English Songs And Classroom Activities Used To Motivate Non-Major English Learners Learning Listening

ENGLISH SONGS AND CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES USED TO MOTIVATE NON-MAJOR ENGLISH LEARNERS LEARNING LISTENING HỒ THỊ KIỀU OANH College of Foreign Languages – Danang University ABSTRACT For most Vietnamese learners of English, Listening has been regarded as the most difficult subject to learn. The problem may result from the difference in pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and also from the speaking speed of the native speakers of English. This could discourage these learners especially non- major English learners from learning Listening effectively. In order to solve the problem, this study is carried out in which the data are collected from the survey questionnaires and interviews. The researcher intends to deal with the question of how to motivate learners by the use of songs with the appropriately designed classroom activities. The sample population is 60 learners from the two first - year non-major English classes (30 learners from each class) of Da nang University. The descriptive and comparative method is used, accompanied by the qualitative and quantitative approach. From the result of the study, it is hoped that English songs could be proved to be used as a supplementary teaching material to teach Listening to those non-major English learners of Vietnamese to motivate them learning it better. I. RATIONALE It cannot be denied that Listening is an important skill of communicative process and it has a close relationship with Speaking. This is because a good listener makes a good speaker. In fact, we start listening as a baby and then continue listening and speaking as an adult. According to Saricoban (1999), effective listening may “save time, prevent problems and strengthen relationships” with other interlocutors. Therefore, teaching and learning Listening skill for learners of a foreign language in general and English in particular especially for non-major English learners is of vital importance because they could meet with inevitable difficulties in pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary which they have not mastered. That is the reason why teachers have made their great effort and trial to retain their learners’ interest in the Listening lessons and also to prevent learners from getting bored of them. Barry (1997) in his book named How to teach English assumes that a good teacher is the one who knows how to teach learners the way to learn effectively by themselves and help them involve themselves with interest in the learning process. In his research, Barry suggests such major ways to maintain students’ interest as audio-visual aids including objects, flash cards, pictures, film, video, and some language activities like games, songs, story-telling, projects. Among these items, the author of this article believes that songs could be the most available and the simplest to be used to attract the learners’ interest in their Listening lessons. In addition, there is hardly a research into the use of songs in classrooms to improve the learners’ Listening learning especially for non-major - English Vietnamese learners. As a result, this study has been carried out with the aims of proving that songs could be used as a supplementary teaching material in teaching Listening to the first-year non-major Vietnamese learners of English at Danang University in order to motivate them learn Listening better.

1 II. HYPOTHESIS This thesis is designed to test the following hypothesis: • Songs could be used to enhance Vietnamese learners’ motivation in learning Listening in English and to improve their top-down Listening skill concerning grasping the general meaning of a passage, inferring ideas and guessing words’ meaning supplemented by the bottom-up Listening skill relating to discriminating sounds, identifying words and comprehending grammatical structures.. III. OBJECTIVES OF STUDY The study is to: 1. Investigate the effectiveness of the use of English songs in teaching Listening to non-major Vietnamese learners of English. 2.Offer some implications of how to use English songs to teach Listening to these learners. IV. SCOPE OF STUDY This study is restricted to the investigation of how to motivate non-major English learners with English songs not with other kinds of language activities such as poems, stories or games. V. METHODOLOGY

v.1. Research Method The major methods used in this study are descriptive and comparative accompanied by the qualitative and quantitative approach. Data could be collected from survey questionnaires, interviews and tests. The questionnaires and tests are designed for students to complete. Sometimes interviews could be employed to seek for the learners’ clearer answers with their explanations.

v.2. Subject Due to the limited time and resource, the humble sample population involves 60 Vietnamese learners of English from the two second-degree classes at Danang University; they do not major in English but learn English as a compulsory subject and are at the same level at the first semester of the global five semesters of the two - and - a half - year course.

