Songs and the singing of songs are a prevalent teaching modality in the EFL context due to the felicity of the singing, the novelty of singing in an academic environment, and the authenticity of a natural activity engaged by native speakers in the target language. Due to the artificial nature of most classroom curricula, learners do not naturally perceive classroom learning as relevant to their real lives and rarely apply classroom learning in this way. As a teaching modality, popular songs allow the instructor to convey the sense that the targeted language is natural, which enables students to see that lessons can be meaningfully deployed in all situations. The learners’ understanding of the targeted language as socially relevant, rather than just academically appropriate, creates the motivation to learn and to apply the skill outside of the classroom.
Although there exists a consensus that songs are effective in motivating learners (Cifuentes, 2006; Chen & Chen, 2009; Selcedo, 2010), there is sparse research investigating the effective use of songs to help learners achieve higher language proficiency. Moreover, there exist doubts regarding whether songs have a positive influence on the learning outcome of the target language. Even where there are no doubts about the efficacy of songs in a classroom, there lacks a clear guideline on how to deploy songs as an effective teaching material.
Among the scant research on the use of songs to motivate language learning in an EFL context, the dominant research attributes the value of songs in language learning to their service as a mnemonic device. Selcedo (2010) claimed that the
melody of songs could potentially serve as a mnemonic device because teachers are able to simultaneously provide learners with more elaborate dual-modality input (auditory and visual input) through listening to and reading the lyrics.
In addition to the dual-modality input, the repetitive nature of songs promotes memorization through its content as well as through the learning process. In respect to other content, songs have a highly repetitive structure in both the use of repeating choruses and the choice of re-referencing words and images. The process of teaching a song involves the teacher instructing the learners to listen to the song numerous times in order to be familiar with the lyrics and the melody. The repeated listening, singing and reading of the song lyrics are believed to accelerate the process of familiarity.
In this vein, Mora (2000) proposed that repetition in songs had a positive effect on text recall. She suggested that since songs expose learners to the lyrics, which contain language forms, syntactic structures, and vocabulary, while learners are repeating the songs and lyrics, they are also internalizing the formal features of language. This internalization thus occurs without depleting learners’ attentional resources and explains how the learners are more likely to retrieve the language forms embedded in the lyrics more effortlessly, hence automatizing their second language skills.
The current understanding of the power of songs is based on their mnemonic value arising from the repeated dual-modality input provided by music-assisted language learning. Notwithstanding these studies, a critical question remains: why are dual-modality input and repetition the keys to the success of music-assisted learning?
Existing studies have not directly explored the above inquiry. However, insights from
a different research paradigm, repeated reading, shine some light on this critical question.
Similar to the repetitive nature of songs, repeated reading puts an emphasis on repetition, viz., repeated exposure to the target vocabulary or form in question. In addition to repetition, there are still some other similarities among songs and repeated reading. First, both are meaning-oriented activities. When learners are doing these activities repeatedly, they are not simply doing drills over and over again. On the contrary, they focus on the meaning of the readings or the songs. Second, assisted repeated reading provides learners with dual-modality input of the texts to be read just as songs provide learners with dual-modality input of the lyrics.
Due to these similar features, repeated reading may potentially serve as a theoretical framework for using songs in language learning and provide ex ante picture for the hypotheses for the questions regarding the efficacy of music-assisted language learning. In this vein, findings of repeated reading will be discussed in Chapter 2. To prepare readers for the discussion in Chapter 2, essential information about repeated reading will be briefly described below.
Repeated reading
Repeated reading, originally designed for L1 learners with reading disabilities, is a pedagogical practice that aims at promoting learners’ reading comprehension, which is defined as the reading fluency and accuracy of word recognition, through reading the same text multiple times. Learners can read the materials vocally (Samuel, 1979) or subvocally by themselves (Anderson, 1993). They can also read while or after listening to an auditory input of the textual material (Dowhower, 1987). This close reading with auditory input is termed “assisted repeated reading.” In the latter
procedure, the most important pedagogical elements are repetition and dual-modality input of the reading materials. For the first pedagogical element, researchers proposed that through reading the same text repeatedly, learners would become familiar with the text, and the word decoding would become faster or without conscious effort. The decrease of attentional resources, due to repetition, would leave more attention for higher-level processing for meaning. In other words, assisted repeated reading decreases attention needed to decode the text, promotes the accuracy of word recognition, and leads to better reading comprehension.
The second important pedagogical element is the dual-modality input of the reading materials. Proponents of assisted repeated reading believe that by accompanying textual reading with auditory input, learners are allowed to draw on their better-developed auditory speech system to support the decoding of the textual material. When learners read the textual material along or after the auditory input, the sounding out helps learners pay more attention to process the prosodic cues, such as intonation and pauses. These prosodic cues could help learners segment sentences into smaller chunks, either on the principle of meaningfulness or of syntactic rules.
Smaller chunks can be processed more easily than whole sentences and thus may lead to better reading comprehension by the learners.
Drawing from these insights, this study intends to generate hypotheses on which the effect of songs on language learning can be tested. Although implications of research on repeated reading cannot be directly linked to pop songs, they may provide an ex ante picture of the effectiveness of pop songs in this study.