Using songs for lexical learning on EFL

O‘ZBEKISTON RESPUBLIKASI

XALQ TA’LIMI VAZIRLIGI

ТОSHKENT SHAHAR ХАLQ TA’LIMI XODIMLARINI

QAYTA TAYYORLASH VA ULARNING MALAKASINI OSHIRISH HUDUDIY MARKAZI

“TILLARNI O‘ QITISH METODIKASI” KAFEDRASI

Ingliz tili fani o‘qituvchilarining malaka oshirish kursi tinglovchisi

Buzrukova Feruza Zokiryoevna

“Yuqori sinflarda leksikani o‘qitishda

Qo‘shiqlardan foydalanish metodikasi”

маvzusidagi

MALAKA ISHI

Каfedra mudiri: __________S.T.Israilova

(imzo)

Malaka ishi rahbari: _________S.T.Israilova

(imzo)

Тоshkent – 2020 yil

TOSHKENT SHAHAR XALQ TA’LIMI XODIMLARINI QAYTA TAYYORLASH VA ULARNING MALAKASINI OSHIRISH

HUDUDIY MARKAZI

INGLIZ TILI O‘QITUVCHILARINING MALAKA OSHIRISH KURSI TINGLOVCHISI

__________________________________________________________________

(tinglovchining F.I.SH.)

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________mavzusidagi

bitiruvmalakaishiga

TAQRIZ

Taqriz uchun tinglovchi malaka ishini ____betda topshirdi.

Malaka ishiga rahbar xulosasi (taqrizchi) tomonidan qo‘yilgan ballar:

Taqrizchi fikri (ijobiy yoki salbiy) __________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Taqrizchining xulosasi:

Tinglovchi __________________________ning malakaishi _____ball bilan baholanganligini hisobga olib ,malaka ishni yakuniy attestatsiya komissiyasida himoyaga tavsiya qilinadi.

Rahbar (taqrizchi) ________________________ ________

(F.I.Sh) (imzo)

“_____” __________________ 2020 y

Annotatsiya

Malaka ishning mavzusi «Yuqori sinflarda leksikani o‘qitishda Qo‘shiq lardan foydalanish metodikasi» bo‘lib, ingliztili o‘qitish jarayoni yanada samarali hamda qiziqarli bo‘lishi uchun foydalanilgan qo‘shiqlar, ularning turlari va ulardan to‘g‘ri foydalanish haqida yozilgan.

Malaka ishi kirish qismi, asosiy qism, xulosa va foydalanilgan adabiyotlar ro‘yxatidan iborat.

Kirish qismi ingliz tili o‘rganishning zarurligi, ushbu malaka ishning maqsadi undan kutiliyotgan natijalar haqida aytib o‘tilgan.

Asosiy qismda ingliz tilini o‘qitish samarali va qiziqarli tashkil qilish uchun musiqalar,qo‘shiqlar hamda she`rlardan to‘g`ri foydalanishning ahamiyati, mazmun mohiyati, afzalliklari haqida ma`lumot berilgan.

Chet tilini o‘qitishda zamonaviy metodlarning va ularni qo‘llaydigan usullarning ahamiyati kattadir. Chet tillarini o‘rganish va o‘qitishda malaka ishning mavzusi ingliztilini eng asosiy masalalardan biri hisoblanadi.

Umid qilamanki. Ushbu malaka ishim ingliz tili o`qitish jarayonida foydalanilgan adabiyotlar qo‘shimcha manba bo‘ladi.

CONTENTS

Introduction………………………………………………………………….…4

Main part

1. Surveying teacher cognitions and classroom practices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

2. Methodological considerations: Assessing the lexical demand of a text genre.11

3. The vocabulary size necessary to comprehend various text genres. . . . . . . . . . 14

4. The benefits of songs for lexical learning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Conclusion……………………………………………………………….…….. . . 30

References

Appendix (printed slides, lesson plan)

THEME: The Use Of Songs In Teaching Lexics In High School

P L A N:

Introduction

Main part

1. Surveying teacher cognitions and classroom practices.

2. Methodological considerations: Assessing the lexical demand of a text genre

3. Can songs be considered written or spoken texts?

4. Songs Might Benefit Lexical Learning

Conclusion and recommendations

Introduction

The present thesis addresses one overall research question: Can songs as they are currently used in the language classroom benefit lexical learning? In order to answer this question, three different aspects of song use in second language teaching, the teacher, the material and the learning outcome, are explored by means of three separate studies utilizing different methodological approaches.

In Study an international teacher questionnaire explored why (not) and how language teachers currently use songs in class.

Study comprises the compilation and analysis of a pedagogical song corpus. It investigated the vocabulary load of teacher-selected popular songs regarding their lexical demand as well as the vocabulary learning opportunities they afford. In addition, the vocabulary load of song lyrics was compared to that of other authentic text genres such as novels, films and spoken discourse. Study examined a potential mnemonic effect of songs and also poems compared to prose texts by means of a quasi-experimental intervention study.

Due to the distinct topics and methodological approaches of the three studies, the literature review is sub-dividedinto three parts.

The first part reviews the small body of existing survey studies using a questionnaire to explore current teaching practices involving songs.

