Using songs and poems in teaching English into motivate students at Van Noi High school

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES * * * NGUYỄN THỊ THÚY HÀ USING SONGS AND POEMS IN TEACHING ENGLISH TO MOTIVATE STUDENTS AT VAN NOI HIGH SCHOOL (SỬ DỤNG BÀI HÁT, BÀI THƠ TRONG DẠY TIẾNG ANH NHẰM GÂY HỨNG THÚ CHO HỌC SINH TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT VÂN NỘI) M.A MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY HANOI, SEPTEMBER, 2011 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES * * * NGUYỄN THỊ THÚY HÀ USING SONGS AND POEMS IN TEACHING ENGLISH TO MOTIVATE STUDENTS AT VAN NOI HIGH SCHOOL (SỬ DỤNG BÀI HÁT, BÀI THƠ TRONG DẠY TIẾNG ANH NHẰM GÂY HỨNG THÚ CHO HỌC SINH TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT VÂN NỘI) M.A MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 601410 HANOI, SEPTEMBER, 2011 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Candidate’s statement i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Table of contents iv List of tables viii List of abbreviations ix PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Aims of the study Method of the study Significance of the study Scope of the study Design of the study PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Motivation 1.1.1 What is motivation? 1.1.2 Motivation and attitude 1.1.3 Motivation in second language learning 1.2 Learning English through songs 1.2.1 Reasons for using songs in the language classroom 1.2.2 How can songs be used in language teaching? 1.2.3 Choosing suitable songs and teaching procedure 1.3 Learning English through poems 10 1.3.1 Reasons for using poems in language classroom 10 1.3.2 How can poems be used in language teaching? 11 v 1.3.3 Choosing suitable poems and teaching procedure 1.4 Previous studies in ULIS and difficulties to apply the idea of teaching 12 14 English through songs and poems in high schools CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 15 2.1 Setting of the study 15 2.2 Research Questions 16 2.3 Research Methodology 16 2.4 Participants 17 2.5 Instruments to collect data 17 2.5.1 Questionnaires 17 2.5.2 Students’ Reflections 18 2.6 Data Collection Procedure 19 2.7 Methods of Data Analysis 20 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 21 3.1 Pre – questionnaire data and analysis 21 3.1.1 Students’ Motivation and Attitudes to Learning English before the 21 treatment 3.1.2 Students’ Attitudes towards Learning English through Songs and Poems 23 before the treatment 3.2 Changes in Students’ Motivation and Attitudes 24 3.3 Attitudes towards learning English through songs and poems after the 26 treatment 3.4 Songs and poems that students like to learn 28 vi 3.5 The Degree of suitability of songs- and poems-based activities as ranked 30 by the students 3.6 Students’ reflections on learning through songs and poems 31 3.6.1 Students’ worksheets 31 3.6.2 Students’ sayings about learning through songs and poems: 31 3.6.3 Students’ collections of their favorite songs 32 PART C: CONCLUSION 34 Major Findings 34 Pedagogical Implications 35 2.1 Integration of songs in the teaching English in high schools 35 2.1.1 Choosing the song for the topic of the unit that the song is taught 35 along with 2.1.2 Designing tasks for the songs 2.1.3 Procedure to teach a song Integration of poems in the teaching English in high schools Choosing the poem for the topic of the unit or for the pronunciation or 36 36 37 37 grammar items in the unit that the poem is taught along with: Designing tasks for the poems: 37 Procedure to teach a poem (These steps are quite like the ones to teach a 38 song) Limitation of the study 38 Suggestions for further study 38 REFERENCES 40 APPENDICES I Appendix 1: Tieng Anh 10 Teaching Schedule I vii Appendix 2: English through songs and poems schedule III Appendix 3: Pre – questionnaire V Appendix 4: Post – questionnaire VI Appendix 5: Examples of poems in the English textbook at Lower Secondary VIII School Appendix 6a-j: 10 worksheets of teaching English through songs and poems IX – XXVIII Appendix 7: List of Internet links to learning English through songs and XXIX poems in Vietnam Appendix 8: Students’ reflections: (extract from some of students’ song books): XXXII Thu Huyen’s diary XXXI Nguyen Thi Tu Linh’s song book XXXIII Nguyen Thi Phuong’s song book XXXVII LIST OF TABLES viii Table 1: Students’ motivation and attitude to learning English before the treatment Table 2: Attitude towards learning English through songs and poems before the treatment Table 3: Students’ motivation and attitude to learning English after the treatment compared with those before the treatment Table 4: Attitude towards learning English through songs and poems after the treatment: Class 10B only Table 5: Songs and poems that students preferred and their ranking Table 6: Learning relevance towards the English through songs and poems activities LIST OF ABBREAVIATIONS ix ULIS: University of Languages and International Studies EFL : English as Foreign Language TESOL: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages G1 : Experimental group G2 : Control group X : Treatment T1 : Pretest T2: Posttest PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale It is commonly believed that motivation is key to a student‟s success In today‟s classroom, keeping learners motivated is a main concern for educators Motivation stimulates the interest of students and inspires them to take part in classroom activities Therefore, one of the teacher‟s responsibilities is to find ways to motivate the students In the motivation literature, a variety of motivational strategies have been suggested, but scholars also advise teachers to apply those strategies selectively taking into consideration the learner variables such as their age, their level of proficiency, the type of the language teaching course, etc Understanding how students are motivated can help teachers engage them in the classroom “Engagement is 99% of teaching If you get students‟ attention and keep it, the lessons themselves are so much easier!” (Nicole Foley, personal interview, September 16, 2006) Knowing that importance of learning motivation, numerous studies have been carried out to investigate students‟ motivation and strategies to motivate students to learn Taking an example, among 740 M.A theses in the library of Faculty of Post – Graduate Studies in University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS), there are about 24 theses on this topic It is clear that students‟ low motivation is common problem in schools, not only at Van Noi High School Various ways have been tried to motivate their students to learn English such as using folktales, songs, language games, visual aids, examination taking strategy training, etc And they got the certain results There are two things that make humans different from all other animals They are language and music (Tieng Anh 10,2006:124) Music, along with the other arts, invites the imagination to work, and provides learners with opportunities to make choices, both collaboratively, and alone Music enhances our students' motivation to learn, and improves upon their engagement and retention In fact, teenagers and music are inseparable Therefore, songs have been widely used in language teaching Songs relax and get rid of negative emotion Many songs are poems in themselves or the lyrics of the songs are very rich in poetry Both songs and poems are authentic materials which are written with the writers‟ real emotion and the words are chosen for their beauty and sounds are carefully arranged According to Murphey (1992:3) songs are highly memorable and motivating in language learning and “its motivational appeal is present to many different types of learners.” Although poems are not as popular to students as songs, poetry promotes language acquisition (Holmes, V L & Moulton, M R, 2001) For the above reasons, a quasi-experimental research was conducted in Van Noi High School to test the hypothesis of using songs and poems to motivate students to learn English Aims of the research The research aimed: - To find out how the use of songs and poems in teaching English enhances the students‟ motivation in learning English - To find out what kind of songs and poems can make high school students motivated - To find out which class activities are suitable for using songs and poems at a high school Method of the study With the aim to investigate the extent to which the use of songs and poems help to motivate the grade 10th students in learning English, a quasi – experimental method was employed with two instruments to gather data, questionnaires (the pre- and post-treatment questionnaire) and students‟ reflections The pre-questionnaire was used to measure students‟ motivation and attitude to learning English and leaning English through songs and poems at the beginning of the research Data obtained from the questionnaire were used as the criteria to determine the experimental group and the control group to make the research more comparable The postquestionnaire was administered at the end of the research to see if there was any increase in students learning motivation and what their favorite songs and poems as well as their preferred learning-English-through-songs-and-poems activities were Significance of the study The study provides information about whether the use of songs and poems in the classroom helps to increase the students‟ motivation in learning English, and if songs and poems are useful, how classroom activities can be designed with songs and poems This could be a contribution to the understanding of the value of songs and poems as a motivational strategy Scope of the study With the scope of a quasi-experimental using two 10th grade classes, extraneous variables could not be controlled Therefore, the research results not have high generality and may only match the situation at Van Noi High School With the limited time of two months, no more than