Foreign Language Songs in the Elementary Music Classroom: Benefits, Challenges, and Effective Teaching Methods

This lecture recital considers the challenges many music educators face in attempting to meet standards for students and on teacher evaluations. The author suggests that music curriculum is sometimes marginalized as music educators attempt to include standards outside of the arts in their teaching in order to meet standards on teacher evaluations. The use of foreign language songs in the elementary music classroom as a means of constructing global and cultural awareness in elementary students demanded by Common Core State Standards, and teacher evaluations is examined. Beginning by defining Common Core State Standards, and the North Carolina Teacher Evaluation Process and discussing the challenges their implementation presents for music educators. Following this, the author reviews the benefits, challenges, and effective teaching methods for foreign language songs in the elementary music classroom revealed through study of the current literature on the subject. A description of a case study of two specific foreign language songs for different age and ability levels taught using methods found in the author's research concludes the effective methods section of the study. The classical repertoire performed in the recital portion and its correlation to the study of foreign language songs is also included. The goal of this study is to provide elementary music educators with a guide for teaching foreign language songs effectively while meeting Common Core State Standards, teacher evaluation standards and music objectives

THE ROLES OF SONGS IN TEACHING ENGLISH TO EFL BEGINNER LEARNERS: THE CASE OF SOME SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN BENIN REPUBLIC

This paper aims at exploring effective and sustainable solutions to address the issue of beginners’ increasing demotivation to learn English as Foreign Language. The research has been designed so as to probe the role of songs in teaching English to EFL beginner learners. Literary research on songs has helped to highlight the importance of songs in teaching EFL beginners to develop communicative skills. In this regard, data are collected through a questionnaire administered to the study population made up of 65 randomly selected EFL teachers. The findings analysis shows that songs are barely used to develop learners’ language skills but rather for entertainment purposes. The ongoing research work suggests that EFL teachers should be trained on the effective use of songs in English classes. Moreover, secondary schools should be provided with songs teaching materials. Those measures appear to be vital to motivate students to learn English and develop communicative abilities

Encouraging motivation using songs and cooperative learning to improve intercultural understanding

The purpose of this study is to explore the students\u27 motivation using songs and cooperative learning to improve intercultural understanding and to achieve communicative competence. The target level is the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) intermediate level students in South Korea

FLARR Pages: Volume 2, Pages 44-68

FLARR Pages is the journal of The Foreign Language Association of the Red River of the North, an organization consisting of regional public school and private school faculty as well as faculty from Minnesota State University Bemidji, Concordia College, Minnesota State University Moorhead, North Dakota State University, the University of Minnesota Morris, the University of North Dakota, and the University of Winnipeg

Ab Initio Language Teaching in British Higher Education

Drawing extensively on the expertise of teachers of German in universities across the UK, this volume offers an overview of recent trends, new pedagogical approaches and practical guidance for teaching at beginners level in the higher education classroom. At a time when entries for UK school exams in modern foreign languages are decreasing, this book serves the urgent need for research and guidance on ab initio learning and teaching in HE. Using the example of teaching German, it offers theoretical reflections on teaching ab initio and practice-oriented approaches that will be useful for teachers of both German and other languages in higher education. The first chapters assess the role of ab initio provision within the wider context of modern languages departments and language centres. They are followed by sections on teaching methods and innovative approaches in the ab initio classroom that include chapters on the use of music, textbook evaluation, the effective use of a flipped classroom and the contribution of language apps. Finally, the book focuses on the learner in the ab initio context and explores issues around autonomy and learner strengths. The whole builds into a theoretically grounded guide that sketches out perspectives for teaching and learning ab initio languages that will benefit current and future generations of students

Maximized The Young Language Learners’ Motivation Via Songs and Increasing Their Speaking Skill Ability