The second part explores research into the lexical characteristics of songs used for language teaching. In addition, this section discusses studies focused on the vocabulary load of other authentic English text genres.

In particular, it details the methodology used in these studies to measure lexical demand, as the present song corpus study follows a similar approach.

The third part of this chapter reviews literature relevant to the quasi-experimental intervention study.

Firstly, it gives an overview of memory theories relevant to an understanding of a possible mnemonic effect of songs.

Secondly, it reviews pertinent research in the field of cognitive psychology studying the effect of songs and poems on verbatim text retention by native speakers. Finally, it explores the small body of research focused on second language learners’ lexical learning through songs.

1. Surveying teacher cognitions and classroom practices

Language practitioners are often enthusiastic about using songs. Such a positive attitude contrasts with the relative scarcity of songs in formalised teaching materials.

In addition, only few empirical studies have explored the use of songs in second language teaching. Due to the dearth of prescribed principles and recommended teaching techniques regarding the use of songs in second language teaching, pedagogical choices and their implementation depend mainly on the course instructor. It, therefore, seems warranted to go to the source and explore song use from the point of view of teachers.

Consequently, the present survey study was designed to explore if, why (not) and how teachers currently utilise songs in the language classroom, with a particular focus on the teaching of vocabulary. In the following review, I discuss the small number of survey studies which have explored the use and usefulness of songs in the language classroom from the perspective of the teacher. Following the review, I highlight the research gap that the present study intended to fill.

One important aspect of a musical teaching approach is, of course, the song used as material. When selecting a song, teachers must bear in mind a myriad of factors, including the suitability of both its content and its language for their students. In particular, teachers need to consider the vocabulary used in the lyrics and whether it is appropriate for the target learners. When discussing the suitability of vocabulary, one relevant question is: How many words do learners need to know to gain adequate comprehension of authentic English songs used as teaching material? In addition, when considering songs as a means to teach vocabulary, it is relevant to know the lexical profile of songs and how it can best serve lexical learning.

Songs are one text genre among many for teachers to choose from. It, therefore, needs to be considered how the lexical profile and particularly the vocabulary load of song lyrics and their vocabulary learning potential compare to that of other authentic language materials such as novels, TV programmes or movies. The present study followed the methodology of existing research such, which used a corpus-based approach to gauge the vocabulary load of various types of written and spoken discourse.

The use of the same methodological approach allowed for a direct comparison of song lyrics with other text genres. In the following literature review, I first discuss existing corpus-based research exploring the lexical profile of songs. I then present existing studies examining the vocabulary load of other types of written and spoken discourse and their methodological implications for the study at hand.

Typically, these personal referents did not specify a particular person, remained vague about the referents’ gender and even often displayed a certain fluctuation over who was the subject and who the addressee.

Furthermore, an analysis of the times and places referred to in the lyrics and discovered that most songs did not mention a specific time or location. These findings and the fact that the songs comprised a high number of imperatives and questions led Murphy to conclude that pop song lyrics are similar to spoken situational discourse.

Argued that vagueness regarding persons, time and location prevalent in pop songs allowed for the listener to “complete the message, or make sense of the song, through using the persons, times and places from their own physical and metaphysical situation”. In effect, he argued that listeners can appropriate the lyrics as their own.

Consequently, pop lyrics can be seen to be highly interesting and emotionally appealing particularly but not only to adolescent listeners. In this context, also raised the question whether pop songs should be considered written or spoken discourse. This question is discussed in greater detail below. Apart from a content analysis, scientists also conducted a lexical analysis of his song corpus, which is of greater interest to the present study. The average song in the corpus contained 263 words.

In addition, he found that the song corpus displayed a type-token ratio (TTR). The average song had a type-token ratio of implying fairly high repetition of a relatively limited number of words. This result 3.o an excerpt of similar length (394 words) from an English textbook for 1st-year-students and found that the textbook passage had a clearly higher TTR.

Calculated the frequency of each word in the corpus and found that, only ten words, you, I, me, my, the, to, a, and, gonna, love (as both noun and verb) accounted for 25% of the total number of tokens in the corpus. Finally, he analyzed the lexical and syntactical complexity of the song lyrics and found that they contained comparatively short sentences with an average sentence comprising seven words. He also calculated that 82% of tokens in the corpus were monosyllabic words.

Based on the results for sentence- and word-length, applied the song corpus and found that lyrics can be considered “very easy” (on a 7-point-scale from very difficult to very easy), comparable to texts requiring a reading level of a child after five years of schooling.

Finally, the speech rate in songs and found that it was about half the speed of normal spoken discourse. However, such a low speech rate did not imply a slower vocalization of words but instead was mostly due to a high number of pauses. From his lexical analysis, pop songs as a genre are short, lexically simple and highly repetitive. Previously stated hypothesis – based on a small-scale study of one song only – that pop lyrics are simple, non-threatening, highly affective and, in essence, a “motherese for adolescence”, and as a result might lend themselves well for language learning.

Findings provided a good indication of the results that could be expected from the present song corpus study. However, findings in the current study were also expected to differ for two reasons.

Firstly, the present corpus is considerably larger comprising a significantly higher number of tokens from a greater sample of songs.