v.3. Sources of Data The data could be obtained from songs of various topics: love, friendship, parental relationship related to soothing music of predictable rhythms with simple lyrics and content. These songs could be used at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of a Listening lesson and experimented within 1/3 of the total cycle of the Listening section in the General English Material named Know how 2 (composed by Therese & Angela, 2003). These English songs could be used alternately at intervals for the Listening sections that are thought as difficult and boring for the learners.

v.4. Procedures The procedure of the study could follow the following steps: - Step 1: The researcher teaches 2 classes of 30 learners for each at the first semester of the global five semesters of the two - and - a half - year course. She gives them a Listening test as a pre-test and got their opinion on their Listening skill. - Step 2: She then teaches these learners Listening together with three other skills of Reading, Speaking and Writing for the total 60 periods. During that time, one class is

2 taught Listening with the use of English songs as a supplementary material while the other class has Listening lessons from the students’ book only. - Step 3: A survey is carried out on the former class about what they thought of using English songs in Listening lessons. Finally, the same test is given to both classes as a means to measure the effect of using songs in teaching Listening lessons.

v.5. Questionnaire and Test In order to achieve the above objectives of the study, a questionnaire has been designed including the following five questions focusing on the five major aspects that the researcher would like to investigate: Question 1: is to find out the students’ attitude towards English songs. Question 2 and 3: are to work out the learners’ favorite activities when they listen to English songs. Question 4: is to bring out the learners’ awareness of the effectiveness of using English songs in teaching Listening. Question 5: is to discover the reasons for the unexpected failure if any of using songs in teaching Listening so that the teacher could avoid them and gain success in their teaching Listening in English with songs. VI. DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION The aim of the questionnaire is to explore the learners’ attitudes towards the use of English songs in the process of learning Listening in class. What the learners think about the use of English songs and to what extent they get engaged in Listening in classroom would prove whether or not songs could be used in teaching and learning Listening effectively. All the survey questionnaires are handed out to the learners who have access to English songs in class. The results could be shown as follows. . VI.1. Learners’ Attitude Towards English Songs From Table 1, it could be seen that most of the learners’ (86.66%) are interested in English songs. Yet there are still 11.66% showing their indifference in the songs and even 1.68% of them showing their dislike to English songs. These assume that English songs are too difficult for them to listen and too complicated to understand and that they Table 1 Learners’ Attitude Towards English Songs Learners’ Attitudes % Like very much 51.66 Like a bit 35 No idea 11.66 Dislike 1.68 prefer listening to Vietnamese songs. These illustrations are of vital importance as they are related to the learners’ later learning process.

VI.2. Learners’ Manner of Listening to English Songs and Their Favorite Activities on Listening to Songs Relating to the learners’ manner of listening to English songs, Table 2 shows a surprising result. Only 5.01 % of the learners listen to songs for fun or relaxation. The others have tried to associate it with practicing their Listening skill. As much as half of them Table 2 Learners’ Manner of Listening to Songs Learners’ Manner of Listening to Songs %

3 Try to take notes 13.33 Listening attentively and remember content 31.66 Try to catch words or lyrics of songs 50 Listen for relaxation and fun 5.01 endeavor to catch the key words of the songs and 31.66% of them have tried to remember the content of the songs while listening. Noticeably, 13.33% of them make their great effort to write down the main ideas of the songs though they know it is not easy to do so. As a result, it could be seen from the result that most learners show their very positive manner of listening to English songs due to their great love for English songs to practise their Listening skill. Table 3 Learners’ Favorite Activities on Listening to Songs Interest 1 2 3 4 5

Activities Answering comprehensive questions 30% 18.33% 21.66% 13.33% 16.68% Summarizing songs’ content 21.66% 18.33% 11.66% 20.00% 28.35% Gap-filling 16.66% 18.33% 15.00% 18.33% 31.66% Discussing songs’ meaning 21.66% 25.00% 25.00% 16.66% 11.68% Dictation 31.66% 18.33% 31.66% 11.66% 6.69% Arranging jumbled lines 8.33 25 11.66 21.66 33.35 For the sake of helping learners improve their Listening skill on their listening to English songs, the researcher as a teacher has tried designing some activities. Learners are then asked to assess the favorite activities ranging in an increasing degree of interest. Table 3 Learners’ Favorite Activities on Listening to Songs Interest 1 2 3 4 5

