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The effectiveness of Teaching English
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One has to notice that many experience text books and methodology manuals prove that songs are not just fruitiness and time-filling activities; they are rather activities supported with great educational values. This is why a great number of writers are today inclined to believe that songs should be treated as central not peripheral to the foreign language teaching.
In the Congolese context, many teachers often use songs and as short warm-up activities or when there is some time left at the end of the lesson. This misuse of songs will not be beneficial to the learners for they are not performed in the right way.
As we see, songs should not be regarded as activities filling odd moments when the teacher and the pupils have nothing better to do.
We can acknowledge that no one today can deny the efficiency and the effectiveness of songs in teaching English as a foreign language.
We have to add that songs lend themselves well to revision exercises helping pupils to remember materials in a pleasant way. There are today so many writers and authors who assert that even though songs resulted only in noisy disturbances and entertained learners, they are worth paying attention to, and complimenting in the 5th and 6th form classrooms since they significantly motivate students, promote greatly communicative competences and skills and generate adequate fluence.
In an effort to supplement a lesson plan in the English language teaching classroom in the 5thand 6thforms,teachers often turn to songs.
This notification for using songs in the classroom has been well demonstrated as benefiting pupils in a variety of ways.
In this research paper, we will closely study the effectiveness of using songs in the teaching of English as aforeign language.
.Choice and interest of the topic
The reason for dealing with this topic is that I discovered that songs may facilitate students to learn English language as fast as possible although some teachers in Goma consider it as a noisy activity. Songs are one of the most charming and attractively prosperous resources that teachers can easily use in verbal communication classrooms.
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Songs propose a change from habitual classroom actions. They are valuable resources to expand students’ abilities in listening, speaking, reading and writing. They can also be exercises to teach a variety of language matters such as sentence patterns, vocabulary pronunciation, rhythm, adjectives and adverbs…
Learning English in the course of songs also affords a non- threatening ambiance for students, who usually are tensed when speaking English in an official classroom location. Songs also give new insights into the objective traditions. They are the means in the course of which educational topics are presented successfully. While they supply genuine texts, they are inspiring.
Prosodic features of the language such as stress, rhythm, intonation are presented through songs, thus from side to side using them in the language which is cut up into sequences of structural points becomes an entire once more. There are many advantages of using songs in the classroom.
Through using modern trendy songs, which youngsters well know, the teacher can meet the challenges of the teenage needs in the classroom because songs are extremely unforgettable and motivating; in many forms they may comprise an influential sub culture with their own ritual. Furthermore, through using customary folk songs the support of the learners’ knowledge of the target culture can be broadened.
Appropriately, chosen traditional folk songs have the two fold encouraging assault of beautiful tunes and appealing stories, in addition for many students the added component of originality.
They may support widespread and concentrated listening and inspire resourcefulness and use of imagination in an undisturbed classroom ambiance. Whereas selecting a song the teacher should take the age into consideration, interests of the learners and the language being used in the songs into deliberation.
Songs and problem-solving activities, which are task-based and have a purpose beyond the production of accurate speech, are the examples of the most preferable communicative activities. Such activities highlight not only the competence but also the performance of the learner.
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Nonetheless, they are the indispensable parts of grammar lesson since they reinforce a form-discourse match. In such activities, the attention is on the discourse context.
In the English language classroom, this is more appropriate to create songs because the explanations are given in another language that requires even more effort by the students to comprehend that in their own mother language. Then using songs in a well-planned lesson is essential. The teacher must be creative and flexible.
The aim of this paper is also to help teachers of English in foreign language milieu to pay attention to the predicted difficulties and teaching problems. Native speakers of other languages might confront difficulties when learning and using songs in English language, i.e. they might also have tendency to transfer in English the realities of songs when acting and practicing them daily.
Background study
My research paper is entitled “The effectiveness of Teaching English Language through Songs in Fifth and Sixth Forms in Goma Secondary Schools: Case Study of Bakanja and Nyabushongo institutes; 2018 – 2019.”
Language is useful for people. Whatever else people express or share when they are together; where they fight, make love, play, or make automobiles, they talk to each other/one another. People live on earthwhere the languages have got much power. They talk to friends, teachers, wives, parsons, priests, pastors, husbands, lovers, parents, rivals, and even enemies.
Therefore, the possession of language perhaps more than any other attributes, distinguishes humansfrom animals, to understand the environment of the language to express their mind, wishes and ideas.
Language is a means of communication that people use to share ideas/thoughts with others.It predicts attitude and wishes of the users.