Secondly, the current corpus comprises songs selected by teachers and material designers for in-class use rather than a selection of popular hits from a randomly selected chart.

The lexical profile of the present corpus, thus, not only reflects the typical characteristics of pop songs as a genre, but is also influenced by the language-pedagogical decisions made by educators. In addition, lexical analysis displays a small number of limitations that the current study set out to address.

Firstly, claims about the lexical simplicity of pop song lyrics are partially based on his finding that only few words are highly frequent and make up a large part of the corpus.

However, research has since shown that high-frequency words such as the, and, to, and youaccount for large numbers of tokens in any form of discourse and are not necessarily an indication of a particularly simplistic type of language.

Secondly, regarding the high lexical repetition in song lyrics is based on the analysis of the type-token ratio. The type-token ratio as a measure of lexical diversity is highly dependent on the length of a text or the size of a corpus.

As a result, it is limited in its informative value and can only be interpreted in direct comparison with a text of similar length. The present study made use of the so-called standardized type-token ratio (STTR) found in Wordsmith Tools® (Scott, 2008) as a measure of lexical diversity. The standardized type-token ratio allows for a comparison of texts of varying lengths.

Thirdly, no means to gauge the vocabulary load of pop songs as a genre. The present study will make use of a methodological approach not available when song corpus analysis. This methodology uses word frequency lists to measure the overall lexical demand of a corpus. It has been used in a number of studies on the vocabulary load of various types of written and spoken discourse and is explained in greater detail below.

As an additional advantage, the use of a methodology applied in the study of various text genres permits a comparison of the overall lexical demand of different teaching materials.

However, it also needs to be acknowledged that applying this methodology to the analysis of songs holds certain limitations.

In summary, research into the lexical profile of songs is scarce and leaves several questions unanswered. However, in recent years, a growing number of studies have investigated the lexical load of various written and spoken types of English discourse from a language-pedagogical perspective. In the following section, I will discuss the methodology applied in these studies as well as their findings for different text genres.

2.Methodological considerations: Assessing the lexical demand of a text genre

An increasing number of studies within the field of second language vocabulary research are concerned with the overall lexical demand of various text genres from a language-pedagogical perspective, such as novels, newspaper articles, movies and TV programmes. They are interested in how many words second language learners need to know for adequate comprehension of these types of written and spoken discourse and for incidental vocabulary learning to occur when engaging with these text types. In order to assess the lexical demand of a text genre, one has to address two questions.

Firstly, one has to determine a reliable average percentage of how many words in a text need to be known for a reader to gain adequate comprehension of its content.

Secondly, we need to have an understanding of how many words a learner is required to know to reach that threshold.

How many words of written and spoken texts need to be known for adequate comprehension?

Within vocabulary research, the issue of lexical demand is frequently addressed by asking how many words in a text need to be understood for adequate or reasonable comprehension and for incidental vocabulary learning to occur. Coverage of around of words in a target text has been suggested. In this context, the term coverage refers to the percentage of known words in the text. Widely accepted to be the optimal threshold for adequate comprehension of unsimplified written texts. That is, with knowledge of running words or tokens in a target text learners are likely to reach acceptable understanding of the content.

However, while it has been repeatedly demonstrated required for optimal reading comprehension, the same threshold cannot simply be applied to listening comprehension.

Listening differs from reading in many ways, most obviously in the temporary nature of aural texts and the challenge of parallel reception and decoding. Aural texts in contrast to written input do not provide opportunities for perusal and repetition . However, spoken discourse also affords extra-linguistic support to understanding. It frequently provides non-verbal clues, such as gestures, facial expressions and lip movements, which aid listening comprehension and make up for deficient lexical knowledge.

Given the additional non-verbal cues present in many forms of spoken discourse, van argued that coverage necessary to comprehend written and spoken texts might differ. Based on an experimental study of listening comprehension in native and non-native speakers, they proposed as an appropriate coverage target for listening comprehension of informal spoken narratives.

Investigated EFL-learners’ comprehension of four audio-recordings of varying levels of lexical difficulty and concluded that coverage of less than of tokens might still result in adequate comprehension if listeners made use of effective coping strategies. And cautioned that “we need to consider that text coverage greater than may be needed to cope effectively with the transitory nature of spoken language”. As this short overview reveals, there is currently no consensus regarding the optimal lexical coverage of aural texts. Song lyrics, however, can be considered a fairly particular text genre, displaying characteristics of both written and spoken discourse. The textual characteristics of and the appropriate coverage for song lyrics are further explored below.

The next issue that must be addressed when assessing the lexical demand of a text or text genre is the question of how many words learners need to know to reach the threshold required for adequate comprehension. This is often done by assessing the coverage of a text provided by word frequency lists. In this context, coverage refers to the percentage of words accounted for by such word lists.

Using such frequency lists to assess the vocabulary knowledge required to understand various text genres is based on the assumption that language learners acquire common words earlier than less common vocabulary.

