Autor: prof.

Irina Telișcă
Liceul Teoretic ,,Grigore Antipa,, Botoșani

Case study: The importance of using music in the classroom

In the 2018-2019 school year, we applied a questionnaire to intermediate and upper-intermediate

learners of English enrolled at Grigore Antipa HighSchool. The scope was twofold:
 to discover what learners felt about studying grammar with songs;
 to identify my learners’ song preferences.
1. The Subjects
The research was carried out with 9 th and 10th grade students, Intermediate and Upper-Intermediate in
English, aged 15-16 (92 students), and 17-18 years old (66 students), studying at Grigore Antipa HighSchool.
The students were majoring in Mathematics-Informatics and Natural Sciences, so they had only two English
classes per week, 72 English classes per school year.
The students were given the sheets of paper with multiple choice questions and were asked to choose the
answers which best fit to their likes and dislikes. For the multiple choice questions they had to choose the answer
which best fitted to them, or, in some cases, if none was appropriate for them, they had to write other answer. It
is important to mention that the students were allowed to choose more than one answer for the multiple choice
questions.
2. Methods and procedures
The students who answered the questions were the ones present in the classroom in regular days. Students
were asked to include their comfort levels toward English classes when are asked to listen to music and solve
exercises on rhymes, their favourite activities and musical genres. The question about the difficulties they have
experienced while listening to music was designed to help me, as a teacher, understand better my students’
problems while listening. By far, the last question was for me the most important as I wanted to know how often
they would like to listen to music during classes; I had an opinion regarding the subject but I wasn’t sure about
it, and I hopped that, under the anonymity they will answer honestly .
3. Instruments
The instrument of the research was a questionnaire with 11 questions, out of which 3 were open-ended,
and the other eight were multiple choice ones. In the first question the students were asked their age and in the
second one for how long they have studied English. The next 9 questions were strictly about English language
teaching and learning through music and songs.
4. Data collection and analysis
The students were given the questionnaire during the usual English class. They were given 20 minutes to
complete the questionnaire. If they had any difficulties in understanding the meaning of some words, these were
explained by the teacher (and this happened especially with 9 th graders). When all the students completed the
questionnaire, they handed it to the teacher.
5. Results and conclusions
The purpose of my research was to investigate how comfortable are my students when having
music based exercises or listening to music, to know their favorite music genres and their favourite types of
exercises. Also, very important to me as a teacher, are their favorite types of activities based on songs, their
difficulties and the frequency of songs and music in our classes.
 Table 1 - Frequencies and percentages on what subjects are approached in English classes
INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS UPPER-INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS
Response
SUBJECTS Percentage Response Frequency Percentage
Frequency
Grammar 22 23% 12 18%
Love and human relationships 18 19% 27 40%
Vocabulary 32 34% 20 30%

Analyzing the answers, the conclusion was that the intermediate students think that the subjects
approached in songs are related to lifestyles and they can improve their vocabulary by listening to songs, while
the upper-intermediate ones considered that lifestyle, love and relationships are the topics most used in songs.
The upper-intermediate students, being older, focus on other things, not only grammar, and this may happen
because their attention is focused on other aspects of life.

Table 2 - Frequencies and percentages on how comfortable are the students when listening to music and
doing exercises on rhymes
INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS UPPER-INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS
Response Response
SUBJECTS Percentage Percentage
Frequency Frequency
very comfortable listening and filling in 48 52% 29 44%
very comfortable listening and singing 42 46% 34 52%
not comfortable 2 2% 3 4%
Total 92 100% 66 100%

The intermediate students are more focused on practicing and doing exercises (usually practicing
grammar and vocabulary), while the upper-intermediate ones prefer listening and singing. This difference in
preferences may be due to the students’ age and interests (older students go in clubs, go to parties more often
than the younger ones). The students who do not feel comfortable with listening to music maybe dislike music or
just don’t trust in their singing skills.

Table 3 - Frequencies and percentages on what skills students would like to be developed when listening to
songs in EFL classes
INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS UPPER-INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS
Response
SUBJECTS Percentage Response Frequency Percentage
Frequency
Listening comprehension 27 29% 30 45%
Reading skills 10 10% 26 39%
Writing skills 7 7% 9 13%
Vocabulary 34 36% 32 48%
Pronunciation, intonation 40 43% 34 51%
Grammar 7 7% 14 21%

Both the intermediate and the upper-intermediate students, answered that they would like to be
developed pronunciation and vocabulary. Listening comprehension came on an “honourable” third place, for
both intermediate and upper-intermediate students, and this show a high interest among students for practice,
rather than theory.
Table 4 - Frequencies and percentages on what music genres do the students prefer in English classes
INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS UPPER-INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS
Response
SUBJECTS Percentage Response Frequency Percentage
Frequency
Folk music 15 16% 16 24%
Pop music 63 68% 45 68%
Rap 18 19% 20 30%
Country music 8 8% 15 22%
Other Rock 5 5% 7 10%

The students’ responses showed that both, the intermediate and the upper-intermediate students prefer
pop music in English classes and, on second place in their preferences is rap music. In terms of gender, boys are
the ones who prefer rap and rock (5% of intermediate students and 10% of upper-intermediate). Country music is
less used in English classes, maybe because its rhythm, so the students have a low interest in this musical genre.

Table 5 Frequencies and percentages on what difficulties have the students experienced when listening to
music in English classes
INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS UPPER-INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS
Response
Percentage Response Frequency Percentage
SUBJECTS Frequency
Can’t understand the lyrics 70 76% 52 79%
Do not like listening to music 14 15% 6 9%
Other: No difficulties 8 9% 8 12%
Total 92 100% 66 100%

The results showed that the students’ highest difficulty is related to understanding the lyrics (76% out of
the intermediate students and 79% out of the upper-intermediate ones). Very few students have no difficulties
when listening to music in English classes (8 out of 92 Intermediate students and 8 out of 66 Upper-Intermediate
students).
The real surprise of this questionnaire came from this last question because I didn’t expect such high
percentages: 59% of the Intermediate and 61% of the Upper-Intermediates would like that in half of their English
classes to listen to music and do song based activities. 22% of the Intermediate students and only 33% of the
older students would like to listen to music every class.
These numbers show how liked and preferred are the modern methods and instruments in the EFL classes
are, and that Romanian students are very bond to English songs as a mean to learn a foreign language.
The results of the questionnaire applied to our high-school students helped us reach the following
conclusions: Romanian students are very comfortable when doing exercises on lyrics and listening to songs,
rather than speaking or writing; if they are to choose between learning by heart some grammar rules and
translating sentences and practicing grammar while listening to songs, they will always choose the latter
option; we also discovered that pop music is, by far, the most liked musical genre in the classroom, followed
closely by rap and folk. The biggest advantage of using songs in the classroom is that they develop
pronunciation and listening comprehension skills in a relaxed and positive manner.