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The role of modern songs in teaching English and their impact on primary school children

Content

Introduction

Chapter I. Theoretical part

1.1 Benefits of the method

1.2 Using modern songs during the teaching process

Chapter II. Practical part

2.1 Examples of songs

2.2 Results of questionnaire

Conclusion

The list of used literature

Appendix

Introduction

Everything is developing day by day, from technology to educational system. A long time ago, Kazakh people didn't even know about an existence of English language. We have been learning this language for a while now. English is just a language for some people, but it's a key to their career and an important part of their life for others, including me.

I got interested in learning English from an early age. It all started when we moved to the town and bought a better TV set. I remember when I discovered a channel where they used to show music videos of songs in English and I thought to myself “Wow, these songs are so much better than ours, but I don't understand what they're singing. That would be great if I learned the language and could understand everything they say!”

People say a lot of things about music and using it at school. For example, an American composer, Paul Reisler, who has worked with more than 35,000 students and produced about 2,200 songs for them, says: “The power of music can teach children the skills they might not learn at school. We have to make children creative, as we live in a creative economy ”. Also, Alison Garnier, who has been a teacher for 20 years, says that this method gives children a lot of social opportunities and improves all the aspects of individual. You can tie music in with different subjects within the classroom and children get really excited about it.

Scientists assume, that something else that's really interesting about how our emotions are affected by music is that there are two kinds of emotions related to music: perceived emotions and felt emotions. It means, when children listen to the songs, they perceive a new information, learn the new words, as well as feel themselves relaxed and excited.

Obviously, I'm not the only one who desired to learn this language. There were, the are and there will be plenty of children who want to master the English language. But are we choosing the right methods, are they able to learn the language by studying it with only one method? My answer is no. So, the actuality of the research problem is that the children know almost nothing in English at

school, because they are bored with only writing and reading, they need something else and the best way to teach at least one thing to children is to use music. If you combine music and English, they will be a perfect match.

We all know that teaching English at school does not help us to learn English properly, so I had only one way to learn the language-listen to the songs. At first I used to listen to the various songs and watch music videos and then, after developing my listening skills a bit, I started to sing them. When I had a computer and Internet access, I began to search for the lyrics of the songs and translate them.

I never tried hard to learn English, because I could just enjoy while listening to my favourite song and automatically learn new words.

I didn't choose this theme just because someone told me to, I chose this topic having based on my own experience, and wanted to prove that we can use modern songs to teach English nowadays at schools. It would be useful not only for children, but also for teachers who would save more time for other things and also see the progress of their pupils from this way of teaching. If children listen to the current songs, it will be easy for them to have an idea of how foreign people nowadays sound like. That's why I chose “modern” songs. I find this method of teaching language very useful. So what if we could actually use it for teaching English to children? I'm sure children would love that!

The problem of the research is that lots of teachers only teach pupils grammar and make them learn vocabulary in an easy and boring way and children don't really understand the value of English and treat it as just another lesson. This way, they are not able to actually speak in this language, use this language to communicate. “Usage is the best language teacher”, said once a roman writer Marcus Fabius Quintilianus. I'm sure that music plays a huge role in getting to speak English fluently and use it to interact with foreigners. Just imagine how excited children would be to go to English classes to listen to their favourite songs and learn new words not even realizing it!

The purpose of research:

v To explain the advantages of using modern songs;

v To show the activities we can do with music;

v To let you know children's opinion on this problem;

v To make up some lyrics myself;

v To prove that using modern songs is a useful way of teaching and learning English.

Hypothesis : Using modern songs at the lesson may be a reachable and suitable way for children to not only learn new vocabulary, grammar and improve their pronunciation, but also let them have fun and enjoy their lesson.

Tasks:

· To use hypothesis and theories;

· To use a diagram;

· To use the lyrics of songs;

· To make a song and video.

The object of research is modern songs, which are clean and suitable for children.

The subject of research is the primary school children.

Methods of research: questionnaire, analyzing, creative, investigating.

Practical significance of research: If I become a teacher, I would like to use it at least as a tiny part of the lesson. The children are very active when it comes to music, so by only letting them listen to one song, you let them gain a new and important knowledge. Imagine the whole country using this method. I'm quite sure everyone would know English a lot better that they do know and most importantly, it would help a marvellous language called English to prosper even more.

Chapter I. Theoretical part

1.1 Benefits of the method

First of all, I want to give you some basic reasons why we should use this method of teaching:

1.Everyone loves music. I haven't seen anyone telling they don't like listening to music, it's impossible.

2.Music will put pupils in a good mood. Lots of times pupils get very tired of the lessons, that's why it will help them relax and not get stressed.