Activities Answering comprehensive questions 30% 18.33% 21.66% 13.33% 16.68% Summarizing songs’ content 21.66% 18.33% 11.66% 20.00% 28.35% Gap-filling 16.66% 18.33% 15.00% 18.33% 31.66% Discussing songs’ meaning 21.66% 25.00% 25.00% 16.66% 11.68% Dictation 31.66% 18.33% 31.66% 11.66% 6.69% Arranging jumbled lines 8.33 25 11.66 21.66 33.35 It could be seen from Table 3 that learners’ interest in classroom activities while listening to songs are remarkably different. The favorite activity to them is to arrange jumbled lines. Up to 55.01% have found it the most interesting and easier than other activities. Gap-filling ranks the second with nearly 49.99% learners finding it both challenging and exciting. Surprisingly, summarizing the songs’ content comes out as the third popular listening activity. Nearly half of the learners (48.35%) have chosen it as the interesting one because this task could help them have a general understanding of the songs and they could withdraw some implications from these songs such as advice, moral lessons …Unexpectedly, dictation is the least favored activity. Among 18.35 % of learners who express their interest in this activity, merely 6.69% of them like it very much. The rest claim that they did not have much interest in this task since it is either monotonous and tedious. As for comprehensive questions, few learners (30.01%) show their preference for it maybe because of its difficulties and complicatedness which may require the integration of various sub-skills to do.

4 VI.3. The Effectiveness of Using English Songs in Teaching Listening Skill Thanks to the above activities, second-degree learners could become interested in their Listening lessons. This could be illustrated through the following table in which the effectiveness of using English songs in teaching Listening skill are shown arranging in an increasing level of agreement. Table 4 The effectiveness of English Songs in Teaching Listening Skill Agreement 1 2 3 4 5 Effectiveness Make the Listening lesson more relaxing 5.00 6.66 6.66 35.00 46.66 Make the Listening lesson more enjoyable 1.66 11.66 8.3 33.33 45.00 Develop confidence in listening to English songs 10.00 18.33 20.00 28.33 23.33 Help learners listen to English better 5.00 8.33 16.66 48.33 21.66 Help recognize key words while listening 1.66 0.00 35.00 45.00 18.33 Help learners pay greater attention to word stress 5.00 3.33 35.00 45.00 11.66 Develop learners’ inferring skill 0.00 15.00 21.66 28.33 35.00 Help learners discriminate English sounds better 11.66 25.00 38.33 13.33 11.66 Table 4 reveals that the majority of learners agree that English songs could make their lessons both more relaxing (81.66%) and more enjoyable (78.33%). This shows that songs could offer the learners the feelings of relaxation and joy, which helps increase their motivation to learn Listening better. Over 50% of learners believe that English songs could help them listen to English better (69.99%). In addition, songs could help them recognize key words when listening (63.33%) and develop their guessing or inferring skill (63.33%). This top-down approach is extremely necessary as catching key words and guessing could save learners’ time and effort to realize the content of the listening text and they could do their listening task better. Moreover, 51.66 % learners could feel more confident and 56.66 % have paid more attention to the word stress thanks to English songs. This bottom-up approach is indispensable for a more effective listening since learners could not listen well when they are lacking confidence and cannot recognize the word stress. Only 24.99 % of learners agree that songs could help them distinguish English sounds better. Although this figure is still humble, this bottom-up approach shows that the use of English songs partly contribute to the improvement of the English Listening skill.

