnamese teachers in general and the teachers at Ho Chi Minh University of Industry (HUI) in particular Most teachers still meet difficulties in working out the way to exploit the maximum benefits of songs in English classroom It seems that teachers just spontaneously use English songs as an entertaining tool to relax students not a teaching aid Teachers fail to set a particular pedagogical aim or follow a specific rule of using songs Generally, songs are often played at the end

of the lesson when teaching and learning is finished and students are sitting to wait for the bell rang Sometimes teachers also let students listen to English songs at break time; hence not all students pay attention to the songs Sometimes songs are also put in the course books as an extra task such as listen to the song and fill in the blanks However, teachers tend to have different ways of carrying out this task While some teachers ignore this task and just let students sit and enjoy the music, other explain the instruction and let students listen to the song, get them to finish the task and then check as an exercise They rarely explain what students can learn from the songs or have no further activities or tasks for the students after having students listened to music Therefore students often forget the song right after listening or even if they are interested in the song, they do not know what to do with it In short, for most of the students at my university, they just regard songs as

a means of entertainment not a useful tool/source of learning English For teachers, most of them have not succeeded in exploiting the pedagogical benefits

of English songs except for the entertaining and relaxing benefits As a teacher of English at the university, I am also very interested in using songs as a teaching aid

in English lessons Learning that at present, songs are not effectively used in teaching English at HUI, I myself realize that in order to get optimal benefits from using English songs as a teaching tool, there should be some principles of using songs to teach English to guide teachers

2 Aims of the study

The study aims at helping teachers to exploit the pedagogical benefits of English songs to teach English at HUI To achieve this aim, the research is designed to obtain the two following objectives:

(1) setting out the principles of using English songs to teach English to first year HUI students through empirical research, i.e HUI English teacher survey and student evaluation;

(2) finding out the feasibility of applying these suggested principles of using songs to teach English to first year students

3 Scope of the study

The study mainly focuses on finding out the principles of using songs to teach English to first year students at Ho Chi Minh University of Industry It, therefore, does not focus on exploring the effectiveness of the principle application

4 Method of the study

The study followed qualitative approach and used mixed methods to collect data The following data collection instruments were used:

1 Teachers‟ questionnaire

2 Evaluation questionnaire for students

The questionnaire was designed for 20 English teachers from the Basic Science and Technology Department at Ho Chi Minh University of Industry The evaluation form was designed to elicit the evaluation from 100 first year students

at HUI who had involved in the English classes with the teachers applying the principles to use songs to teach English The data collection process lasted 2 weeks (teacher questionnaire) and in the last week (student evaluation) during the first term of the academic year 2012- 2013

5 Design of the study

This study contains three main parts as follow:

Part A is the introduction in which I would like a present the rationale of choosing this topic, the aim of the study, the scope of the study and the methods to be applied

Part B is the development which includes three main chapters:

 Chapter 1 is about the theoretical background related to the purpose

of the study

 Chapter 2 deals with investigating the situation of using English songs in teaching at HUI and finding out the principles of using songs to teach English for first year students at Ho Chi Minh University of Industry

 Chapter 3 is concerned with applying the proposed principles of using songs in teaching English at HUI and then evaluating the feasibility of these principles when applied in real teaching at HUI Part C is the summary of the major findings in Part 2 and suggestions for further study This part also contains the List of References and Appendices

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1 Reasons why English songs should be used as teaching materials

According to Larry M Lynch (2005), there are 9 reasons why songs are used to teach English as a foreign language such as the authentic and natural language, easily controlled time length and easy obtainment Besides, learning with songs students can have the chance to learn a variety of vocabulary contained

in the songs and be exposed to many different accents as well as different cultures Moreover, songs are considered to be fun and easily meet the need as well as interest of the students

Kevin Schoepp (2001) discusses the reasons that make songs become a useful tool of teaching English by compiling other researchers‟ point of view on this issue Three main reasons are:

Affective reason

Sharing the same point of view with Larry M Lynch on the matter that songs make students feel fun and interested, Steven Krashen (1982) gives out a deeper explanation based on his own hypothesis called The Affective Filter Hypothesis Basically Krashen‟s hypothesis explains how language learning is affected by affective factors This helps teachers understand why some students are interested in learning while others are not Not only Krashen but also many other teachers have long recognized that learner‟s positive attitude toward learning decide how much learners can improve their language proficiency Krashen (1982) explains that for optimal learning to occur the affective filter must be weak This hypothesis gives teachers a suggestion that they should provide a positive atmosphere conductive to language teaching Songs are one tool to achieve a weak affective filter and promote language learning Supporting for this idea, Lo and Li (1998) add that songs can blow into classroom a refresh and relaxing atmosphere

in which learners can develop their language skills

The belief that songs provide enjoyment and develop language skills comes from several other authors (Adamowski, 1997; Bechtold, 1983; Domoney & Harris, 1993; Griffee, 1992; Guglielmino, 1986; Lems, 1984; Little, 1983; Monreal, 1982) The enjoyment of learning language through song is directly related to affective factors

Cognitive Reasons

It‟s widely known that automaticity in language learning is one of the factors that help learners become fluent communicator Accroding to Gatbonton and Segalowitz (1988, p.473) atumomaticity is “a component of language fluency which involves both knowing what to say and producing language rapidly without pauses” Kevin Schoepp (2001) confirms that the main cognitive reason for using songs as teaching material is that songs can enhance learner‟s automaticity This is understandable because automaticity is traditionally believed to occur through repetition The nature of songs is fairly repetitive and consistent and, therefore, helps facilitate language learning as well For example, a song such as “Lemon tree” – a very famous pop song provides sample opportunities for students to focus

on the study of the present progressive in English Grammar with the lyrics containing a lot of sentences in the present continuous

Linguistic Reasons

In Kevin Schoepp‟s opinion, linguistic factor is also a reason that teachers use songs in the classroom By using songs, learners can be exposed to the informal or colloquial language which is often met in real life Some songs are excellent examples of colloquial English Let‟s take the song "My Best Was Never Good Enough" by Bruce Springsteen as an example This song is a prime example

of a song that demonstrates colloquial language use Students will hear many colloquial sentences such as "Every cloud has a silver lining." and "Every dog has

his day” in this song Hence, using songs can prepare students for the genuine language they will be faced with

Finally, two studies, Domoney and Harris (1993) and Little (1983) once again confirm the importance of music to language learning These two authors both found out that pop music exist apparently in the lives of EFL students and music is the major source of English outside the classroom The frequent use of English songs in classroom can enhance automaticity and positive affective filter

If students are exposed to songs which they enjoy, more learning is likely to occur since they may seek out the music outside of the classroom The repetition feature

of songs then helps to promote automaticity of colloquial language

2 Materials in foreign language learning and teaching

According to Brian Tomlinson (1998), many people misunderstand the term

“material” and take it for the course book; however “material” from Brian‟s point

of view refers to a much wider range of things This author states that “material” refers to “ anything which is used by teachers to facilitate the learning of a language”, therefore materials could be cassettes, videos, CD-Roms, dictionaries, grammar books, readers, workbooks or photocopied exercise Not stop there; materials can also be newspapers, food packages, photographs, live talks by invited native speakers and so on

From this point of view, songs are also considered teaching materials which can effectively support the teaching of foreign language

3 Principles of developing teaching materials

There are many ways to develop materials to enhance students‟ acquisition

of the second language However it is not easy to achieve the expected effectiveness when we develop materials in language classroom unless we follow some principles of materials development According to Tomlinson, (1998:2) for materials developers, “whatever they do to provide input they do so in principled

ways related to what they know about how languages can be effectively learned”

In the book “Materials development in language teaching” Tomlinson demonstrates some principles that material developers should take into consideration These principles are also the target pedagogical benefits that

effective materials should achieve In this research the researcher would like to

focus more on the principles that can be applied for using songs in language classroom, thus, the next section reviews these

