ThepositiveroleofEnglishsongs.doc

The Positive Role of Songs In English Teaching

江苏省海安县实验中学 姜加芹
Ⅰ.Brief introduction of the positive role of songs in English teaching
Interest is the best teacher for English language learners. How to arouse the students’ great interest in English class is due to the teacher’s teaching techniques. Constant use of techniques throughout the lesson can assist and support student understanding teaching materials. However, studies have indicated that, in most classrooms, teachers come to teach with ideas about the teaching/learning process formed from the years they have spent as students themselves, leaving students severely limited in terms of opportunities to use language in a variety of way. Most of the traditional teaching methods pay special attention to the process of teaching knowledge. Teaching techniques and learning strategies are often neglected. In this way, students usually get sensory memory and short-term memory for learning materials. As is known to all, our senses, such as sight, hearing, touch, smell, register information from the environment and make it available for further processing in short-term memory. An important feature of the sensory memory is that information registers only for a very brief period of time. It is then either lost from the system as forgetting or is a conscious thought in short-term memory. Short-term memory is a very active, immediate memory system, which has two characteristics. The first is that information is soon lost from this memory unless it is rehearsed. What’s more, short-term memory has limited capacity. Although several ideas can be judged at once, the addition of too many new ideas can result in the loss of them. So, perfect long-term memory is the dream of many students. By becoming clear on where we stand nowadays, we should choose to teach differently from the way we were taught. One of the most widely accepted methods for teaching strategies to English language learners to achieve long-term memory is to apply songs in English class. The ways in which we put songs into practice vary with the situation, the method, the topic, the background of the material, the content and the audience. We will see, as described in the following, songs really play a positive role in English teaching.
Ⅱ.Analysis of the positive role of songs in English teaching
Firstly, songs assist students in getting knowledge of international phonetics. As we all know, it’s easy for even a little child to learn to sing ‘A B C Song’ easily and quickly. However, if a child is asked to recite the twenty-six letters one by one, he will feel it dull and uninteresting and eventually give up. Yet things will be quite different when he is required to focus on learning ‘A B C Song’. It will be much easier to learn the letters by providing a song, which tells us one important theory------Different goals result in different effect. As is the same with international phonetics, for most English language learners, they are unwilling to learn the international phonetics just by dull reading and repeated writing. Even if they have to remember them in class, they can only have short-term memory for them while songs can help them gain long-term memory for the phonetics. For instance, when we teach them the international phonetics called [ai]
, we can make up a song just as the following: My white kite; my white kite; where are they? Where are they? On my bike, on my bike. Mike can fly it. Mike can fly it. From this song, students may get to know one thing, that is to say, the letter ‘i’ and ‘y’ can usually be pronounced as [ai]. As all the students are familiar with the popular children's song named ‘Two Tigers’, the music for the teacher –created song can be based on it. In order to emphasize the phonetics, the words and phonetics can be seen on the screen simultaneously. In addition, we can play such kind of songs often in order that they have more chances to review and consolidate the international phonetics. As a matter of fact, students enjoy listening to the songs. And at the same time we may encourage them to write down the phonetics according to what they hear. Sometimes we can even hold competitions so that they can get much more encouragement and self-confidence.
Whenever possible and appropriate, we should put songs into practice. As students are engaged in so many subjects, it’s common for them to feel it boring to remember the English words one by one. As for English words, students can also benefit a lot from English songs. Let’s take the following as an example. Hurry, wait, time, seven, o’clock and quick are all new words of one sample dialogue. If we follow the traditional teaching method, teach the students the pronunciation, explain the meaning of the words one by one and just ask them to repeat, students will surely feel uninterested and some of them may even give up. Yet the way in which we put songs into practice will change the situation greatly. We can make up a nice song, which includes all the new words listed above. The song can be written as the following: Hurry, hurry, wait for me. What’s the time? What’s the time? Seven, seven o’clock. Quick, quick, be quick. The music being played can be based on the English song called ‘Twelve Months’. Since students know the song and enjoy the song, they’ll be eager to learn the new words. Only after they can read the words fluently and accurately can they sing the song easily and properly. And at the same time, the song can assist them in remembering the new words. We can play the song from time to time. And vivid video or slides for the song can be played simultaneously. By this means not only can the words be learned quickly and efficiently but also that they can be consolidated naturally? The example listed above helped us a lot in teaching new words in an English class. What’s more, songs also play an important role in reviewing the words of a unit or the whole book. We may choose key words from different texts and make up songs in which students show great interest. In addition, we can play the music and ask students to write out the words of the songs. One of the best ways in which words can be checked is to have a competition among the students. Those who can finish the words of the song quickly and correctly can get nice presents. In this way students can be greatly encouraged. They will surely try their best to achieve what they need. Apart from the words, sentence structures can also be learned and consolidated in songs. As mentioned previously, the sentence pattern called‘What’s the time?’is also used in the song. It will help students a lot to remember the form and meaning of the pattern by heart. For such kind of procedure, the teacher only needs to offer assistance in helping students learn the song. The purpose is to learn a nice song rather than learn so many new and dull words. Instead of dictating the new words, we can ask the students to sing the song with the help of the video and music, it’s easy for them to do so. After they became familiar with the song, we may require them to write the words according to the music.