3.All pupils are involved in the process. Singing and listening to music in general is very interesting ,so even the pupils who don't like studying, will surely participate in this kind of activity.

4.Children are active. Not only they listen to music, they also do loads of planned exercises.

5.It's an authentic material, which will help pupils to understand native speakers.

Here are the techniques for using music in an English classroom:

Introduce a new theme

Break the ice in a class

Change the mood

Build vocabulary and idioms

Review material

Teach pronunciation and intonation

Teach songs and rhymes about difficult grammar and spelling rules that need to be memorized

Inspire a class discussion

Teach listening for details and gist

Now, let's move forward and talk about what we can teach with songs:

1.Grammar

When children listen to the songs and learn them, they unconsciously learn the grammar structure of the sentences, and when they pass exams or tests, they can

easily remember it.

2.Vocabulary

Songs are really rhythmical and catchy, so it's very easy to learn loads of new words listening to them.

3.Pronunciation

When you listen to the songs of different artists, whether they are British or American, you want to sound exactly like them, and try to pronounce the words properly.

Pupils can also provide their listening, speaking and reading skills, while listening to the song, speaking about its meaning and reading the lyrics.

You can still think that I could choose music of any generation, not specifically “modern” songs. The reasons of my choice are below:

Youth listen to modern music and adults or aged people listen to old music.

It is undoubtedly suitable for people's fast lifestyle.

They are played everywhere and gain everyone' attention, including children's.

Modern music is growing and for example, classical music is vanishing.

Here we can clearly see that music can be used for different kinds of purposes at the lesson: whether it could be to teach specific words or to improve pronunciation or even change the mood.

1.2 Using modern songs during the teaching process

You can't just pick a random song and let children listen to it. As all the other methods of teaching, it also has some rules and difficulties. So, let's take a look at some tips for choosing a suitable song for the lesson and have a good result:

1. Discuss with pupils what song they want to listen to. Because you may not know what children exactly want to listen to and their tastes.

2. Think of the level of difficulty. You shouldn't choose a difficult song for children, because it's too complicated and overwhelming for them.

3. The words should sound clearly. I know from my experience, that when the song goes fast or there's a noise in the background, you can't understand a word.

4. The song can be about anything and any genre, but the lyrics should be appropriate. Just think about what would happen if you picked a song with inappropriate words and children asked you what it meant! You don't want to be a bad influence for your pupils, right?

5. One song is enough for a lesson. Lesson is a lesson. No matter what, you have to teach pupils what government demands, also pupils will probably get bored of it soon enough.

And now, it's time to talk about activities we can do by using songs:

There are 3 stages of listening activities: pre- listening, which means you do exercises before you get to know the listening material; while-listening is when you do tasks during listening and post-listening is what you do after listening to specific material.

Divide activities into 3 stages that we all know.

Pre -listening activities:

1. Write new words on the blackboard, and show pupils their pictures. First, pupils need to learn some new words to understand a song.

2. Talk about a singer and songwriter. I think, it's really important for a listener to know a bit of something about the person whose song they are listening to.

3. Discuss the title of the song. To improve pupils' speaking skills, teachers have to make them express their opinion on what the song is going to be about.

4. Guess the song. To get pupils more into this, teachers can first play the beginning of a song for about 2-3 seconds and make them guess it.

While listening activities:

1. Fill in the blanks. Teachers can give them lyrics with missed words and pupils should write the word.

2. Sing along. Teachers should let pupils sing the song aloud; this will help to develop pronunciation skills.

3. Lip-syncing helps people to express their emotions and they will have fun pretending to be a singer.

4. Make children shout “stop” when they hear a new word and translate. If teachers want to check pupils' knowledge from the new lesson, nothing better than doing fun exercises like this.

5. Choose the right verb/noun/adjective. Teachers can give pupils lyrics with for example 3 variants of one word, so they could choose the right one.

Post-listening activities:

1. Watch a music video and discuss. Songs and music videos don't often match, so it would be great to find out what pupils think about it, developing their speaking skills at the same time.

2. Draw what you understood from the lyrics. Pupils love drawing, so why not try to combine listening and drawing together?

3. Tell what you understood. It's very important to find out how reachable the lyrics and the meaning of songs are.

4. Make a dialogue in pairs discussing the song and a songwriter. These kind of activities are helpful for improving pupils' creativity.

5. Vocabulary competition. Children are very competitive when it comes to putting marks. So making a little competition will help pupils remember new words and let teacher find out who indeed learned something from the lesson.

This leads us to the conclusion that this method takes some consideration, too. Therefore it has its rules and activities and it may not be as effective without them.

Chapter II. Practical part

2.1 Examples of songs

Sometimes, with a lack of time or knowledge of modern songs, teachers may not find a suitable song for children. The best way in this case is to use Disney or any animated film soundtracks, they're modern yet have a good message for children.