Research has shown that this is indeed the case. It explained that “high-frequency and wide-range words are generally learned before lower-frequency and narrow-range words”.Andit needs to be noted that the wordlists used in the majority of studies on lexical coverage consist of word families rather than individual words. That is, the lists contain headwords along with a number of family members. A vocabulary size of 3,000 word families, consequently, refers to knowledge of more than 3,000 individual words, as each word family can comprise several family members. For the wordlists, a word family is defined on the basis of the level-6 classification described in Bauer and Nation, which includes inflected and derived forms. The headword break, for example, subsumes the following members: breaking, breakage, breakages, breaks, broke, broken, unbreakable, outbreaks, outbreak, unbroken, breaker, breakers.

The use of the word family to measure word knowledge is based on the assumption that “inflected and regularly derived forms of a known base word can also be considered as known words if the learners are familiar with the affixes”. In addition, proper nouns are also often assumed to be known or have such a small learning burden as to be counted as known. So-called marginal words are also often counted as known due to their low learning burden.

The term marginal words refers to exclamations, interjections and hesitation markers such as oh, err, or ah.

Finally, added transparent compounds as a separate category to the word frequency lists, as also considered to be known by means of knowing their high-frequency parts, for example hometown, babygirlor sailboat. For an explanation of transparent compounds and for an application of the category in a corpus study.

3.The vocabulary size necessary to comprehend various text genres

No study to date has attempted to establish the lexical demand of pop song lyrics based on the coverage provided by word-frequency lists. In contrast, various studies have explored the lexical demand of other text genres used in English teaching.

The lexical demand of written texts

Research into lexical coverage has originated from and is still primarily focused on written texts and reading comprehension. The vocabulary demand of various types of written discourse. The vocabulary knowledge of word families is needed to read novels.

One reason for this difference could be the use of different wordlists: based analysis on West’s General Service List and on wordlists adapted from vocabulary workbook, whereas used fourteen wordlists developed.

Secondly, whereas analyzed three short novels written for adolescents, investigated the vocabulary demand of five novels written for adult readers. These five novels not only constituted a larger corpus from a greater variety of sources but they were also written for a more sophisticated audience. For these two reasons, Nation’s corpus might have displayed greater lexical diversity.

Finally, in study there might have been a greater mismatch between the analysed texts and the wordlists used to analyse: corpus only contained novels published before, yet the wordlists used where based on, a corpus “designed to represent a wide cross-section of British English from the later part of the 20th century”.

The comparison of study of novels for adolescents and analysis of novels written for an adult readership highlights the importance of a precise definition of the targeted text genre. It also emphasizes the necessity for a corpus to contain a comprehensive selection of text samples if it is intended to be representative of a genre. As previously discussed, the only existing pedagogical song corpus containeda fairly small number of songs and comprised several songs produced by the same artists, thus possibly over-emphasizing a particular style of language.

Also investigated the lexical demands of various newspaper corpora and found that they required the same level of vocabulary knowledge as novels. The word families plus proper nouns were necessary to gain adequate reading comprehension of newspaper articles. This might be surprising, as one might expect a higher vocabulary demand in newspaper articles, which can be assumed to cover a wider variety of specific topics and to use a greater number of academic terms than novels.

It can thus be expected that song lyrics contain a comparatively low number of proper nouns.

Unscripted spoken discourse, that is, spontaneous, unplanned speech not based on a script prepared prior to speaking, has been found to be less demanding in terms of vocabulary load than written text genres.

The use of wordlists based on a British corpus might have led to a somewhat inflated result, as some highly frequent words in the corpus such as were counted as low-frequency words in the analysis.

Furthermore, they discovered that there was great variation between different types of spoken discourse. The differentiates between five types of conversations, defined by the relationship between interlocutors: intimate, socio-cultural, professional, transactional and pedagogical. While word families provided over coverage of the transactional sub corpus and still over of the professional section, it only provided the coverage of the pedagogical subcorpus. The pedagogical discourse comprises a much higher percentage of low-frequency formal and academic vocabulary. It needs to be noted that did not utilizewordlists but instead used frequency lists based on the itself.

That is, coverage was assessed by the frequencies of the words in the corpus itself, rather than by more generalised frequency lists based on both written and spoken texts from a variety of contexts.

As explained, employing wordlists representative of general language use is done “to represent the vocabulary size of a typical language user. Such a user would not know only the words in a spoken corpus but would know other words as well”.

The category of scripted spoken discourse includes lectures, speeches and language produced in movies and TV programs. It differs from unscripted spontaneous language in that it follows a written script prepared prior to speaking.

Examiningthe lexical demand of movies, while the vocabulary demand of TVprograms. TV programs, movies and song lyrics are scripted spoken language. All three genres are typically recorded and can be listened to repeatedly.

In that sense, they differ from spoken discourse which described as “heard and then gone”.

In addition, all three genres can be supplemented with reading material: In the case of songs, teachers frequently provide the learners with the lyrics in written form, while TV programs and movies can be viewed with captions. Furthermore, all three genres provide additional non-verbal support for comprehension: While TV shows and movies offer strong visual support in the form of video, songs feature music.

Finally, all three genres are highly popular with learners. In other words, they are authentic genres, which learners engage with voluntarily and frequently.