five songs and five poems have been taught to experimental group along with their English Appendix 6j Lesson plan: English Pronunciation Poem (Teil Drei) teacher gives handouts of the poem to students teacher plays the audio recorded poem for students to listen while looking at the poem, pay attention to the bold and italic letters students practice reading along with the tape Teacher explains some stress and pronunciation rules in the poem Teacher calls some good students to read aloud each small parts Students are asked to practice the poem at home, try to learn by heart some favorite parts XXVII Here is more pronunciation Say the a in gas quite short, Ration never rhymes with nation, Bought remember rhymes with thwart, Say prefer, but preferable, Drought must always rhyme with bout, Comfortable and vegetable In daughter leave the g h out B must not be heard in doubt, Wear a boot upon your foot Debt and dumb both leave it out Root can never rhyme with soot In the words psychology, In muscle, s and c is s, Psychic, and psychiatry, In muscular, it's s k, yes! You must never sound the p Psychiatrist you call the man Then remember it's address Who cures the complex, if he can With an accent like posses G in sign must silent be, In architect ch is k In signature, pronounce the g In arch it is the other way Please remember to say iron Please remember, say towards So that it'll rhyme with lion Just as if it rhymed with boards Advertisers advertise, Weight's like wait, but not like height Advertisements will put you wise Which should always rhyme with might Time when work is done is leisure, Sew is just the same as so, Fill it up with useful pleasure Tie a ribbon in a bow Accidental, accident, When you meet the Queen you bow, Sound the g in ignorant Which again must rhyme with how Choir must always rhyme with wire, In perfect English make a start That again will rhyme with liar Learn this little rhyme by heart Relative, but relation, Then say creature, but creation Appendix XXVIII List of Internet links to learning English through songs and poems in Vietnam Learning English through songs in Vietnam http://www.tienganhonline.com/index.php/Table/GIẢITRÍ/VỪANGHEVỪAHỌC/ http://hoctienganhtructuyen.net/hoc-tieng-anh-theo-bai-hat http://forum.ueh.vn/forums/285-Learning-English-by-songs http://loidich.com/mienphi.php?r=788745 http://hoctienganh.org.vn/hoc-english-qua-bai-hat.html http://www.tienganh123.com/hoc-tieng-anh-qua-bai-hat/p/2 http://www.globaledu.com.vn/Song.aspx http://baidich.com/?id=11042 http://thunglunghoahong.com/ForeignLanguage/?action=Detail&lID=18&tID=71 8&cID=728&Page=1 10 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTUckOzJZLw 11 http://aroma.vn/hoc-tieng-anh-qua-cac-bai-hat-tieng-anh-bat-hu-hay-nhat/ Learning English through poems in Vietnam http://tienganh.com.vn/showthread.php?t=22007 http://tailieu.vn/xem-tai-lieu/doc-tho-hoc-ngu-phap.180763.html Appendix XXIX Students’ reflections: (extract from some of students’ song books): What students thought and said about learning English through songs and poems: Nguyen Thu Huyen from Class 10B (the original was in Vietnamese, which was scanned and enclosed in pages XXXII - XXXIII ) “My diary ( extract from Huyen’s diary on May 7th, 2011) English is our must to learn It is very important To learn English well, we have many ways Among the ways, learning English through songs and poems is an interesting and useful one, which helps us improve our English When we did not know English, we felt nothing when listening to English songs But since our new teacher taught us how to learn English through songs and poems, our class have been specially interested in English songs And when teacher’s assignment was about copying and translating our favorite songs, it was our hot topic everyday in class We copied the lyrics, sang the song, and corrected other’ mistakes… All the members looked like professional singers The atmosphere of the coming – to – end days of the school year was really exciting Everyone seemed to have a common thinking, common action That is the grateful saying to the one who has great influence on changing our view in English Our classmates now become closer to one another through the singing activities The also learn some more benefits from learning English As for me, I love this subject than ever, find it very interesting when listening to English songs We want to say thank you to you, our dear teacher!” Two examples of students’ copy of song lyrics, Vietnamese translations and their feelings when listening to the songs (extracts from students’ song books) When you believe – Nguyen Thi Tu Linh from Class 10B- pages:XXXIV  XXXVII A little love – Nguyen Thi Phuong from Class 10B –pages: XXXVIII  XL Two CDs of songs to learn – collected from the students’ most favorite songs with the lyrics were designed for the listening task XXX XXXI XXXII XXXIII XXXIV XXXV XXXVI XXXVII XXXVIII XXXIX Two CDs of songs to learn – Favorite song collections from 10B XL XLI