As far as educational languages are concerned in our country, French and English in different schools are regarded as the first foreign languages to be taught.French is taught to students from the
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basic school until university whereas English is taught from secondary schools. From the programme, it is expected that the student have better Education in French than in English.
For the of good of foreign language is to learn in order to write and read its literature or in order to benefit from the mental discipline and intellectual development that result from foreign language study, studying and teaching songs are the ways foreign students may get the effectiveness of communicating as quickly as possible in English language.
Songs contain the power of Music as well as the power of lyrics. While music touches our hearts,
the lyrics and their words flow into our minds and so they draw us into their own world. It “grasps our imagination, emotions, and intellect with equal force regardless of our language backgrounds” (Holmes, V.L. and Margaret, R.Moulton P.2).
Let us highlight a few examples of songs that became an inseparable part of specific events in the past, and sometimes they can entirely characterise a given period or some particular event.
In the sixties it was, for example, the protest song “where have all the flowers gone?”, in the late sixties it was “San Francisco” which
“Became the anthem of the “hippie” “era”, or in 1985 Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson’s “We are the world”, which was intended to raise funds to help famine relief efforts in Ethiopia.
Moreover there is one more advantage why to introduce songs in the classroom according to Mario Papa and Giuliano Lantorno claiming that “Singing is certainly one of the activities which generate the greatest enthusiasm and is a pleasant and stimulating approach to the culture of foreign people” (Papa M., Lantorno G., P.8)
From the discussion above, I got the inspiration to write my dissertation on the effectiveness of teaching English language through songs in fifth and sixth forms in Goma secondary schools: case study ofBakanja and NyiragongoInstitutes; 2018 – 2019.
Problem statement
The problem of a foreign student while learning the English
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language through songs seems to have reached its climax. As there is no research that can be studied without problems to solve; we would like to depict the effectiveness of using songs in order to address the problems detailed here below.
The problems which occur while a French speaker is learning English are due to the first language. Learning a second language is always a complex issue.
After carrying out sufficient investigations, we have realised the following:
Some teachers of English do not teach songs simply because they do not know the methodology to be used, the importanceof songs in the students’ daily life saying that songs are useless, teachers waist time to teach them; whereas in today’s education, learners need freedom (joys, games, dance, songs,…)
As a researcher, I discovered this problem of not teaching songs by teachers of English in our milieu, reason why I selected this topic in order to wake up those teachers who do not schedule songs as one of the yearly materials to be taught by proposing them strategies and methodologies to be used when teaching songs.
Therefore, the following research questions arose in our mind.
Research questions
Based on the problem of the study, here down are three major questions to be discussed through this final research paper:
1. Are there any difficulties that a French/foreign learner can encounter while learning English through songs
2. Is it effective to teach the English language throughsongs?
3. Can songs have some impact on the success of teaching English language to foreign students Thus, we could not have gone forward without proposing some assumptions.
Hypotheses
I assume that foreign learners of English language do face difficulties while learning songs through this target language.
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This assumption might be due to the fact that the learning of a second language is always influenced by the first language.
I have therefore formulated my hypothesis which implies that teachers may use songs in their EFL classrooms but they may not use them as a resource to teach and learn English but as time fillers or as a reward for good behaviour.
However, my hypothesis also implies that teachers may find some negative aspects about using songs in the classrooms such as losing the control of the class or wasting time.
The research questionnaire will hopefully help me to discover the use as well as the opinions and beliefs of some Goma secondary school teachers of English towards the use of songs.
Objectives
This thesis aims at the effectiveness of using songs in the teaching of English as a foreign language.Its main objective is to find out what some Goma secondary school teachers of English believe about the use of songs as a resource to teach English to the 5th and 6th form learners in the classroom.
This investigation aims to discover whether Goma secondary school teachers of English appreciate the pedagogical value as well as the advantages that songs can offer as well as the difficulties and negative aspects of using songs in the secondary school classrooms.
Bearing in mind, the main goal of the study, a questionnaire was sent to some Goma secondary school teachers and pupils in order to find out their attitudes and opinions about the use of songs as well as1.8. Scope of the work
This work it is going to limit itself on analytical and ethnographical study of the effectiveness of teaching English language through songs.
This dissertation has got five chapters: The first is on the general introduction. It gives a general view of the whole work content. The second chapter stands for the description of the context.
This chapter will facilitate us firstly to develop the teaching of English language in Congolese context; secondly to discover problems raised