3.1 Materials should achieve impact

Materials should have good influence on learners by bringing them curiosity,

interest and attention Brian also recommends some ways to achieve these

noticeable effects as below:

a, novelty which means something new to the learners

b, variety which means the teaching materials have to help break up the boring atmosphere that often exists in English class In order to do this, the author suggests teachers should use diverse sources of materials in a funny way that students haven‟t experienced before

c, attractive presentation with attractive colors, lots of white space and photographs

d, appealing content By this Brian means material developers should bring to the class interesting topics that attract students‟ attention It may be something new, universal to the students

3.2 Learner’s attention should be drawn to linguistic features of the input

According to Tomlinson as well as other researchers, when introducing to students any kind of materials, teacher should not forget to draw students‟ attention to the related linguistic features because helping students take notice of the linguistic features through materials can help them acquire language consciously or subconsciously step by step

3.3 Materials should provide the learners with opportunities to use the target language to achieve communicative purposes

Tomlinson (1998) analyzes that “learners should be given opportunities to use the language for communication rather than just to practice it in situations controlled by teachers and materials” According to Ellis (1990) “ideally teaching materials should provide opportunities for such interaction in a variety of discourse modes ranging from planned to unplanned”

Interaction can be achieved through activities such as:

- information or opinion gap activities

- post-listening and post-reading activities in which learners have to use the information from the text to achieve a communicative purpose

- Creative writing and creative speaking activities and so on

3.4 What is being taught should be perceived by learners as relevant and useful

Many researchers such as Stevick (1976), Krashen (1982) and Wenden (1987) have realized the importance of making students aware of the potential relevance and utility of the language and skills they are teaching In order to make the teaching points relevant and useful in the eyes‟ of students, teachers can study their interest as well as their aims of learning language Besides, perception of relevance and utility can be achieved by relating teaching points to the interesting and challenging tasks and presenting them in ways which could facilitate the achievement of task outcomes desired by learners

3.5 Materials should take into account that learners differ in learning style and affective attitude

Tomlinson (1998 :17) has listed out 9 types of learners with 9 different learning styles and asserted that different learners have their own favorite way of learning foreign language therefore it is very important to for the materials developers to cater for difference of learning styles in language learning materials These learning styles are listed as visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, studial, experiential, analytic, global and independent

Sharing the same idea with Tomlinson, Ellis (1994:46-50) adds that materials developers should not “assume that all learners can benefit from the same approaches as the good language leaner”

- Not only different learning styles but also affective attitudes have impact on the use of materials in language class Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982) state that “ the learner‟s motives, emotions, and attitudes screen what is presented in the language classroom … This affective screening is highly individual and results in different learning rates and results” (cited in Tomlinsion:1998) Tomlinson (1998) also supports that learner‟s attitude can be their attitude about the language, their teachers, their peers and their learning materials These factors play an important part in deciding the effect of the using materials in the lesson However learner‟s attitudes are unstable and variable Therefore, Tomlinson admits that catering for all of these affective attitudes and studying learners‟ difference in attitude about the materials is a challenging but necessary task for material developers Regarding the solutions for this issue, Larsen-Freeman and Long (1991) (quoted in Tomlinson: 1998) come up with an idea that is “ to diversify language instructions

as much as possible based upon the variety of cognitive styles and the variety of affective attitudes likely to be found among a typical class of learners”

3.6 Materials should help learner feel at ease and develop confidence

Tomlinson in his book “Materials development in language teaching” cites the opinions of Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982) on learners‟ language acquisition that “the effects of various forms of anxiety on acquisition: the less anxious the learner, the better language acquisition proceeds Similarly, relaxed and comfortable students apparently can learn more in shorter periods of time” It is no doubt that the learning atmosphere and students‟ psychology is a determined factor in language acquisition Therefore materials developers need to help learners feel at ease if they want their students to acquire the language maximally

