MUSIC AS AN ENGLISH SKILLS DEVELOPER

OSCAR GIOVANY MARTNEZ PICO

Introduction
Music now a days is everywhere even in
classrooms although some teachers do not
take it as a good learning method, however
there are some ones who use it as a didactic
developer. As a result most of students are
taking study as something really stressful,
they hate going to study because they are
just sitting in silence and listening words that
they do not really care what the meaning is
about, it means, if they learn that knowledge
is not enough compare with the one they
could get learning in a way that involve them
for instance in emotional aspects. Learning
is a long process which depends not only on
the inner abilities of the student, but also on
the method chosen for teaching any subject.
Prez D.
Gardner in his theory about multiple
intelligences said that there are many
different ways of learning, we have to take
into account our methodology and how we
use other disciplines in order to make the
learning process easier. This process is
affected by social changes and furthermore
by the interaction with those changes and
thus is how Prez D. talks about that While
you are learning a foreign language, you are
learning the culture behind that language and
you are learning thousands of years of
history. In other words you are acquiring a
different way of thinking.
Moreover music is not just a way to improve
listening skills as it is considered for many
teachers It has been demonstrated that
music is a trigger that improves academic
skills such as vocabulary and grammar, and
also develops linguistic abilities McCarthy.
Music develops the right hemisphere of brain
and Language the left one, so, what will
happen if you work with both? Music and
Language at the same time is not used just to
improve vocabulary. Listening, writing, and so
on, in addition is one of the better ways to

develop the whole concept of learning a

foreign language; by its using you will learn
anything for instance, about a culture.
As Nietzsche said Life without music would
be a mistake we as teacher have to keep in
mind that teaching has not to be as boring as
(probably most of us) learnt. We got the
power to create new ways in which our
students can learn as in many ways as they
could not imagine. Most of people think that
music is good talking about any topic,
relaxing, creating, reading, feeling happiness
or sadness, in any moment of life music is the
best friend of each one Take a look at our
children, they are learning English while are
listening and trying to say what a song say, so
the role of music has to do especially with
the cognitive abilities that the learner can
improve by keeping in mind musical concepts
such as songs or instrumental music and how
these can improve learners special
reasoning. This is, in turn, connected with
subjects like mathematics, language skills of
writing and reading and, finally, verbal
competence. In the case of language
development, the relationship is somehow
more indirect, but at the same time important:
what we write, what we read, and what we
hear involve words that are used and
understood in specific contexts. These
contexts can be seen as spatial networks
involving words with related words, words
with their historical backgrounds, words with
their social relationships, and words placed in
expressions. Catterall.
In addition, in a study carried out in Colombia,
Morales stresses that While listening to a
song we can read the lyrics and clarify
pronunciation issues, we can sing and
practice speaking and pronunciation skills,
and we can write opinions or answer
questions about our understanding of the
songs. Some teachers tend to think that

using music is not a nice way because

students get confused and almost all time
disturbing each other, also think that its a
way to just create some kind of noise within
the classroom but on the other hand, Woodall
& Ziembrosk pointed out that oral language
is an interactive and social process, and
using songs with authentic meaning is a
natural way to experience rich language in a
pleasurable way. Songs are a good way for
teaching children not only theoretical
concepts related to music, but also
vocabulary we use daily. To conclude I think
the most important is to teach something real
for them, I mean teach what really affects
their process not just as students but also as
human beings.
The Problem
Simple: the traditional method teachers use
to teach a foreign language. Repeat after me,
read, join, complete, and so on Almost all
teachers are focused on what the books say,
they think they have everything because the
book itself has the topic and the work to do.
They forget the context and what really
belongs to them, that is why teacher should
take into account what Murphey said
students may become accustomed to the
natural rhythm and speed of speech used in
songs. Moreover, since songs can be easily
sung both during class time and outside of
the classroom, they provide possibilities for
ample speaking practice and therefore they
might help students to acquire a greater
fluency in the language they are studying.
With music we will create interest in our
students, through it students discover and
learn so many things probably a book does
not mention about, it means: real life, non
academical words, a different type of writing,
a lot of different pronunciation, knowledge
about cultures-history-social problems in
current time and many things we and they
never learn as students; teaching how to
develop better relationship is one of the most
important part in our process as teachers and
L draws our attention to the role of music in
language learning in terms of non-linguistic
factors, specifically, for the improvement of
social skills, and as an overall aid for
learning. Pedagogically, his study revealed
that lessons with songs increase the
students social-interaction skills and their
self-esteem. The implication was that such

