I. Omniglot blog entry ”Foreign Language Music”
Entry dated 8/24/06 with various reader comments about listening to songs in languages being studied. Artists/musicians mentioned include: X-Japan (Japanese), Sigur Rós, Björk (Icelandic), Clannad, Altan (Irish), Cheb Mami (Arabic), DDT, Mashina Vremeni, Nautilus, B-2 (Russian), Rammstein, Kraftwerk, Die Prinzen (German), Orphaned Land (Hebrew), Andrea Bocelli, Toto Cutugno (Italian), Raj Kapoor, Mohammed Rafi, Lata Mangeshkar (Hindi), Rabindra-Sangeet (Bengali), Mísia, Mariza, Cristina Branco, Mafalda Arnauth, Amália Rodrigues (Portuguese Fado), Marta Sebastyen (Hungarian), Hamelmal Abate, Teddy Afro (Amharic)
Even music without words is useful because it 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 face is the non-standard grammar in many of the songs, which may confuse the foreign language students. On the contrary the non-standard grammar of authentic foreign language speakers is fairly common in daily usage of most languages and the students have to learn to deal with it in a language they learn.
Compared to traditional teaching methods in the classroom, the students report learning through songs as much more enjoyable, although both forms of the learning may be equally effective. However, music is a more enjoyable method and can enhace the motivation for 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.
III. Music Lingua (Foreign Language School for children; Spanish, French, German)
Music Lingua classes use music, movement, storytelling, drama and art to present thematic concepts and key vocabulary. The emphasis is on hearing the spoken language, learning the songs, and in the process, learning target vocabulary and responding to commands.
Using Music in FL Instruction (Multilingual Mania, Blog for Multilingual Parenting and Education)
The relationship between music and words makes learning song patterns easy and effective. Use music to teach foreign language while covering grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, reading and listening comprehension. Boost interest and confidence.
Selecting Songs: Choose songs that include only about 10% unfamiliar words (the other 90% should be at level of student); vocabulary categories on two related levels, introducing one broad category (like relationships) and several sub-categories, such as romantic, familial, and professional; songs with repeated structures, such as choruses and hooks; specific grammar topics, such as subject-verb agreement, gender-number agreement, idioms, irregular verb conjugations.
Exercises
Listening Comprehension: Use a copy of the song lyrics with about ten to fifteen words missing (replace them with blanks). Play the song twice or three times and fill in the blanks
Writing: Play a movie clip in class that includes expressive music, write a movie script to fit the soundtrack.
Grammar: Create a worksheet of a song’s lyrics with missing verbs, including a word bank with at least two conjugations of each missing verb. Fill out a worksheet, then play the song several times to correct mistakes by listening carefully.
IV. Ask MetaFilter – Foreign Language Music for Fun and Learning
Various recommended musicians and songs.
V. The Role of Music in Second Language Learning: A Vietnamese Perspective (Mark Huy Lê)
It is argued that music, particularly songs, is an encoding of cultural values and ideology which need to be viewed critically if foreign music is used in teaching a second language in Vietnam.
Music is an essential part of human existence. Different kinds of birds have different cries, songs and melodies to communicate about their world. Similarly music is used by human beings to express their thoughts and feelings about their inner world as well as their social world.
In the context of education, music has become a popular subject in primary and secondary education and it is an established academic subject in tertiary education. However, research on the role of music in second language learning is surprisingly still in its embryonic stage while its popularity is strong and its impact on society is readily recognised.
THE ROLE OF MUSIC IN LEARNING
Halpern (1999, p1,) states that “of the many factors that influence learning, few are as far-reaching – or little understood – as sound and music”. Its entertaining function is widespread in many human activities, individually and collectively. According to Neuenfeldt (1998), Aboriginal musicians…have been introducing Aboriginal knowledge and perspectives into schools at all levels by performing and teaching with the Aboriginal musical instrument ‘didjeridu’. The music incorporates an empowering social context in an entertainment format to convey indigenous interpretation of Australian life.
Harwood (1998) argues that context affects both the musical content children learn (choice of repertoire, stylistic conventions) and how they attempt to learn it (problem solving skills and strategies). Through exposure to multiple contexts where music learning occurs, (formal and informal, school, home, church, playground) children acquire different understandings about what it means to be a music maker and learner.
Music generally manifests in tune, melody, rhyme, and lyrics. The role of music can be divided into two aspects: participant-orientated and performance-orientated. The former refers to the joy that music brings to each individual as an active music experiencer.
Personality, emotion and self-esteem are powerful affective factors in human learning. Human beings are emotional creatures. It is only logical, then, to look at the affective (emotional) domain for some of the most answers to the problems of contrasting the differences between first and second language acquisition.
Suggestopedia was introduced by Lozano (1979) which stresses the significance of mental calmness in learning. Suggestopedia is a method of second language teaching that capitalises on relaxed states of mind for maximum retention of material. Music plays a vital part in this teaching method. For example, Baroque music, with its 60 beats per minutes and its specific rhythm creates a kind of “relaxed concentration” for active learning (Ostrand & Schroeder, 1979, p. 65).
The role of music in learning can be described in terms of enhancement of social harmony, motivation force, and tool for learning.
Enhancement of social harmony: One of the most important factors for achieving teaching and learning effectiveness is social harmony among learners. In a classroom, children often sing together to celebrate birthday, to play games together, to appreciate the feeling of togetherness.
Motivation force: Music is used to soothe the mind, to relax the mind and body. Music enables learners to be free from pressure and stress.
Tool for learning: Music is deliberately used to teach language, society and culture. Songs encode cultural meanings, inspiration, and worldviews. In other words, songs tell thousands of human stories.
Language is Music (website of multilingual author Susanna Zaraysky)
The Effects of Songs in the Foreign Language Classroom on Text Recall and Involuntary Mental Rehearsal (Claudia Smith Salcedo, Louisiana State University)
This study investigated the effect of music on text recall and involuntary mental rehearsal (din) with students from four college-level Beginning Spanish classes. Two groups heard texts as songs, one group heard the same texts as
speech, and one group was the control group. For the text recall variable, a cloze test was administered at the end of each song treatment to determine total words recalled. Students from one of the music groups heard the melody of the song while testing. For the din variable, students were asked to report on the amount of this phenomenon experienced.
Data was collected to answer the following questions: (1) Is there a significant increase in text recall when that text is learned through the use of songs?, (2) Is there a significant difference in delayed text recall for students who learned the text with song, as compared to those who learned the text with spoken recordings?, (3) Is there a significant difference in the recall results when one group of students from the song groups hears the melody of the song during the recall test?, and (4) Is there a significant difference in the occurrence of involuntary mental rehearsal after listening to song rather than text?
Immediate recall of text showed higher scores for the music class in all three songs. This difference reached significance in Songs 1 and 3. Delayed text recall showed no significant difference between the classes.
There was no advantage observed for the group that heard the background melody during testing
Overall results for the din occurrence showed a significant difference between the classes. Students in the classes that heard music reported a higher occurrence of this phenomenon than did those who heard only spoken text.
Students of the melody group reported a significantly higher frequency than did students from the text group.
These findings suggest that the use of songs in the foreign language classroom may aid memory of text. The results evidenced that the occurrence of the din is increased with music, and therefore may be a more efficient way to
stimulate language acquisition.
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