VI.4. Some Disadvantages of Using Songs to Teach Listening Learners’ answer to Question 5 in the survey reveals at least two problems that make them unable to completely improve their Listening skill. In the first place, lovely music of the song could distract learners from listening to its lyric. Therefore, they could not concentrate on the words of the songs. This state is common among 11.66% respondents. In the second place, assimilation happens so frequently that many learners especially those with poor pronunciation find it very hard to recognize the songs’ words. About 33.33 % of the learners complain that they sometimes could not catch the words though these words are easy and previously learned. In general, it could see to some extent that though songs are helpful in improving learners’ Listening skill, they have some problems that should be noted when songs are used as a type of teaching material. VII. TESTS’ RESULT ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION The Listening tests are aimed at finding out what progress the songs could help learners to make in their Listening skill. The time for doing the test is within 15 minutes.

5 The test is carried out on two classes: the class with English songs (A) and the class without English songs (B) in two different points of time - at the beginning (Pre-test) and at the end (Post-test) of the term. After the tests are collected and marked, their scores are analyzed in terms of frequency distribution to discover the range of marks each class has in order to make sure the progress level of each class. Similarly, the results of the post-test are interpreted and compared with those of the pre-test. And then the standard deviation (sd) is assessed to measure the degree of dispersion. These procedures could help the author investigate the degree to which the test scores are deviated from the mean then find out what effects the English songs could have on teaching and learning Listening. • Frequency Distribution (Pre-test) Table 5 indicates that the marks are ranged from 2 to 8, in which marks 5 and 6 are the most common and learners in class B seem to be of being more similar at a little bit over the average level while class A has more good marks. This could be shown in the table where the bad marks (2, 3) occur more frequently in class B while good marks (7) are found out more commonly in class A though the modes reveal that class B seems to be better than class A as its mode of 6 is higher than that of class A which is 5. Table 5 Frequency Distribution (Pre-test) Class A Class B Score Testee % Score Testee % 1 0 0.00 1 0 0.00 2 1 3.33 2 2 6.66 3 0 0.00 3 3 10.00 4 6 20.00 4 6 20.00 5 7 23.33 5 5 16.66 6 6 20.00 6 7 23.33 7 6 20.00 7 4 13.33 8 4 13.33 8 3 10.00 9 0 0.00 9 0 0.00 10 0 0.00 10 0 0.00 The mode : 5 The mode: 6 The mean: 5.7333 The mean: 5.2000 Table 6 Correlation The mean of 5.7333 reveals that class A is rather better than class B the mean of which is 5.2000. Besides, the means show that the learners are only at average level. The standard deviation of 1.48660 and 1.68124 indicates a very small range of scores, which implies a narrow range of ability of students in both classes. • Frequency Distribution (Post-test) Table 7 shows that there is a shift in the mark range of the two classes, in which the lowest mark is no longer 2 but 3 and the highest mark increases to 9. This positive sign shows the progress of the two classes in their Listening skill. This is proved more persuading by the mean which is one point higher than that of the pre-test. Nevertheless, the mark of 10 is still not reached. Class A is inferior to class B in the below average marks but it has exceeded class B in the above average marks. Furthermore, for the pre-test mode, class A is at the second position after class B with the mode of 5, the trend is reversed at the post-test. Therefore, class A seems to override class B in their Listening skill with English songs.

6 Table 7 Frequency Distribution (Post-test) Class A Class B Score Testee % Score Testee % 1 0 0.00 1 0 0.00 2 0 0.00 2 0 0.00 3 1 3.33 3 2 6.66 4 3 10.00 4 4 13.33 5 3 10.00 5 4 13.33 6 8 26.66 6 7 23.33 7 9 30.00 7 6 20.00 8 4 13.33 8 4 13.33 9 2 06.66 9 3 10.00 10 0 0.00 10 0 0.00 The mode : 7 The mode: 6 The mean: 6.3666 The mean: 6.0666 Table 8 Correlation Class Number Mean Standard Deviation A 30 6.3666 2.0988 B 30 6.0666 2.8722 Comparing with the mean of the score of the learners’ pre-test, we could see that while class B has made a slight progress from 5.2000 to 6.0666, class A has made much progress with a rise in marks from 5.7333 to 6.3666. This difference in the mean scores between the pre-test and post-test reveals that after a term in which the teacher uses songs to teach Listening, the learners’ skill is remarkably improved. However, there is a rapid change in the standard deviation of class A and B at the post-test: 2.0988) and 2.8722 compared to that in the pre-test: 1.48660 and 1.68124. The standard deviation in the post-test shows that the range of ability among learners of class A is narrower or class A has a more uniform level of listening or they learn better (with the higher number of learners having more good marks) whereas class B does not. Generally, the better result of class A enables us to conclude that English songs could to some extent help learners learn Listening in English more efficiently. VIII. CONCLUSION

