Investigating Song-Based Language Teaching and Its Effect on Lexical Learning
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INVESTIGATING SONG-BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING AND ITS EFFECT ON LEXICAL LEARNING by FRIEDERIKE ANNA GERDA TEGGE A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Victoria University of Wellington 2015 1 i Abstract The present thesis addresses the following question: Can popular songs as they are currently used in second and foreign language classrooms benefit lexical learning? Lexical learning is defined as the acquisition of new vocabulary as well as the consolidation and further elaboration of familiar words and phrases. To answer this research question, three methodologically distinct studies are reported. In the first study an international questionnaire explored teacher cognitions as well as actual teaching practices involving songs. The responses of 568 informants in 41 countries indicate that a majority of respondents believe in the usefulness of songs for language learning and that many respondents utilize songs in class for clearly defined pedagogical purposes, including vocabulary learning. The questionnaire also elicited information from the respondents about the way they incorporate songs in lessons, including details about how often a song is played and what types of form- and meaning-focused activities are used to engage learners with the lyrics of a song. The second study investigated the lexical characteristics of teacher-selected songs and the vocabulary learning opportunities they afford. For this purpose, a corpus of 635 songs used for ESL/EFL purposes, comprising 177,384 tokens, was compiled and analysed. Results indicate that teacher-selected songs are short, repetitive and relatively undemanding as far as lexis is concerned compared to other authentic text genres. Knowledge of the 4000 most frequent word families of English provides 98% coverage of the running words in this song corpus. Little difference was found in terms of the overall vocabulary demands between songs intended for use with beginners, intermediate and advanced learners. The third study investigates whether participating in a song-based lesson results in higher verbatim text retention compared to a lesson based on a poem or a prose text. For the sake of ecological validity, the procedures and the materials used in the classroom intervention study were informed by the findings of the teacher questionnaire (study one) and the song corpus analysis (study two). Results indicate that a song-based i language lesson but also a poem-based lesson result in significantly higher recognition and cued recall of verbatim text than a lesson based on a prose text. In response to the overall question, this thesis provides evidence that songs as they currently tend to be used by language teachers around the world indeed benefit certain aspects of lexical learning, perhaps in particular the entrenchment in memory of already (half-)familiar words in association with their phraseological patterning. It is argued that, while certain structural characteristics of songs (and poems) have the potential of rendering text (and the lexis therein) memorable, it is the way that songs tend to be exploited in the classroom that capitalizes on this mnemonic potential. ii Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my doctoral supervisors Professor Frank Boers and Dr Averil Coxhead. Thank you for your guidance, insight, and encouragement, your always open doors and creative ways to help me when I was “lost in the woods”. I am also grateful to everyone in the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies (LALS) for all your help, input and the incredibly positive atmosphere. I am grateful to all my survey informants, who generously shared their experiences, knowledge, ideas and questions with me. Thank you also to all my experimental participants. It was truly a pleasure to work with you. I am particularly grateful to the institutions and teachers, who supported this research by giving me access to their students and by assisting me in many ways during data collection. In particular, I want to thank Shirley Elsas, Bente Opel, Christian Spickermann, Dr Jelena Vujić, Dr Mirjana Daničić and Dr Biljana Cubrović. A big thank you to my family and friends in Germany, New Zealand and around the world, who encouraged me, hosted me, fed me ... In particular, I want to thank my mom for oh so many things and above all for being there through it all. Danke Muddi! I also want to express my deep gratitude to Audrey and Peter Vernon. Your friendship has been invaluable to me. Thank you to my “partners in crime” Simin Littschwager and Jackie Yeoh, and to Annesley and Monty, the best flatmates I could have wished for. I would also like to thank my friends at Central Baptist and particularly my family group and the Macs. Thank you also to all my awesome office-mates in legendary VZ410. Thanks for all the good times, for wearing stripes on “show-your-office-spirit” day, for helping me out when I hobbled around on crutches and for tolerating the crazy during the final weeks of writing. I am indebted to professors, lecturers and teachers who inspired me throughout my “academic life”. Particularly, I would like to thank Professor Stayc DuBravac, Dr Prisca Augustyn, Professor Willis Edmondson, Dr Johannes Eckerth and Helen Stein. Finally, I also want to express my gratitude to Victoria University of Wellington for the financial support, without which I would not have been able to conduct this research. iii iv Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................. i Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................. v List of Tables ................................................................................................................... ix List of Figures ................................................................................................................. xii List of Appendices ......................................................................................................... xiii Chapter 1 Introduction ................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Introduction: Why study the use of pop songs in the language classroom? .......................... 1 1.2 Why study the learning of vocabulary through songs? ......................................................... 3 1.3 Why is vocabulary learning relevant and what does it entail? .............................................. 4 1.4 Why is it relevant to remember verbatim text and learn multi-word units? ......................... 5 1.5 The aim and significance of the present study ..................................................................... 6 1.6 Organisation of the thesis.................................................................................................... 7 Chapter 2 Literature review......................................................................................... 9 2.0 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 9 2.1 Study 1: Surveying teacher cognitions and classroom practices ......................................... 10 2.1.1 Exploring teachers’ beliefs and classroom practices .................................................... 10 2.1.2 Implications of previous research for the current survey study ................................... 14 2.2 Study 2: The lexical profile of songs used in the language classroom ................................. 15 2.2.1 Existing research on the lexical profile of songs in language teaching.......................... 15 2.2.2 Methodological considerations: Assessing the lexical demand of a text genre ............ 19 2.2.3 The vocabulary size necessary to comprehend various text genres ............................. 21 2.2.4 Can songs be considered written or spoken texts? ...................................................... 26 2.2.5 Implications from existing research for the present corpus study ............................... 28 2.3 Study 3: The benefits of songs for lexical learning .............................................................. 29 2.3.1 Pertinent models of information processing and storage ............................................ 30 2.3.2 Cognitive-psychological research on the potential mnemonic effect of songs and poems ........................................................................................................................................... 36 2.3.3 The effect of melody, rhythm and lexical structural regularities on memory ............... 40 2.3.4 Research on a mnemonic effect of songs in L2 studies ................................................ 45 2.4 A summary of the literature review ................................................................................... 53 Chapter 3 The teacher survey .................................................................................... 55 v 3.0 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 55 3.1 Research questions ........................................................................................................... 56 3.2