Teachers use music and songs in Foreign Language classes for several reasons. The main reason is the good atmosphere it creates in the classroom. Students relate to songs as part of entertainment rather than work and find learning vocabulary through songs amusing rather than tedious. This is true especially with pop songs which are part of youth culture. Better familiarity with these songs improves students’ status within the peer group and therefore stimulates learning. These songs also tend to deal with problems interesting to young people and the students identify with the singers and want to understand the words. Didactically songs are also useful in teaching the rhythm of the language and informing the students about the culture of that language’s speakers. The other issue is that even just playing music without words creates a relaxed atmosphere that enhances learning. The best example for this is the Suggestophobia method of Georgii Lozanov in which foreign texts are read dramatically with the background of several carefully chosen works of classical music. Lozanov claims that the atmosphere created by the music enhances the ability of the students to remember vocabulary words and thus shortens the study period of the foreign language.
The major problems that teachers have with using songs in the classroom is the non-standard grammar in many of the songs and the ‘non-serious’ image of the pop songs. The first problem is that the non-standard grammar will confuse the foreign language students. The answer to this in current research is that not all songs are suitable for foreign language classes. But students usually can deal with the non-standard grammar issue in most of the songs. On the contrary, the students find the exposure to the singers, as authentic foreign language speakers, useful. After all non-standard grammar is fairly common in daily usage of most languages and the students have to learn to deal with it in a language they learn. Indeed, the students prefer authentic foreign language songs to the songs created especially for foreign language classes. The second problem, that of the ‘non-serious’ image of pop music, was addressed by all the researchers working in the field. The teachers worry that their students will enjoy the music, but will actually learn less than by more traditional methods. This worry has been refuted by all the research done on the issue, dealing with different languages, different student populations and different levels of classes. The common agreement is that students learn the same amount of material by both methods. The main difference is that the students report learning through songs as much more enjoyable. This refutes several theories based on analysis of brain functioning, according to which music should considerably enhance the learning potential of the students. But it still encourages using the more enjoyable method in the classroom in order to enhance the motivation for learning. Since the results are roughly similar, this could help the teacher deal with the problem of creating a good learning atmosphere in the classroom, without compromising the level of learning.
The current research recommends using the students’ every day experience of foreign languages to enhance their learning. Pop music is an important component of that experience and makes learning a foreign language more fun. It encourages the students to take an active part in the learning process by contributing from their musical knowledge. Therefore, they become more confident in their learning ability and more motivated to continue learning the language.
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Prepared by Inna Shtakser, August 2001