growth may lead to greater success in

learning, finally using music we can realize
that excercises after listening to songs can
be developed to enchance vocabulary
knowledge, for example, examining the lyrics
like poetry, probing the words and phrases,
and putting them into use (Lems, 2005) and
in that way we will contributing with improve
our quality as social people, it means we will
teach not just a foreing language but more
than that the importance of being active (in a
nice way) in our society. Finally, I consider
teachers teach English but do not teach: Why
important to learn a foreign language is.
Justification
The need is taken from our now a days
classrooms, there is where we would find
bored students; paraphrasing some of the
Paulos Freire words: We are the ones who
could change oppression, we as teachers
could realize that educational problems are
not because of students instead of bad
teaching methods. Emine Buket explains
that so far, it has been noted in the above
sections that the reasons for using music
may have both cognitive and affective
justifications depending on brain-based
research, music methodologies, and the
effect music has on peoples emotions. That
is why our students are receiving information
rather than knowledge; music is the way a
culture even an entire society could learn
another points of view and it does not matter
if there is in another language, under these
circumstance is even better because that
society could learn a foreign language.
If you listen to music in English (and then you
use it to Teach/Learn) you are going to be
able to:
1. Reading and Vocabulary: Obviously
lyrics in a song were made to be
(listen at first but) read once you have
listened to the song. There you are
working on your reading skill.
Griffee states that using songs as
authentic material is another way of
enhancing the vocabulary knowledge
of the students as this provides them
with a meaningful context. Almost all
time we as teachers think that
reading academic books is just the
necessary tool to use but Knowing
that idioms and metaphors are

necessary to understand a language,

the use of songs may provide
excellent source or examples for
language teachers in teaching these
specifically used expressions in the
language (Nuessel & Cicogna,
1991).
2. Writing and Grammar: After a couple
(or many) of songs you will want to
create something which belongs to
your current mud or with what you
are thinking in a certain time. There
you are developing your writing skill.
Since songs have suprasegmental
characteristics,
this
may
help
learners to raise their awareness of
grammatical patterns to reconstruct
the language if the teacher uses
these rhythmic aspects of language
through songs (Saricoban & Metin,
2000). Abrate also proved that using
music you may include the following
grammar exercises: fill in the blank
dictations with the correct form of a
verb tense, some structural patterns
and how they are used in sentences
with the examples found in the song.
3. Listening: More than just listening,
you are learning something really
important: Pronunciation; moreover
you are learning phonetic itself and
what is better, without being stressed
because of a partial about that.
Mastering your ear. Listening
activities based on real-life situations
are thought to be more challenging
and motivating than the activities in
text books (Ur, 2004).
Listening comprehension and other skills are
of great value in a language program.
However, in order to enhance the ability to
speak fluently Nuessel & Cicogna explain us
that learners need time because fluency
cannot be taught directly but it emerges only
after the learner has constituted competence
through input. Songs can be a great aid in
providing it.
4. Speaking: I think this one join the
previous one, and with music both
could be develop in a great way. If
you sing you should pronounce
correctly even you (involuntarily) are
correcting your own mistakes. In

relation with that Nuessel & Cicogna

said that songs might be motivating.
It is possible that they might have
power to engage students insinging
the song. Since it can be sung in
groups, students participation is
equal and shy students can benefit
from singing as a whole class. In
other words and According to Griffee
songs and music can improve the
speech ability of a student in a
foreign language class as their
content suggests myriad exercises
for discussions. Also, learners are
exposed to colloquial speech via
songs, which provides a better
understanding of the daily use of the
language.
Now a days teachers talk about boosting the
four skills but I consider that there is another
important part in real life to take into account,
one the probably almost all have forgotten:
5. Affective Considerations: In addition
to the potential effect of music on
language learning as an activity of
the brain, music also has an effect on
peoples emotions, and this too can
be beneficial for learning a language.
One of the most salient aims of
music is to move the feelings of the
listeners, which is why music has
been described as the language of
emotions (Kivy & Sundberg). In
addition Sacks claims that among all
the arts, music has a unique power to
help people express their emotions.
Music can be presumed to affect both ESL
and EFL learners. According to Murphey if
music is incorporated into class hours, it can
stimulate the students feelings and reactions
as well as their desire for learning. Krashen
has also postulated that music can promote
mental alertness and reduction for tension
for the language learning environment. In
conclusion music create an environment
where everybody would like to learn even to
teach.
Aims
Apply music to develop each skill on firstgrade students taken from the Mentor and
Gimnasio Imperial schools. In order to make
it possible, this project is taking in to account

what Gardner H. said: young children have a

natural tendency to sing a tune or to hum. He
also states that musical intelligence is the first
intelligence to occur. Musical Intelligence
(Howard Gardner) and Social Interaction (Lev
S. Vygotsky) are the methods this project is
going to be based on. Songs and how do
they share the knowledge those songs give
them will be the result and then the reach of
this projects goal.