This article is aimed to describe the advantages of why songs are important to support the English language learning process. This article also explains the position where English is learned as the foreign language in Indonesia. Songs are learning resources with many advantages, including linguistics resources, affective/psychological resources, and cognitive resources. Songs can be good learning sources as teaching media for English language classes. As the world of children goes with songs and like to sing it. They love saying chants in rhythm and enjoy repeating phrases that rhyme. Moreover, they enjoy moving to the rhythm, clapping hands, tapping the feet, and dancing. Therefore, music and movement naturally connect to children's hearts, minds, and bodies. Teaching young learners has to be enjoyable for the classroom as young learners often use songs and movement to engage children in the class. Using songs and movement is one of the best ways to teach young learners. Making the learning process interesting for children is important, especially for young learners who learn English as a foreign language. Songs can also support the four skills for the learners such as speaking, reading, writing, and listening. Another language advantages are that pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar are provided in learning through songs. It is such a duty for teachers to create a fun and enjoyable atmosphere in teaching. Using the textbook is no longer efficient for teaching young learners nowadays. The teacher tends to be more creative and tend to find more variation in delivering teaching materials, whether using songs from the internet, CD or tape recorder, or television. There are several benefits for language learning using songs for young English learners' classes. Music and songs can do the following: provided authentic, meaningful context, introduce children to the target culture, emotional and social effects, provide opportunities to practice oral language, Aid in retention and comprehension

The Application of Chinese Songs in Teaching Chinese Language Sense as a Foreign Language

Language sense is a skill, and cultivating students’ language sense ability has theoretical and practical significance for language teaching. However, compared with English, French, and other universally taught languages, more research needs to be done on teaching language sense in Chinese as a foreign language. Therefore, based on the advanced theories of language sense research, we discuss the role of Chinese songs in cultivating Chinese language sense to put forward some constructive suggestions for teaching language sense in Chinese as a foreign language

TEACHING CHILDREN THROUGH SONGS, CHANTS AND RHYMES

Since English has become an international language, more and more people learn English. The importance of English as a world language has made people to learn English as early as possible. Teaching English as a foreign language to young learner needs special approach since young learners have special characteristics, they have their own way of learning. The forms of fun activities for children are songs, chants and rhymes. The main objective of this article is to emphasize the importance of using rhymes and songs in the teaching of English as a foreign language to young learners. Their functions, criteria for election and the ways of presenting them to the class will also be analysed. Songs, chants and rhymes are amazing tool for teaching language, especially to children. Young learners pick up pronunciation, vocabulary, grammatical structures, and rhythm of the language.   Article visualizations

Teaching English for Young Learners

Language as a means of communication plays very important role in social relationship among human beings. The English language is the first foreign language we teach to children at very early stages of schooling. The primary aim of teaching English in the early years of schooling is to motivate young learners to be ready and have self-confident in learning English at higher levels of education. Some children are born to parents who are polyglots, so they have to acquire two or three different languages. Some others learn second or third language because they have to immigrate to a new country. Others learn English as foreign language because English is not their native language in their country. Teaching English to young learners then can be beneficial or detrimental to learners. It will be beneficial if the teachers can facilitate learning and enable learners to bring to language learning their curiosity and eagerness to make sense of the world, as a result, the teachers may help the learners are able to overcome their problem even the most demanding tasks with enthusiasm and willingness

Malaysian ESL Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices Regarding the Use of Music and Songs in Second Language Teaching

Regardless of numerous studies supporting the effectiveness of utilizing music and songs in second language teaching, there is a remarkably limited amount of research investigating how music and songs are actually used by language teachers and the beliefs underpinning their practices, particularly in the Malaysian educational context. This qualitative study explored Malaysian ESL teachers’ beliefs and practices with regard to the use of music and songs in language instruction at different levels of education as well as factors influencing their instructional practices. The research participants consisted of five primary-level, five secondary-level and five tertiary-level ESL teachers working at public and private educational institutions, who were selected using purposeful sampling strategy. Data were gathered through individual semi-structured interviews and analyzed using Miles and Huberman’s (1994) framework for qualitative data analysis. Findings of the study indicated the ESL teachers from all three levels of education held overall positive beliefs about the benefits and appropriateness of music and songs as a teaching tool and utilized them in various ways to promote students’ language learning. A number of factors were found to influence the teachers’ use of music and songs in their classrooms. The findings of the study have implications for various educational stakeholders