As pointed out, “although we strongly advocate learning vocabulary through reading, the fact that people spend more time watching television than reading suggests that it could be an effective method of learning vocabulary”. This claim also holds true for pop songs. Song lyrics, then, seem to share a number of characteristics with scripted spoken discourse.

However, as will be discussed in the following, they also possess features found in written and unscripted spoken discourse. As coverage thresholds for written and spoken discourse differ, it is necessary to define more closely where songs can be located within these different categories.

1. Can songs be considered written or spoken texts?

As we saw earlier, identified a number of characteristics of lyrics indicating that pop songs should be considered situational spoken discourse. On the other hand, he found that the speech rate in songs is half that of interactional spoken discourse, which clearly distinguishes songs from other forms of spoken text.

Song lyrics also display a number of characteristics more typical of written texts. Most obviously, the words are written down and usually carefully edited during the production process. And while songs can be considered transitory, they are nowadays typically recorded and can be and are usually repeated many times. Also, the provision of the lyrics in a booklet and the high popularity of lyrics websites on the internet indicate that consumers read and re-read the lyrics of songs.

Results indicated, among other things, that song lyrics display characteristics of both written and spoken text. The short average word-length and the high use of the personal pronouns I and yousupport the view of song lyrics as resembling spoken discourse.

However, the comparatively high standardised type-token ratio speaks for the categorization of lyrics as written text. While the spoken part of observed that song lyrics in the corpus display a low use of the discourse marker you know. In interactional spoken discourse, this expression is frequently used to manage information or to keep the turn.

As explained, using fillers such as you know to avoid losing the turn is “not relevant to pop song lyrics as they resemble written texts with regard to the clearly off-line text production”.

Furthermore, the authors observed that published written lyrics often display creative and unconventional ways of spelling words, as in Avril Lavigne’sSk8er boi. Such intentionally deviant spelling emphasises the relevance of the written text. Overall, identified song lyrics as “a special case of written-to-be-spoken (or, rather, written-to-be-sung) genre”. It therefore seems appropriate to analyse song lyrics using research methods that are typically applied to written texts. In addition, the identification of lyrics as belonging to both the written and the spoken genre highlights their possible usefulness for language learning, as they can be listened to as well as read, and also read-while-listening.

As this review has shown, only one corpus study has conducted an analysis of the lexical properties of songs with “a language-pedagogical slant”.

The present song corpus study intends to contribute to the existing research and to address a small number of limitations. In particular, it comprises a larger corpus with a greater sample size and uses different analytical tools. It also needs to be pointed out that the current corpus comprises songs selected by teachers and material designers to meet the needs of English learners. As a result, it differs from corpus of popular hits found in a European chart, and consequently its findings cannot be generalized to the genre of popular songs as a whole.

Instead, the current corpus study is designed to reveal whether songs in the classroom are accessible to learners in terms of their vocabulary demand and to show what vocabulary learning opportunities songs afford. Results will indicate how lyrics should be utilized in class considering their lexical profile.

This method made it possible to gauge the vocabulary load of song lyrics against general language use and to assess the vocabulary knowledge necessary for language learners to engage with songs. As the literature review has shown, this well-tried methodology has been utilised in the analysis of a number of written and spoken types of discourse and thus permits the comparison of various text genres regarding their lexical challenge for language learners. To this day, this methodological approach has not been applied to the analysis of song lyrics.

Besides the clear benefits of this approach, there are certain caveats associated with the application of this method to the analysis of songs.

Firstly, assessing the vocabulary knowledge required for adequate understanding of lyrics presupposes a recognized threshold of lexical coverage for the comprehension of songs. However, currently such a threshold has not been established.

In addition, the use of BNC wordlists to measure lexical coverage is intended to assess vocabulary knowledge required for unassisted comprehension of texts and for incidental vocabulary learning. This purpose contrasts with the way songs are used in the classroom. A review of the pedagogical literature implies that songs are frequently used to intentionally teach vocabulary and that comprehension is commonly assisted by a variety of measures, including pre-teaching of unknown vocabulary, explanations, repeated listening, and a variety of other form- and meaning-focused activities.

While these caveats should be kept in mind when interpreting the results of the present study, the method is nonetheless an appropriate approach to gain insight into the lexical profile of song lyrics and an improvement on methods previously applied to the analysis of song lyrics. As the literature review has shown, song lyrics resemble both written and spoken discourse.

It can thus be hypothesized that lexical coverage required for adequate comprehension of lyrics is located within a range of 95 to 98 percent. In addition, lexical coverage necessary and sufficient for the comprehension of any text genre depends on a number of variables including the purpose of the activity and the sub-category of a genre. As pointed out, “the degree of lexical coverage required and the vocabulary size needed to reach this coverage will always depend on the input text and the degree of comprehension required”.

4. Songs Might Benefit Lexical Learning

The previous two parts of the literature have explored teachers’ beliefs and teaching practices involving songs and the lexical profile of songs and other text genres used as teaching material. The third part of this review takes a closer look at the learning outcome. More specifically, this section explores if and how songs might benefit lexical learning.