Methodology

Students have different motivations and that

is why I used different songs rather than the
same one in the whole class, understanding
that is how the learning process develops
interest. According with H. Gardner "Multiple
intelligences is a psychological theory about
the mind. It's a critique of the notion that
there's a single intelligence which we're born
with, which can't be changed, and which
psychologists can measure. It's based on a
lot of scientific research in fields ranging from
psychology to anthropology to biology. It's not
based upon based on test correlations, which
most other intelligence theories are based on.
The claim is that there are at least eight
different
human
intelligences.
Most
intelligence tests look at language or logic or
both - those are just two of the intelligences.
The other six are musical, spatial,
bodily/kinesthetic,
interpersonal,
intrapersonal, and naturalist. I make two
claims. The first claim is that all human
beings have all of these intelligences. It's part
of our species definition. The second claim is
that, both because of our genetics and our
environment, no two people have exactly the
same profile of intelligences, not even
identical twins, because their experiences are
different."

This study followed the Theory of Multiple

Intelligences method and took into account
what Gardner said about the way we learn
and that these differences "challenge an
educational system that assumes that
everyone can learn the same materials in the
same way and that a uniform, universal
measure suffices to test student learning.
Indeed, as currently constituted, our
educational system is heavily biased toward
linguistic
modes
of
instruction
and
assessment and, to a somewhat lesser
degree, toward logical-quantitative modes as
well." To conclude I made a strong emphasis
in the use of music.

Once they had done all the activities I just

play the song in order to give them an idea of
what they were going to listen about. Then I
read them the lyrics with the intention they
understood it better, once I had read it, I
wanted them to read it with me aloud. We
listened to the song again, and next to that I
was pronouncing with them word by word,
that make them feel comfortable as well as
self-confident. Summing up almost all of them
were singing the song or at least speaking
about it and the topic presented within. To
conclude students write a paragraph related
to the topic, if it could be a song it would be
much better, in fact this was their homework.

In order to make this project I used some

songs during some classes, I did it with firstgrade, second-grade, third-grade and fourthgrade students. After explanation and some
book activities I use songs referred to the
topic recently studied, along with songs I was
also showing them some videos in which
music was involve clarifying the topic.

The learned topics were:

In that order of ideas the project is based on:

1. Develop the four skills in students
based on learning with music.
2. Involve
music
with
other
academicals fields along the learning
process.

3. Teach in ways which students do not

feel as if they are studying.
4. Develop criticism and auto criticism
by using a certain musical genre
(based on his/her needs).

1.
2.
3.
4.

First-grade: Fruits.
Second-grade: Clothes.
Third-grade: Professions.
Fourth-grade: Nationalities.
Results

The way I complete the results were listening

to my students once they were singing;

actually my first intention was listening to their

own song (homework) but time was not
enough.

MUSIC AS AN FOREIGN LANGUAGE SKILLS DEVELOPER

Music as an English skills booster
Students insight

Listening practices were easier to

understand for them.

An easier way of understand

words pronunciation.

Pronunciation and fluency by using

music gave better results.

A motivator once they need to

pronounce.

Reading and writing something

students really like it is better than
doing it just because it is mandatory.

A perceiver of how easy could be

read and write in a foreign
language.

Notwithstanding that I categorized, codified

and interpreted what the project show me
after using music with educational purposes.
Diagram above depicts the categories and
subcategories found.1

References
Brown, D. (1994). Teaching by principles: An
interactive approach to language pedagogy.
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall
Regents.
Buket. S .E. (2010). The effects of music on
English language learners speaking fluency
and on their motivation/interest level. Ankara:
Bilkent University.
Catterall, J. S. (2006). Conversation and
silence: Transfer of learning through the arts.
Journal for Learning through the Arts, 1(1).
Retrieved from:
http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/6fk8t8xp
Gardner, H. (2004). Frames of Mind the
Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York:
Basic Book.

1 Oscar G. Martnez P. Licenciatura en Humanidades,

Lengua Castellana e Ingls. Noveno Semestre.
oscargmartinezp@uincca.edu.co

Prez D. F. (2010). The Role of Music in

Young Learners Oral Production in English.
Universidad Nacional de Colombia, sede
Bogot. PROFILE Vol. 12, No. 1, 2010.
Pages 141-157.