VIII. 1. Summary of Major Findings After analyzing the data, the result could be summarized as follows. Firstly, it is undoubtedly that songs could help much in motivating learners to learn Listening better. Nearly all participant learners are activated in the Listening lessons. They are more active, industrious, and more involved in any activity designed in the lesson. The ambiance of the class is therefore more interesting. The learners have agreed that they feel like listening more than before. And amazingly, English songs offer learners a chance to be much more engaged in the Listening lessons. Secondly, songs also prove to be an effective approach to enhance learners’ top-down skills such as general comprehension of the listening content, inferring or guessing complemented by such bottom-up listening skills as word recognition, awareness of word stress. In fact, learners no longer listen to the tape or record passively but they start using these sub-skills in handling the Listening tasks such as: gap-filling, correcting mistakes and jumble tasks.

7 VIII. 2. Implications VIII. 2. 1. How to Use Songs as Supplementary Materials? In order to help learners learn Listening in English better, the following implications could be helpful for teachers. VIII.2.1.1. Choosing Suitable Listening Materials Popular Songs with positive contents could be used. Also, they should be enjoyable and classified into various topics: love, friendship, family, homeland …Various tasks could be designed with a song according to the level of difficulty of the Listening. For example, for difficult texts and difficult for learners to hear, rearranging the jumbled lines could be suitable; for difficult texts but easy to hear for learners, limited listening practice (gap- filling) could be used; for easy texts but difficult for learners to hear, predictive gap filling with listening to confirm could by preferred; for easy texts and easy to hear for learners, listening comprehension questions could be possible. VIII.2.1.2. Varying Teaching Methods According to Different Listening Lessons’ Aims A variety of listening topics not only provides learners with words or vocabulary but also offers them a chance to practice speaking after listening in English in that they could use these words to express their opinions about the topics given with their classmates in pair-work or in group-work. In addition, the songs could be utilized to introduce, practice and consolidate the grammatical points such as tenses, sentence patterns, parts of speech … This could help improve their knowledge of grammar, which could make learners more confident in using it. Moreover, English songs could be employed for translation practice. Teachers could ask learners to translate the songs into Vietnamese after listening as a post - listening task. This could give them an opportunity to further understand the content, the culture features of the songs and especially the authors’ viewpoint of the world. More importantly, thanks to English songs, learners could compare the writing style in music and that in daily communicative English. VIII. 2. 2. Tasks Designed from Songs a. Correcting Mistakes In this case, learners have to listen to the song, then find and correct their mistakes or errors. This task helps learners review and strengthen the grammatical and lexical points of the lesson. b. Vocabulary Learning Vocabulary learning is an activity that is seldom paid much attention in most language classroom. In this way, songs could be of great help. Indeed, various words concerning a particular theme or emotion appear in a song. Teachers could then write the name of the song on the board and then ask learners to write down any words they think can appear in the song and after that they are required to listen to the song and finally to think of a cluster of words. c. Jumbled Words or Lines Learners have to listen to the song and then rearrange the jumbled words or lines in it to make the song meaningful. This could help improve the learners’ knowledge of the cohesion and coherence of the songs. d. Cloze or Gap-filling This may be a very preferred task since it helps improve learners’ listening comprehension and also recall the language items. In this task, learners are required to fill