4 Previous studies on using songs to teach English

It has been demonstrated that “music is a trigger that improves academic skills such as vocabulary and grammar and also develops linguistic abilities” (Martin, 1983; Mitchell, 1983; Jalongo and Bromley, 1984)

Li and Lo (1998) also have come to conclusion that songs provide a break from classroom routine and that learning English through songs develops a non-threatening classroom atmosphere in which the four language skills (listening, reading, writing and speaking) can be enhanced

Recognizing the valuable benefits as well as appropriate features of English songs, a number of researchers have made use of English songs to enhance their students‟ language proficiency in terms of language components and language skills

4.1 Teaching grammar

It can be said that learning grammar is one of the most challenging part in learning English for students because learning grammar is not only difficult but also hard to memorize Grammar lessons seem to be the most boring ones for students To deal with this problem, there have been many researches on how to motivate students to learn grammar, one of them is the research carried out by Ha (1999) In her research, she focuses on using songs and role play to teach grammar

to 11th form students in the communicative approach Regarding the literature review, the author spent all of the space on discussing about grammar and aspects related to it without mentioning the effects of using songs in teaching grammar or reasons why we should use songs to in grammar lessons

In the application part, the author gave out some suggestions on song selection and teaching procedure with songs Like other researches, Ha (1999)

recommends that choosing songs should be based on the appropriate length,

rhythm, lyrics and content Regarding the suggested teaching procedure, the

suggestions are quite common and there‟s no special recommendation on using songs procedure related to teaching grammar She just simply suggests these

following steps: introducing the songs, delivering the lyrics to students, singing or playing the songs once or twice and then checking learner‟s comprehension of the song, having learners‟ practice singing the song

Thu (2005) once again exploits songs to motivate students in learning English grammar In her study, she has clearly pointed out the benefits of songs in teaching grammar to both teachers and learners Among those, there are some main remarkable benefits such as providing more choices for teachers among techniques used in teaching grammar, helping students memorize the grammatical rules more easily and more enjoyably Thu (2005) also states that choosing songs

for the grammar lesson is a very important step According to her, choosing

songs must be based on students’ level, students’ age, students’ interest, grammar points to be studied and features of the song Undoubtedly, these are

very brief and useful suggestions for teachers when selecting songs to teach grammar as well as other skills Besides, the author also focuses on presenting activities designed form songs to teach Grammar From her point of view, songs

can be used for all of the phrases in grammar lesson such as warming up,

presentation, practice and production This is totally right, however what a pity

when the author demonstrated how to use songs in the warming up and production stage, she seemed to lose her way It turned out that the author mainly used songs for activities focusing on speaking not grammar For the practice part in grammar lesson, Ha (2005) suggested a lot of interesting activities with songs such as identifying particular parts of speech, giving the right form of the words in the brackets, multiple choice, blank filling, and creating new lyrics and so on Generally, the most common aspect of English grammar exploited in practice activities is English tenses

It can be said that although the effect of English songs to teaching grammar has been proved, the matter of how to use songs to teach grammar still needs a lot

of discussing and researching

4.2 Teaching Vocabulary

Generally, students often have trouble in learning vocabulary They often find it hard to remember the meaning of new words or often forget them very quickly after learning Learning vocabulary through English songs is also a very interesting way for learners Chuanxuan Shen (2009:5) explains that when coming across an impressive song, learners will be eager to understand the content and sing after the singer or sing it themselves This leads to their further motivation to learn all the new words appearing in the song By this way, their vocabulary will

be naturally improved Thorn Bury (2002) adds that “In lyrics, words usually appear in context, the sound of new words is easily remembered along with the melody of the song and by listening to the song, students are exposed the new words many times” Definitely, the usefulness of songs to teaching and learning vocabulary is undeniable This has been affirmed in the research of Huyen (2002) and Chuanxuan Shen (2008), however not many suggestions on designing tasks for teaching vocabulary were mentioned in these two studies Dagmar Siskova

