Name: Trần Huyền Trang

Class: K44C-ELT

II. LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1. The application of English songs in teaching language

An overview of the advantages of using English songs:

In term of music, learning English through music is an extremely effective method that
can help you improve your listening skills quickly and easily. Science proves that music
can help second language learners acquire grammar, vocabulary and improve spelling
quickly. The method is called "Mozart Effect", which suggests that listening to music
increases the productivity of mind-related tasks such as learning. Listening to music helps
students become familiar with difficult titles in English such as: attachment, connecting
sounds, intonation up and down ... Characteristics of songs are very rich melodies so
students can listen and sing along to practice phonetics and intonation in sentences. If
students practice phonetics in a phonetic class or a phonetic lesson, you want to throw the
book away a few times. The good thing here is that the song helps us practice phonics
with great enjoyment and so of course, the effect will also be much higher.

Language is actually imitation, repetition. In each song, many words and sounds are
repeated over and over and this makes it easy to take deep into your mind. Music has
extraordinary abilities when it is deeply embedded in our minds. The melody and lyrics
will often penetrate our thoughts and dance. All of this will make learning English
through songs to help you easily memorize words and phrases in them. In fact, after a
short while you will feel it is almost impossible to forget them.

One of the reasons people think that the difficulty of learning a language is that they don't
have much time to pay attention to learning. However, when learning English through
songs, you do not need to spend too much time because you can listen to music
anywhere. You can listen to music while riding in the car, washing dishes and taking a
shower. And by choosing the music you like, you can listen to the songs without getting
bored.

In addition, nowadays, music is popular to students can easily approach music freely.
Students also listen to music as a daily basis. Hence, it is no doubt that music is an and
friendly and huge and useful source to students.

Types of songs for university students who learn English as a second language
 According to Nihada Delibegovic Dzanic & Alisa Pejic ( 2016), if well planned, applied
and evaluated, songs can become useful tools for language teaching and learning. Also, if
the suitable songs are chosen, learning can become a fun and memorable experience. In
order to accomplish this, a division between different song types and their purposes needs
to be made. Ur (1992: 65) also makes the distinction between the specially-composed
English teaching songs and the authentic ones. She explains that the first type of songs is
used to teach vocabulary and language structures, as well as to aid oral language
production. They develop listening comprehension skills and reinforce
rhythm, intonation, specific language structures, and vocabulary. TPR songs require
students to respond physically to what they hear and sing only when they are ready to do
so. Using the appropriate songs is of critical importance.  

Significance of using English songs in teaching Listening skill

It can be said that there are two main reasons to explain the drawback when teaching
Listening skill in Vietnam. In general education, students have not much more chance to
practicing listening skills, so when they continuing academic life in university, they find
difficult to study it. Sometimes, listening lessons and media used in textbook to teach
Listening are not really effective because they are not natural source, these make students
bored. These cause the reducing of students’ effectiveness when communicating with
foreigners. Additionally, this also causes the lack of passion when students realize that they
cannot reach the level or standard they want, and the reducing of the effectiveness in
teaching language, especially listening skill. Hence, using English songs in teaching
Listening skill is one way to deal with the problem and vary the source of learning or
teaching.

2.2. Problems of choosing English songs to teach in listening skill

There are some downsides in criteria for Selecting Songs in Language Teaching. Songs are
essential sources to be utilized during language teaching. Besides positive effects, there are
of course difficulties encountered while using songs in language teaching. Pop songs are not
scientific. The types of music favored by students may not be matching with each other.
Songs that are not grammatical or those involving complicated sentence structures may
confuse students. Some songs, there may be disgraceful parts that cannot be explained to
students.( Ni Luh Gede Windy Lestary & Si Luh Nyoman Seriadi). Another downside is that
the language and grammar which is used in these choose songs is wrong, and students have
not the abilities to realize and fix them. Additionally, teachers do not control all of songs
students as well, so there are some mistakes which are missed and lead students having
wrong knowledge.
2.3. Research questions:

1. To which degree can be teaching English songs in Listening skill whether is helpful for
students and whether they like the method or not?

2. How can students make use and choose of English songs to increase their English listening
skill efficiency?

3. How long this technique should be applied?