8 in the blanks in the songs. The blanks could be of a grammatical or a lexical item. Before listening to the song, learners are asked to read it once and predict what is in the blank. Then they have to fill in the blanks with the correct word when they listen to the song. e. Grammatical Review In some songs, particular grammatical features occur with great frequency. These songs, could therefore be used to reinforce a particular structural pattern that has been taught in the former lessons. For this activity, teachers could ask learners to listen to a song then identify the grammatical point appearing in the song. f. Choose Correct Answers Certain songs could be in the form of a story, which are suitable for the multiple choice task. In this case, learners are required to listen to the song and choose the correct answer to a question. Later they are asked to retell the story in the song with the words or grammatical points they have learned from the song. g. Musical Dictation Songs could be a good substitute for prose passages in dictation exercises. Yet, songs for this task should be simple and sung at a low speed. To carry out this task, learners are asked to listen to the tape or disk and then write down the word. In brief, in spite of some unexpected problems such as music noise, learners’ distraction from the task due to the exciting music and the assimilation of sounds in some cases, the use of English songs in teaching Listening could be proved feasible for Vietnamese learners of English in general and for those non-major learning English as a foreign language in that they could help motivate these learners to learn Listening better. Within the scope of this reporting article, I would like to present the following as one of the Listening lesson plans suitable for the second-degree Vietnamese learners of English. Song: My Old Dad (Michael & Catherine) Stage Technique Aim/Strategy Warm-up: 5’ Teacher introduces the song, - Lead learners into the lets learners talk about their topic of the song. father First and second listening: Learners listen to the song and - Listen for the main content 10’ identify the main idea and and grammatical points grammatical points in it. Third listening: 5’ - Teacher delivers to learners - Listen for details the song hand-outs with some - Further focus on the blanks grammatical points such as: - Learners work out the past simple, special missing words individually structure: S. + ask/tell/+ Od and then in pair: + (how) + V We never …(1)…… him in - Improve learners’ the mornings and he always knowledge of phrasal verbs …(2)…home late.Then he … (do the crossword) (3)…..and …(4)…… the (1) saw paper and …(5)…… the (2) came, (3) sat crossword while he (6)……. (4) read He never …(7) us with our (5) do, (6) ate homework but he …(8)….. (7) helped me how to swim, and he …(9) (8) taught

9 … me to be patient. I guess I (9) told …(10)… a lot from him. (10) learned My old Dad, he was one of the (11) went good guys. He was nobody’s (12) was hero but he was special to me. (13) loved Every summer we (11)…… to (14) sit Blackpool, except when he … (15) watch (12)……unemployed. He … (16) was (13)….to (14)…..and …(15) (17) enjoyed …the sunset. That (16)…one (18) was thing we both …(17)..He (18) (19) made …. always very gentle, (20) was nothing ever ..(19)….him (21) was mad. He (20)…..never rich or famous, but I ..(21)…. proud of my old Dad. My old Dad, He was one of the good guys. He was nobody’s hero, but he was special to me. Post-listening: 10’ - Learners listen and sing - Enjoy the song along the tape or record. - Consolidate the grammar - Learners translate the song points: tenses, structures. into Vietnamese. - Practise translation.

VIII. 3. Suggestions for Further Research Due to the time and resource constraints, the study mainly focuses on how English songs could be used to teach Listening to non-major English learners. Hopefully, this study could be a starting point for further study of the effectiveness in using English songs to teach Listening to English major learners. REFERENCES • In English [1] Barry S. (1997). How to Teach English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [2] Saricoban A. and Metin E. (1999). “Songs, Verse and Games for Teaching Grammar” in The Internet TESL Journal. http//iteslj.org/Techniques/Saricoban-Songs.html. • In Vietnamese [3] Đỗ Minh Hùng (2004). “Dạy kỹ năng nghe hiểu qua bài hát tiếng Anh” in Tạp chí Ngôn ngữ và đời sống số 6(104) 2004. Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản Chính trị quốc gia. SOURCES OF DATA [1] Michael S. and Catherine W. (1991). The New Cambridge English Course 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [2] Therese N. and Angela B. (2003). English Know-How 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [3] Pham Thi Tho and Nguyen Mau (1995), A Collection of English Songs, Volume 3, Ho Chi Minh city: Ho Chi Minh Publisher.