(2008) recommends that “ for teaching vocabulary, the most appropriate

activities are writing a dialogues using the words of the song, dictating a song, using a song for gap-fill, cloze, or correction, using songs into project work, practicing songs for pronunciation, intonation and stress”

4.3 Teaching Pronunciation

Pronunciation is always a challenge to Vietnamese students as they find it impossible for them to pronounce correctly like native people That‟s the reason why learners are often afraid of pronunciation lessons and feel unconfident when pronouncing words or speaking English with other people One more time, songs are found to be an effective and exciting source for teaching pronunciation Veronika Rosova (2007) concludes that songs can be of great help in teaching

three areas of difficulties in pronunciation, namely sounds, words and connected

speech To be detailed, Veronika claims that “the rhymes in songs provide

listeners with the repetition of similar sounds, and when students choose to listen

to the song again and again, they are exposing them to these sounds, repeating them, getting better at recognizing them and producing them” For learning words,

In Veronika‟s opinion, songs fitting the music and containing memorable rhythms

can help students associate with the syllables, the stress in the words

Besides, songs can be useful for teaching three other elements of

pronunciation such as word stress, rhythm and intonation (Mai: 2010) As she

explained “students like to imitate singers; therefore, students would likely to imitate their ways of making sounds” Additionally, the song‟s tune going from low to high, up and down is a good example for students to follow the ways of making stress and intonation in English In Mai‟s study, she limited the range of songs that can be used to improve learner‟s pronunciation and just focused on the

“traditional songs” as a teaching material This is a limitation of the study Solely using traditional songs can restrict the source of songs for teaching and make learners easily get bored with music and the lesson Like other aspect of language, pronunciation can be taught with many kinds of songs of different kind of music

as long as they bring about the pedagogical benefits

There are some kinds of tasks teachers can design from songs to teach English according to the difficulty level of English songs as below:

Difficult to hear the text matching the words with their pronunciation Easy and short text mistake correction

Difficult or long text multiple choice

4.4 Teaching listening

There have been a lot of studies proved that songs can be used as an effective teaching tool in listening lessons Researchers both nationally, Huyen (2002: 68), Huyen (2006), Trang (2006) and internationally De Kock (1989:123), Fiveash (1989:195), Lynch, L.M (1993:23), James (2000: 36-37) and many others

suggest the use of music to enhance students‟ listening proficiency Music provides students with practice listening to different forms of intonation and rhythm Generally speaking, most of researches focus on two main important issues including how to choose a suitable song and how to design tasks from songs With regard to choosing songs, Trang (2006:33) shared the same ideas with

the way of choosing songs for teaching other aspects of English like grammar She

also advised teachers to pay attention to the difficulty of the song, the time available, the goal of the lesson, teachers and student’s interest Huyen (2006)

also emphasized that choosing songs must be done carefully however she just suggested regarding only two elements related to songs like the content and the level

Taking tasks designed from songs into consideration, according to Trang (2006), activities composed from songs can be used in pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening She also adapted some activities designed by Bilsborough (2000) in teaching listening skill Some main activities which can be exploited in the while-listening stage are fill in the blank, multiple choice question, put the items into the correct sequence, sentence halves, song dictation, comprehension questions, true or false, jigsaw, spot the difference and so on

Among these above tasks, fill in the blank seems to be more commonly used than others due to the appropriateness of difficulty level and entertainment Song dictation, sentence halves or put the items into the correct sequence are quite challenging to students Once the tasks designed are too difficult for learners, they will distract learners from enjoying the music and demotivate learners to study Murphey stresses that teachers should “be careful not to kill the material by using too much of serious work” (1992: 10) Therefore although there are a lot of tasks which can be designed from songs, teachers still need careful consideration in terms of the appropriateness of the tasks and the songs