For example, the song “Happy” by Pharrell Williams is a soundtrack of an animated film “Despicable Me 2”. Now, take a look at the lyrics:

Because I'm happy,

Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof.

Because I'm happy,

Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth.

Because I'm happy,

Clap along if you know what happiness is to you.

Because I'm happy,

Clap along if you feel like that's what you want to do.

Now, you can see that the lyrics are just for the primary school children, because the lyrics are repeated and the melody itself is easy to remember. Also, who doesn't like the “Frozen” song “Let It Go”? It has been almost 2 years since this song came out, but nobody forgot it. Here is the lyrics:

Let it go, let it go, Can't hold it back anymore. Let it go, let it go,

Turn my back and slam the door.

Here I stand, Here I'll stay. Let it go, let it go,

The cold never bothered me anyway!

Again, it's repeated, easy to learn and very inspirational.

Teachers also may like the melody, but lyrics can be about love, inappropriate or difficult for primary school children. So, why don't teachers make up their own version of that specific song? I think it's a great idea! It can be about an alphabet, numbers, colours, words, months, family, etc. So, for my research I decided to write my own lyric to one song, sing it and shoot a video for it. You may think that this song is only suitable for children in the 1st grade, but revising an alphabet and learning some new words is never too much for even 2nd,3rd,4th grade pupils. I really hope that you will like it and understand the importance of teaching English by using modern songs.

Original song: “Blank Space”

Singer/songwriter: Taylor Swift

Genre: Pop

New version: “English alphabet”

Lyrics: Erlankyzy Nazgul

Look here, the letter “A”,

Apple , ant, art, say with me!

Look there, the letter “B”,

Baby, baker, backpack,

Can you see the letter “C”?

You can find it

In the words can and cream, hey!

The letter “D”-dog, dot,

The letter “E”-eat, egg.

The letter “F”-flat, frog

The letter “G”-grass, group.

“H” is hat, ”I” is ice,

“J” is juice, k is keys.

“L” is loose, m is mouse,

“N” is nose and niece.

Chorus:

Let's learn the letters,

A,B,C,D,E,F,G

Let's learn the letters,

H,I,G,K,L,M,N,O,P.

Q,R,S,T,U,V

W,X,Y,Z

Let's learn the letters pupils,

This is English alphabet.

Apple, battle and castle,

Daddy, eagle and fossil.

Glass, heart and island,

Jacket, knife, lamp and muscle.

Name, orange, pepper, queue

Rubbish, subject, train and up,

Wife, fox, yacht and zebra

Just learn it, don't stop!

Next letter is “O”,

You can find it a word oil.

Following letter is “P”

People, park and pool.

“Q” is quarter, “R” is rabbit,

“S” is star and “T” is tool

“U” is unit, “V” is village, hey!

“W” is window, “X” is box

“Y” is you and “Z” is zoo

These are all the letters that

We should know and we should learn

By heart, not forget,

You should tell it all your friends,

Don't forget to tell your friends!

Chorus:

I mentioned that we could do loads of activities before, while and after listening the song. Now I'm going to give examples of these activities with the song I made.

1.Teachers can bring some flashcards with an alphabet the words in the song with translation: “apple-àëìà”, “cat-ìûñû?”, “dog-èò”,etc. Then show it to pupils, make them repeat several times and if necessary, write it on a blackboard.

2.Give pupils some information about the singer. For example “Taylor Swift is an American famous singer. She is very talented and has a lot of great songs-Òýéëîð Ñâèôò-Àìåðèêàíû? àòà?òû ?íø³ñ³.Îë ?òå äàðûíäû æ?íå ê?ïòåãåí òàìàøà ?ëå?äåð³ áàð.”

3.This activity is more suitable for the 3rd or 4th grade, because they have to express their opinion. Teacher asks: “What do you think this song is about?” Pupils: “I think it's about alphabet…”.

4.Everyone should have the lyrics on their desk with missed words. For example:

Look here, the letter ____,

Apple, ___, art, say with me!

Look there, the letter ____,

Baby, ____,backpack

5.Turn the music on and let children read the lyrics and sing along, if they can't read, do it the next lesson, when they learn it by heart.

6.Let children find new words in a song, when they find it they shout “stop” and translate. For example: *the song is playing* Pupils: “ Stop! Ant- ??ìûðñ?à”

7.Write 3 variants of 1 word, pupils should choose the right one. For example:

Next/last/previous letter is “O”,

You can find/see/look it a word oil.

Following letter is “p”

People, park and pool/pearl/pea.