There is a widespread belief that songs and also poems aid the memorization of verbal information. Reported that “older friends have shared with us German songs from their childhood or from a German class with the statement that they have retained little else but have no difficulty singing songs learned as long as fifty years ago”. Accounts like these can be found frequently throughout the pedagogical literature and are recounted in support of an assumed mnemonic effect of songs. Observed a “close relationship between song and memory”, and argued that “the mnemonic value of songs, is, of course, one of the best reasons for using them in the classroom”. Empirical research focused on native speakers has provided some evidence that song and also poetry can benefit verbal learning.

However, findings based on L1-research cannot simply be extended to second language learners. In the following review I will first recapitulate several pertinent models of human memory relevant for a discussion of a possible mnemonic effect of songs and poems. This is followed by a review of the relevant research on “musical mnemonics” and also poetic mnemonics and a discussion of potential factors rendering songs and poems more memorable than prose texts. Finally, I will discuss in greater detail the small body of existing research on lexical learning through songs in a second or foreign language.

One important distinction within long-term memory is that of semantic and episodic memory. Semantic memory refers to world knowledge, which includes knowing the meaning of words, knowing concepts, facts, figures, sensory experiences and how to behave in a certain situation.Usingthe term “mental thesaurus” to illustrate the decontextualized nature of semantic memory. Episodic memory, on the other hand, refers to an autobiographical memory of personally experienced events in the past that includes not only the whatbut also contextual information of the where and when of the event. While we tend to think of all forms of memory and remembering to be about the past, only episodic memory has, in fact, a direct link to past events. It allows for what termed mental time travel in subjective time, that is, a re-visiting of a past event.

Neuropsychological research has shown that semantic and episodic memory are indeed two distinct systems. They are, for example, differently affected by attrition. However, research also shows that they are interdependent at the levels of encoding, storage and retrieval. Healthy subjects use episodic memories to produce lists of objects such as kitchen utensils, for example, by imagining their own kitchen and going through all the items they “see”. At retrieval, episodic memory often functions as "an organizational strategy or an efficient route to access".

The finding that episodic and semantic memory are separate but interdependent systems led researchers to different conclusions. Argued for a serial processing of information. In his view, during the encoding phase input is first processed as semantic and then as episodic memory and subsequently stored in both systems in a parallel fashion. On the other hand, drew a different conclusion regarding the interplay of semantic and episodic memory. He saw the two systems as interdependent and argued that semantic memories are formed after a number of (episodic) learning events as an "accumulated residue".

In short, semantic memory is decontextualized information abstracted from episodic memory. Criticizedsuch a view and pointed out that the formation of semantic memories does not require several learning episodes but can be formed during one single event.

A fair number of studies within the field of cognitive psychology have investigated native speakers’ verbatim memory of sung, spoken and rhythmically enhanced spoken texts. The majority of studies have demonstrated a mnemonic benefit of songs compared to spoken texts under certain conditions. However, a small number of studies also produced converse findings. The existing research revealed several factors that can contribute to an increased memorability of songs and also poetic texts.

One of the first studies indicating a facilitative effect of music on verbal learning. Four experiments on the retention of folk ballads compared different modes of presentation, that is, a sung, spoken, and beat-enhanced spoken mode and their effect on verbatim text recall and the recall of structural features such as rhyme and the number of syllables. She also explored the effect of the number of verses and the repetition of the melody across verses. In addition, the investigated effects of one consistent (and hence repeated) melody in comparison to presenting verses with each a different melody. The lyrics of a three-verse ballad were significantly better recalled verbatim if presented in a sung compared to a spoken and beat-enhanced spoken format, on condition that all verses were sung to the same melody.

However, when the target text consisted of only one verse, the spoken presentation resulted in higher verbatim recall. Additionally, Wallace observed that the presentation of three verses each sung to a different melody but with the same rhythmic pattern yielded similar results to a presentation in spoken format.

As concluded that melody can have a positive effect on recall and reconstruction of text. An acoustically emphasised rhythm alone, however, stressing the same syllables as the melody, seemed to have little facilitative effect. The melody is a major factor when it comes to the superior retention of song lyrics over spoken text. This finding is supported by a number of other studies.

For example, found significantly higher free recall of pop song lyrics under a sung learning condition compared to a spoken condition. Observed increased lexical recall of unconnected lists of words, such as terms for colours and minerals or lists of unknown names of fictitious athletes, following a sung compared to a spoken presentation. And observed superior recall of sung text both in a naturalistic study and in a controlled intervention study. In their naturalistic approach, they investigated whether the frequency of exposure to a sung version of the preamble of the American constitution during childhood in form of a “Schoolhouse Rock” TV vignette affected recall and strategy use during testing. They found that participants who had frequently watched the vignette had a significantly higher recall of the text than participants who had only been infrequently exposed to the broadcast song. In addition, frequent viewers reported a significantly higher use of overt or covert singing as a strategy to remember the lyrics.

Also conducted a laboratory experiment on the recall of the preamble under four different treatment conditions, that is, sung or spoken input without repetition or presented repeatedly over several weeks.

Recall was tested once the treatment was completed and five weeks later. They found that participants of the sung and spoken condition showed similar recall when the text was presented only once.

However, in the repeated condition, the song group significantly outperformed the spoken group during immediate posttesting.