Another noticeable thing is that these activities are designed with the main aim of practicing in the while-listening stage However, teachers can also flexibly

use them in other stages such as warm-up or post-listening in the form of a game

to cheer the students or to help them revise the knowledge

4.5 Teaching speaking, writing and reading

It‟s easy to understand when grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation is improved through English songs, other skills, especially speaking skill will be therefore improved Chuanxuan Shen (2009) demonstrates that singing an English song demands familiarity of a number with phonological rules such as liaison, loss

of explosion, assimilation, voicing, deletion, and so on which help students enhance their speaking fluency According to Shen (2009), songs also help refresh the boring atmosphere in writing lesson Teacher can ask students make a new version of the original song on their own by following the same tune, imitating the format of the lyrical lines Therefore, writing the lyrics by imitation might be a effective way of digging out students‟ creativity in language The right song will arouse their empathy, stimulate their inspiration and light their passion to express their experiences and emotion in the same way

In general, the previous studies have shown that there are many ways to use songs to teach English and songs are used to teach a variety of aspects of English Normally, songs are used with the aim of improving students‟ proficiency in terms

of language components such as: grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation; and language skills Due to the features of English songs, songs can be exploited to enhance listening skill much more than other skills like reading and writing and speaking In order to achieve these above targets of using songs in English classroom, teachers need do a very important job that is always discussed in previous studies is choosing the appropriate song and designing tasks from the songs

CHAPTER 2: A STUDY ON USING SONGS AS TEACHING MATERIAL

IN TEACHING ENGLISH TO FIRST YEAR SUTDENTS AT HUI AND SUGGESTED PRINCIPLES OF USING SONGS TO TEACH ENGLISH

1 Research approach and questions

The study was mostly qualitative using questionnaire survey, complemented with student evaluation The questions set for the survey were:

1 What are HUI English teacher‟s attitudes toward the use of English songs in

their teaching?

2 How do they often use English songs to teach English?

3 What is the effect of teaching English with songs on their students‟ language proficiency?

4 What are their difficulties when using songs to teach English?

5 What solutions do they suggest for the problems of using songs to teach

English?

2 Participants

The study was carried out with the participation 20 English teachers coming from Ho Chi Minh University of Industry Among those, there are eight English teachers coming from the Basic science and technology Department at Ho Chi Minh University of Industry, Thai Binh campus and other 12 English teachers coming from the Basic science and technology Department at Ho Chi Minh University of Industry, Thanh Hoa campus Four are male and the others are female The oldest teacher is at the age of 45 and the others are quite young with the age varying from 26 to 35 Despite teaching at different campuses, these teachers follow the same teaching module; use the same course book and teaching materials since they are teaching at the same university, HUI

3 Data collection instrument

Questionnaire for teachers

This research was conducted as a qualitative study, using questionnaire for teachers The questionnaire is used in the research since it is one of the most popular instruments in gathering data Moreover, because the informants are from different campuses namely Thai Binh and Thanh Hoa, questionnaire turns out to

be a quite convenient instrument for the researcher to collect the data via email in

a short time

The questionnaires for teachers are used to investigate the necessity of using songs in language classroom, the way teachers use English songs in language classroom, the difficulties that they may encounter while using songs and

to search for solutions to those difficulties These issues are respectively analyzed

in eight questions in the teachers‟ questionnaire (see appendix 1) Based on the results of investigation, the researcher can draw out some principles of using songs

in teaching English

4 Procedures of data collection

The data was collected as the step below:

Step 1: The researcher delivered the questionnaire to teachers to investigate their opinions on using songs to teach English, their encountered difficulties as well as their experience of using English songs

Because of the small number of English teachers at the researcher‟s university, other English teachers from other schools are invited to get involve Eight questionnaires are delivered directly to 8 English teachers at the researcher‟s campus and 12 questionnaires are sent via email to the teachers of Ho Chi Minh University of Industry at Thanh Hoa campus The information was collected within one week in the third semester of the school year 2011 – 2012

5 Data analysis

Data from questionnaires were analysed quantitatively via Excel for descriptive statistics in the form of pie chart, percentage and frequency Data from

student evaluation was analysed interpretively to gauge the feasibility of the principles putting into practice