8. Tell pupils to draw, for example a baby, a park, a village and so on.

9.Pupils should make a dialogue, for instance: “A: Do you like this song?

B: Yes, I do.

A:What did you understand?

B:It's about letters…”

10.Divide pupils into 2 groups, tell pupils words in English, they have to translate them into Kazakh. Which group gets more words right, gets a good mark.

It means that there are a lot of options of songs and very useful activities that can make pupils interested in the lesson and give great results.

2.2 Results of questionnaire

The other day I asked primary school children, trying to find out if they preferred listening to music in an English class, or not. Here are the questions I asked:

o Do you like learning English?

o How do you learn English at school?

o Do you like listening to music?

o What kind of music do you like?

o Would you like to listen to music while learning English?

They all said they liked learning English, but some of them said that they only use books in an English class and it's not interesting. Obviously, they love listening to music and most of them said they liked listening to music for dancing, rhythmical music, just like modern songs.

I was able to capture some of the short answers of pupils of the 2nd grade in a video. For instance, Aiym said that she liked learning English, Erasyl said that they learned English by reading books and writing exercises, Ayana said she liked listening to music, Arsen said he liked listening to pop music, and they all got very excited and said they would love to listen to music while learning English.

Eventually, 90 % out of 100% of pupils wanted to listen to music at the lesson, so this is another proof that this method is suitable for primary school children. (See the appendix 2.)

Conclusion

Music is endless, music is beautiful, music is life and none of us can deny it. What would life be without music? Would I even want to learn English and chase my dreams without music? These questions also made me think over and helped me to determine the theme of my research.

There are plenty of amazing sayings about music and its role in our lives. Here's the one by Claude Levi-Strauss, who was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, that truly represents the idea of this research: “Since music is a language with some meaning at least for the immense majority of mankind, although only a tiny minority of people are capable of formulating a meaning in it, and since it is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man, a mystery that all the various disciplines come up against and which holds the key to their progress.”

Also, during the research, I found this article on the Internet, where it says that “music moves brain to pay attention”. Apparently, The Sanford University in the USA found out that music engages the areas of the brain involved with paying attention, making predictions and updating the event in memory. So do you still have a doubt about the influence of music in children's development?

This work means a lot to me. Because not only I got to gain a lot of interesting and useful information, but I also tried to use my talents and discovered that I'm able to write my own lyrics.

I tried to show you the currency and advantages of using modern songs in teaching English to primary school children, let you know how to use it in a classroom, what activities to do, what kind of songs to use, even came up with my own lyrics, that is appropriate for children. I hope it's enough to prove that it should be used more in a classroom and that in the future teachers will understand that it's an irreplaceable method of teaching English language to our growing generation. school english song teaching

Electronic resources

Web:

1 https://www.englishclub.com/teach-english.htm

2 http://www.omniglot.com/language/proverbs/language.html

3 http://www.metrolyrics.com/happy-pharrell-williams-lyrics-pharrell-williams.html

4 http://www.metrolyrics.com/let-it-go-lyrics-demi-lovato.html

5 http://www.ranker.com/list/notable-and-famous-music-quotes/reference?page=2

6 http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2007/07/music-moves-brain-to-pay-attention-stanford-study-finds.html

Appendix 1

Writing the lyrics.

Making up the lyrics is not that difficult, even for the most uncreative teacher. You just need to make a rhyme and make sure that some words are repeated.

MY OWN COLLECTION OF:

LYRICS	RHYMES
1. Family I love my mother, I love my father, I love my sister and my brother. All they say is they love you, So make sure that you love them, too. 2. Letters Just learn the letters, If you want to learn the language. If you learn the letters, In the future you will manage. Just learn the letters pupils, They'll tell you how to speak. If you've got a blank space, Just write it, quick! 3. Teddy bear Little John likes taking care Of his little Teddy bear It's all fluffy, it's all white, He sleeps with it late at night. 4. My dear friend You are so smart, you are in my heart, Smile on your face has a perfect grace. I have no fear calling you my dear Our memories are in my mind A friend like you I will never find!	1. A bird A bird named Vest, Needed a nest. So I made her one, Because I'm the best. 2. Spring It is springtime, it is springtime Winter's gone, winter's gone Summer time is coming, summer time is coming It won't be long, it won't be long. 3. Birthday My birthday's in September, Luke's is in November. Mike's is today, So, happy birthday we say! 4. Happy birthday, mom! Happy birthday Mom, Shine brightly, like The sun. Wish you happiness and health, Laughter, hugs and some wealth!

Appendix 2

Questions of the questionnaire.

Questions	Yes	No
o Do you like learning English?
o How do you learn English at school?
o Do you like listening to music?
o What kind of music do you like?
o Would you like to listen to music while learning English?

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