So far I have illustrated a lot about the usage of songs in teaching International Phonetics, new words and structural patterns. Another aspect in which songs work a lot is that songs can assist students in teaching reading materials. As we all know, the present evaluation thoughts require that we shouldn’t evaluate a student only according to the marks he achieves. The most important thing lies in helping students experience progress and success, build self-confidence, adjust learning strategy and promote his integrated language skills. As a result, we cannot neglect students’interest and learning strategy in English study. An investigation showed that it usually takes at least five minutes for the students to transfer from the resting state to the working state. Thus songs can help adjust their state during the special period. Usually for the first twenty minutes students can focus their mental energy on the class. Yet twenty minutes later, their state of excitement gradually disappeared and the level of their thought activities lower down continuously. For this special moment, songs can help them drive off tiredness. Actually after our summarization for the whole class, we can end the class with a proper song in order that it can help students relax. Since songs play such an important role in our English class, then what kind of songs shall we choose to deal with different procedures? In common, we’d better choose songs whose topics are mainly connected with or similar to the teaching materials. Otherwise it will be a waste of time and energy. Here I’d like to select one of my open classes as an example, the title of which is making a travel leaflet. The task for the students is to design a travel plan. After a pro-thinking, I chose the song called ‘Camping’ to lead in the class. When I played the song, some questions appeared on the screen, which can be answered according to the song easily. The students felt excited and became active. Most students showed great interest in the topic. What surprised me most was that a lot of students put up their hands to answer the questions listed on the screen while in our daily teaching life, it’s difficult for so many senior middle school students to raise their hands to answer teacher’s questions optimistically. The answers include the following five questions:
1. When did the singer go camping?
2. Where did he go camping?
3. Who did he go camping with?
4. What did he do there?
5. Why did he go camping?
It seems that these questions are not so difficult for students and they are common questions from a song. Yet it has set a good foundation for our main task of the whole lesson. That is to say, when we plan a holiday, we should also consider similar questions listed above. As a result of the proper use of the song, most students did a good job in the class. After the groups I divided finished their tasks, I asked the winner what present his group members are eager to have. (I prepared some nice presents such as beautiful cards, sweets, chocolates and pens before class) I was surprised to find that they suggested that the song be played once more. So when our class came to an end, I played the song for a second time and most students followed the song. What’s more, I could even hear some students sing the song during break time. I really felt satisfied with my design. I should say the song really worked. Besides English songs, sometimes we can also choose proper Chinese songs for our English class. Here, I’d like to take one of my open classes, which was considered to be well-designed, as an example. The title of the teaching material is ‘Looking Good and Feeling Good’. The main topic is about health. It’s an ordinary topic for us. But how can we arouse students’interest for the common topic? I thought hard and one of Fan Xiaoxuan’s songs called ‘Song Of Health’ came into my mind. Though it is a Chinese song, yet everything in the song has something to do with our teaching content. Before the students listen to the song, I offered a guiding question as the following: What do Fan Xiaoxuan and her grandpa do in order to live a healthy life? I even allowed some students who aren’t good at English express their idea both in English and in Chinese. To my great surprise, all the students except two raise their hands to take the chance to express their opinion. All the students enjoyed the song and were encouraged to express their ideas actively and freely. After some students gave their personal ideas, we had a discussion and summarization and came to the following conclusion: Eating right food, drinking plenty of water, exercising regularly and having enough sleep will make a teenager feel and look better. As a matter of fact, the conclusion is not only the answer to the question which was raised at the beginning of the class but also the main idea of the teaching content. With vivid pictures and nice music, it’s easy for them to remember the detailed measures of how to look good and feel good. When we analyzed the whole content in details, I designed extra pictures and music for each part. And the music is chosen from the former that we used at the beginning of the class. Actually, all the students were absorbed in our topic whole-heartedly. They participated, cooperated, communicated, learned a lot and also enjoyed a lot, which mainly due to the proper use of the song. At the end of the class, all the students sang the song together and spoke out the ways in which people can look good and feel good. The teachers who attended my class all applauded and I was totally encouraged. After that class, I wrote the following sentence in my teaching diary: As teachers, our automatic use of English helps us to create or produce something new for students. By teaching, we can enhance students’ability in all aspects.
As one of the famous musicians said,‘Nobody in the world hates music, if so, that’s because he hasn’t understood the value and beauty of music.’From my own teaching experience, I get to know that all the students enjoy music and can benefit a lot from music. It’s always a feeling of great pride for the students when they succeed in singing the songs clearly and fluently. We can help students achieve a lot as long as we act as not only teachers but also perfect designers and excellent organizers. The better arrangement we have the better goal we will achieve eventually.
Since songs play such a positive role in English teaching, then how can we put them into practice high-efficiently in our daily teaching life? First of all, we ourselves should be fond of and even good at listening and singing songs. Only after we form the habit of enjoying songs can we apply songs in our classes properly. Setting a good example for the students to sing beautiful songs, you will certainly earn more admiration and respect from your students. We can search on the internet for all kinds of songs, especially children’s songs, both in English and in Chinese. After we gather enough songs, we can sort them according to different aspects. And it will be convenient for us to choose.
Enough preparation is important while reasonable arrangement for the songs also cannot be neglected. When we touch our teaching topic, we should consider one thing, which means we should make sure where songs are needed indeed and what kind of songs are needed. After we make up our decision, we should design the concrete teaching procedure and details of the use of songs. More importantly, songs are not isolated. They should be connected with the teaching material, the situation, video, pictures and so on. After students get used to accepting knowledge by means of songs, we should change the role. If the students always listen to the song chosen by the teacher, repeating it