Consequently, emphasised that repetition is essential for melody to serve as a mnemonic aid. This is in line with, who measured free recall after one and several learning trials and found that after only one presentation, test results for the spoken and the sung condition did not differ significantly. While both groups then experienced a significant increase in recall over the next two trials, the song group experienced significantly greater gains.

Also argued that music constitutes added information that needs to be processed and can therefore be considered an additional memory burden. She argued that repeating a song and its melody a sufficient number of times can transform the melody from a memory burden into a memory aid when it comes to verbatim recall of song lyrics. In a similar vein, Moussard, Bigand, Belleville, and Peretz found that in patients with Alzheimer’s disease “music can interfere with verbal learning in initial stages, and facilitate performance in long-term retention or relearning episodes”. Apart from the number of rehearsals, Wallace also found some other factors to moderate the beneficial effect of melody on memory. She qualified that a melody needs to be simple and symmetrical and display a regular rhythm in order to aid retention.

On the other hand, did not find a mnemonic benefit of a sung format, despite repeated line-by-line learning trials and productive retrieval practice. In fact, the authors wondered “why music should facilitate recall, since there is more to learn in a song than in a text”. They compared a sung and spoken format not only during learning, but also investigated the effect of singing and speaking during recall. They found that listening to a song and singing did not result in higher verbatim recall of lyrics compared to listening to the spoken text and repeating it in spoken form. They also observed no differences between groups regarding awareness and recall of structural features. Concluded that “the best strategy for learning lyrics is to ignore the melody”. Also raised the issue of speech rate.

While they controlled for presentation rate, they argued that most studies showing a superior verbatim recall of a sung learning condition did not take into account the slower rate of presentation in songs compared to spoken texts. Looked at the variable of speech rate in even greater detail than it to be the decisive variable in song mnemonics.

A superior memory effect under a sung condition only when the lyrics were presented at a slower rate than in the spoken condition. When presented at a comparable rate, experimental participants engaging with a spoken text produced higher results than the song group by a small but consistent margin.Another factor contributing to the potential mnemonic effect of songs is the rhythm.

While found no superior verbatim recall of text presented in a rhythmically enhanced spoken format, observed that a spoken learning condition with emphasised rhythm was just as effective in aiding verbatim recall as a sung format, provided that it afforded sufficient rhythmic information.

In summary, research with native speakers in the field of cognitive psychology frequently showed superior retention of songs compared to spoken texts.

However, a few studies found no difference in verbatim memory between sung and spoken learning conditions.

In addition, a small number of studies found that beat-enhanced spoken texts and also poems can result in increased verbatim memory compared to normal spoken texts and prose. Finally, the existing research with L1-speakers implies that among the many elements involved in the potential increased memorability of songs and also poems, the melody, the rhythm and lexical sound patterns are crucial factors contributing to the mnemonic effect of songs. In the following, I will discuss in greater detail how these three factors might affect cognitive processes and increase verbatim retention of lyrics.

The three identified features, melody, rhythm and the structural regularities or sound patterns found in lyrics, can result in cognitive processes benefiting the formation of stable memory traces. Of particular interest is the extent to which text and melody are integrated: Several studies have come to the conclusion that melody and text in songs are closely associated but probably fall short of being stored as a fully integrated holistic unit in long-term memory.

However, while many studies propose a beneficial memory effect of melody based on the close association of text and music,spoke of “the cost of singing” and claimed that the melody is, in fact, detrimental to the recall of lyrics. They argued that the parallel learning of text and melody can lead to a dual-task situation, in which different encoding cues compete for the learner’s attention.

Another proposed reason for song’s potentially higher memorability is chunking. As explained earlier, chunking is a way of circumventing the limited processing capacity of the phonological loop by binding smaller units of information into larger units, thus effectively increasing the “size” but not the number of units to be processed.

As explained, chunking in sentence processing occurs when “additional information, typically from long-term memory, is used to integrate the constituent words into a smaller number of chunks with capacity being set by the number of chunks rather than the number of words” Such additional information is often semantic in nature. However, structural information such as (predictable) patterns of melody, rhythm and rhyme can also encourage chunking beyond sentence level.

Investigated the learning of the alphabet through the well-known “alphabet song”. They found that the mnemonic effect of the song is based on its chunking of the letters into larger (rhythmic) units in accordance with the processing capacities of the working memory. In fact, they argued that the song’s structure is “a direct result of the properties of the human memory system”.

In a series of experiments on the retrieval of letters of the English alphabet, observed that their subjects needed to access the relevant chunk and conduct a serial search within it. In addition, they observed that the formation of the chunks was governed by the learners’ expectation of phrases to rhyme. Observed indications for increased chunking in experimental participants under the song condition. In contrast, in intervention study neither a melody nor an acoustically enhanced rhythm resulted in significantly different patterns of chunking. On the other hand, did find a certain kind of chunking effect when the recalled text was sung rather than spoken. That is, they found that sung recall was more sequential than spoken recall.

However, rather than benefitting text performance, the sequential recall had a detrimental effect, “since recall of a line was more dependent on the recall of the previous line”.

In addition, observed that the forgetting of one line tended to impede the recall of the following line. This finding is supported andwho also found a strong memory for (forward) sequence order in songs.