6 Results of data analysis

a Teacher‟s attitude toward the use of English songs in their teaching

From the pie chart we can see that most of teachers consider English songs useful teaching material with the percentage of 90% answering yes when being questioned if English songs are useful or not On the contrary, 10 % the teachers

think that songs are of no use in language teaching (Pie chart 1)

90%

10%

Yes No

b Teacher‟s manner of using English songs to teach English

Regarding the frequency of using songs in language classroom, 70% of the teachers being asked say that they often use songs to teach English 30% of the teachers seldom use song as a teaching material and no one says that they have never used English songs in their class It can be concluded that songs are quite

commonly used by teachers at HUI (Pie chart 2)

The usefulness of English songs in language teaching

The frequency of using English songs in language classroom

Before using songs, all of the teachers have awareness of setting out the aims of using English songs with the total 100%

Table 1: Aims of using songs in language classroom

Motivate students to learn English 100%

Enhance students‟ listening skill 75 %

Enhance students‟ speaking skill 30%

Enhance students‟ writing skill 10%

Enhance students‟ reading skill 0%

Enhance students‟ pronunciation 50%

Enhance students‟ vocabulary 45%

The table above illustrates the aims that teachers set out when using songs It can be seen that motivating students to learn English is the most common aim of using English songs in classroom with the total percentage - 100% of teachers choosing this aim in the questionnaire The second popular target of using songs is

to make students relaxed 95% of the teachers claim that they play English songs

to help students feel comfortable and refresh when they are stressed or tired of learning Noticeably, many teachers use songs for the teaching purpose, in which listening counts for the highest percents – 75%; ranking the second is pronunciation with 50% and followed by vocabulary and grammar with the same percentage of teachers choosing - 45% There are 30% of the teaching use English songs to teach speaking Writing skill is the language components that teachers hardly aim at teaching when using songs with only 10% and reading is the skill that no teachers find possible to teach with songs Finally a considerable

percentage of teachers (45%) say that they sometimes use songs to kill the time because they don‟t know what to do with the students with the time left at the end

of the lesson

Table 2: Activities with songs

Play songs and let students listen only 35%

Teach students to sing the song 40%

Taking the activities teachers can do with songs into consideration, table 2 shows that the most common tendency is to design tasks from songs 80% of those being asked choose to create exercises from songs for students The teachers add that exercises can vary according to the songs, the topics or issues being taught and students‟ level 55% often get their students to play games with English songs and the popular game with song is “clap the board” – students will have to listen to the song and clap on the words they hear on the board 40% admit that they often play English songs in the class and then help their students to learn to sing them There were 35% of the teachers say that they have no father activities with the songs except for playing the songs and getting students listen to

c The effect of teaching English with songs on students‟ language proficiency

Pie chart 3: The effect of teaching English with songs on students‟

language proficiency

The pie chart illustrates the effect of using English songs in language classroom according to 4 scales: very much, much, not much and not at all The results gained through teacher‟s questionnaire show that English songs do have a positive influence on learners‟ language acquisition; however the result is not very satisfactory To be detailed, 35% of the teachers think that their using of English songs help students improve their English proficiency a lot while 45% say that their students‟ language proficiency have improved but not much and 20% claim not at all

d Difficulties when using songs to teach English

Table 3

Difficulties of using English songs as a teaching material Percentage

Students are uninterested in English songs 15%

It‟s hard to design tasks with songs 95%

Using songs in class is time consuming 80%

Strict regulations at university prevent teachers from using

songs in class

85%

As can be seen from the table above, teachers often encounter difficulties when using English songs as a teaching tool The most common problems are choosing songs and designing tasks from songs This has been stated by 95% of the informants They often find it hard to choose suitable songs to teach The second regularly encountered problem which is chosen by 80% of the teachers is using songs in language classroom is time consuming Besides 70% of them claimed that students „low level of English, especially listening ability is also the reason for the low effectiveness of using English songs A very little percentage of those being asked think that students are not interested in English songs, just 15% think students‟ dislike of English songs is a problem Most of young learners