Another possible effect of presenting language in the format of a song is that melody, rhythm and sound patterns such as rhyme direct the listeners’ attention to the form of the lyrics rather than the meaning. When investigating children’s recall and comprehension of information presented in songs, considered that “the melodic structure could predispose children to listen to how the lyrics sound rather than to what they mean”. In what way could such a focus on form aid text retention?

This is a relevant question, particularly as it is frequently claimed – for example in the Levels of Processing Hypothesis described above – that semantic elaboration and processing is more likely to lead to transfer of information into long-term memory than so-called shallow processing of surface structures. Argued that music renders structural aspects of the text more salient to the listener.

Elaborated that “rhyme, alliteration, repeating sounds, rhythm, and verse structure help preserve the exact wording” in the transmission of ballads in oral tradition.

Explained that the rhythm can greatly restrict the choice of words when attempting verbatim recall. In addition, structural information can serve as an indication whether all necessary information has been recalled or whether further attempts of retrieval are required. Referred to a schematic frame imposed by the rhythm, which serves as a mnemonic device. Also highlighted that combined cues, in their specific case a combination of semantic cues and rhyme, dramatically limit the choice of possibilities.

In addition, they understood such a combination of cues to account for strong differences in research results and general beliefs regarding the effectiveness of rhyme as a mnemonic device:

Rhyme is not an especially good cue for recall in laboratory research (…), yet it is among the most used mnemonic aids outside the laboratory and in oral traditions. (…) The lack of generalization of laboratory results occurs because care is taken … to ensure that rhyme and other sound and orthographic properties do not interact with meaning cues.

One could say that research that focuses exclusively on one variable while controlling for other factors as possible interfering variables might obfuscate relevant processes.

Another aspect that needs to be considered is that songs’ richness of contextual information encourages the processing and storage of the listening event as an autobiographical or episodic memory, leading to increased recall and recognition compared to spoken texts. Argued along those lines and proposed that “it is … possible that the greatest value of music for memory is to provide mnemonic processes with a particularly rich and helpful context during the encoding phase of episodic memory”. Research has confirmed the existence of episodic memory for non-verbal music. And argued that participants in a study on very long-term memory for popular songs are likely to have formed episodic memories of the listening events. Songs often evoke a strong emotional response and emotions can be considered a powerful factor in memory. A link between the (positive) valence, or perceived attractiveness, of music and the facilitation of memorization. Involuntary subvocal rehearsal, i.e. the involuntary re-playing of a song in one’s mind, as a reason for a possible mnemonic effect of melody. Subvocal rehearsal may help retain at least parts of the lyrics in the phonological loop, and memory decay could be prevented or repaired, effectively facilitating the integration of information in the long-term memory. Referred to this involuntary repetition as the SSIMP, the song-stuck-in-my-head phenomenon. Argued that listening to songs results in a high rate of involuntary subvocal rehearsal of the melody and the lyrics. Apart from a myriad of anecdotal evidence for brain worms, the stuck song syndrome or involuntary musical imagery, there is ample empirical support for the existence of auditory imagery, that is the imagining of sound, particularly music, in the majority of people provided an overview of a number of studies on auditory imagery and concluded that humans experience both musical and, to a lesser extent, verbal sound imagery in their mind and that such imagined sound is processed at least partially in the same regions of the brain that process actual sound.

As put it: “Think of the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony – your cortex is abuzz!”. However, the lyrics in songs have mostly played a subordinate role in research on auditory imagery and have so far often been of interest only as triggers for melody recall in experimental settings. Survey participants experienced earworms both in native and non-native languages, implying that the lyrics were indeed part of the rehearsal experience.

On the other hand, in the field of second language acquisition proposed the existence of the Din, a purely verbal form of involuntary rehearsal of second language input. When the language acquisition device is being activated as a result of learners receiving comprehensible input.

CONCLUSION

In summary, cognitive psychology has provided evidence that under certain conditions songs and also poems can benefit the retention of verbatim text.

The melody, the rhythm and the structural regularities of the poetic text such as rhyme and other sound patterns, have been identified as three main factors rendering songs and also poems more memorable than prose texts. A number of reasons have been proposed as to how these factors affect cognitive processes and consequently benefit the recall and recognition of verbatim text.

These reasons include the memorization of text and melody in close association. In addition, it has been argued that the additional structural information provided by the melody, the rhythm and the structural regularities in the language result in the increased processing and encoding of words in larger chunks. Furthermore, it has been argued that melody, rhythm and lexical sound patterns render the linguistic structure of the language more salient and draw the listeners’ attention to the linguistic form.

Finally, it has been hypothesized that involuntary rehearsal of a song results in increased retention of its lyrics. The research discussed so far has focused on native speakers. It cannot be assumed that memory processes in second language learners are equivalent to L1-speakers processing their native language. In addition, studies in cognitive psychology research naturally do not consider the impact of classroom proceedings and teaching techniques.

However, in order to measure the effect of songs on lexical learning within the second language classroom, teaching practices need to be taken into account. In the following I will discuss experimental and also classroom-based quasi-experimental studies on lexical learning through songs in second language learning.

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