Topic 17. Songs as Poetry and Literary Creation in the English Language Classroom.

Typology of
Songs. Techniques for Using Songs to Learn Phonetics, Vocabulary and Culture.

INDEX
1. Introduction
2. Songs as Poetry and Literary Creation in the English Language Classroom
3. Typology of Songs.
4. Techniques for Using Songs to Learn Phonetics, Vocabulary and Culture.
5. Bibliography and legal framework
6. Conclusions

This essay aims to study the use of songs as a resource of the English Language classroom. For this purpose, I will give
some background information about the relevance of this topic in Foreign Language Teaching.
Then, I will divide this topic into four main parts:
First, I will examine songs in the English Language Classroom and the contributions: Psychological roots, pedagogical
and methodological reasons as well as the use of Songs as a poetic vehicle and a literary creation.
Second, I will deal with the classification of songs: action songs, traditional songs and pop-songs.
Third, I will explain the Techniques to use songs in Foreign Language Teaching.
Fourth, I will develop the main linguistic aspects which can be improved through songs: pronunciation, vocabulary
and culture. I will show how songs foster the acquisition of Communicative Competence.
Finally, I will compile the bibliography used to develop this topic and the main conclusions.

When teaching English to young learners, it is clearly evident that children must be exposed, first of all, to oral
language. This implies that the first linguistic skill to be developed is listening and then, the rest of skills will follow.
In order to do so, at Primary level, language teachers must have an extensive knowledge of the different forms of oral
materials. Among these materials, orally transmitted literature stands out and within this category: songs, rhymes,
tongue twisters or chants are included.

Songs are an excellent teaching resource because of their musical features, such as rhythm, or melody. Songs have
literary and musical components and they belong to popular poetry. Songs fulfil the poetic function of language, that
is, their main purpose: to exploit the sound potential of language and to take pleasure in it. Apart from that, lyrics
usually gather cultural traditions, such as, festivals or customs.

After this brief introduction, I will go on with the first part of the topic, the contributions of songs to the English
Language classroom. For this purpose, I will deal first with psychological roots, then pedagogical and methodological
reasons to use songs in the classroom, and finally I will study songs as a poetic vehicle and literary creation.
As regards psychological roots, it seems that songs preceded and contributed to the development of speech in Homo
Sapiens. Recent research indicates that the musical babbling produced by infants and reinforced by parents is
extremely important in the development of language skills in young children.
Murphey (1992) has often called songs “adolescent motherese”. This means that songs may replace the need of
affective speech that students and adults don’t receive. There is also a pervasive presence of music in the world and
consequently this must be reflected in schools.

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 Topic 17. Songs as Poetry and Literary Creation in the English Language Classroom. Typology of
Songs. Techniques for Using Songs to Learn Phonetics, Vocabulary and Culture.

Songs also activate the mechanism to process and generate vocabulary and grammar structures what Chomsky
called Language Acquisition Device.
Krashen suggests that the involuntary repetition of children who are developing a language and when they are
humming a song, it is a manifestation of Chomsky’ language acquisition device.
Finally, songs facilitate memorisation because they use simple, conversational and relaxing language and are always
short.

After having explained the psychological aspect related to songs, I will concentrate on the pedagogical and
methodological reasons that support the use of songs in the classroom.
Brewster (1992) said:
➢ Variety is added to the range of learning situations.
➢ The pace of the lesson is changed, maintaining pupils’ motivation.
➢ Formal teaching is lightened, renewing pupils’ energy.
➢ Pupils’ participation is encouraged, giving confidence to shy pupils. Communication between pupils is
increased, giving the opportunity for fluency practice and reducing the domination of the class by the
teacher. Any distance between teacher and pupils can be reduced.
➢ Hidden practice of specific language patterns can be provided.
➢ Listening skills, attention span and concentration are improved.
➢ Areas of weakness and the need for further language work are revealed.

Moving on the pedagogical and methodological reasons to use them in the classroom, I will deal with songs as a
poetic vehicle and literary creation. On the one hand, songs together with games are the first way in which poetry is
used by children; therefore, they may be used to develop students’ interest in poetry. Not only that, songs help
students develop their creativity due to some factors: they involve movement; they can develop verbal activities by
means of an open series that can be lengthened or by means of a closed series creating parallel stories; additional
materials can be created to carry out plays; the presence of different characters that can be interpreted or imitated.

After having examined the contributions of songs in English Foreign Language class, I will present the second part of
the topic: classification of songs. According to Brewster (1992):
1. First, Action songs based on Total Physical Response Method: Through these songs pupils move and do what is
said matching words to the actions.
2. Second, Traditional songs. These songs belong to popular literature are good tools to develop cultural
awareness (nursery rhymes, tongue twisters, riddles, lullabies, etc
3. Third, Pop songs. These songs are suitable for the 3rd cycle students because they see traditional songs as childish.
Pop songs need to be selected carefully. It’s the task of the teacher to choose a song that suits the needs and
level of their class. The criteria to select them may fit certain grammatical structures, vocabulary, or some topics of
the language syllabus. Moreover, songs can also be selected by students. This may have the following
advantages: Students are more involved in the lesson. It develops their sense of responsibility. It fosters learning
autonomy and Students’ needs and interests are considered.

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 Topic 17. Songs as Poetry and Literary Creation in the English Language Classroom. Typology of
Songs. Techniques for Using Songs to Learn Phonetics, Vocabulary and Culture.

I would like to develop the third part of the topic related to techniques for using songs in the foreign language
teaching. Some techniques which can be used are:
➢ Actions based on Total Physical Response Method: the performance of actions during the song has different
advantages. First, the relationship between the words and the actions will help students’ comprehension.
Second, students who don’t know the words can participate by doing the actions and be part of the group. The
teacher should identify students who are having trouble with the lyrics of the song and plan remedial action.
➢ Drawing: students take a picture to reflect the song
➢ Miming actions/role-play: it consists of interpreting the song.
➢ Blanks: filling in blanks in the lyrics on a worksheet
➢ Multiple choices: it consists of giving different alternatives to fill in some blanks.
➢ Spot the differences: it consists of changing some of the lyrics which must be spotted by listening to the song.
➢ Strips of paper: this involves cutting out the lyrics into several strips of paper, which students must put in order
according to the song.
➢ Paragraph rearranging: this involves cutting out the lyrics into paragraphs so students put them in order
according to the song.
➢ Sentence halves: this involves on cutting the lyrics into sentence halves which must be put together to form
sentences.
➢ How many times? this involves counting the amount of times a word appears in the song.
➢ Speculation: this involves on using the title of the song, key words from the lyrics or some other materials to
speculate what the song may be about.
➢ Reading: the lyrics of the songs can be used as reading texts and treated in the same way.
➢ Background music: music without lyrics can be used in the class to relax or to change from one task to another.

Suggestions to maximize the use of songs.

Now that I have explained how to use and maximize the use of songs in the classroom, I will go to the fourth part of
the topic, the particular linguistic aspects which can be improved when using songs. For this purpose, I will study first
pronunciation, focusing on the segmental and suprasegmental features; specific strategies will be examined as well.
Then, vocabulary and culture will be developed.

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 Topic 17. Songs as Poetry and Literary Creation in the English Language Classroom. Typology of
Songs. Techniques for Using Songs to Learn Phonetics, Vocabulary and Culture.

As regards pronunciation, a song is a great tool for teaching pronunciation. They can be used to teach individual
sounds (segmental features) and sounds in connected speech, comprising aspects such as stress, rhythm and
intonation (suprasegmental features). In relation to segmental features, vowels, consonants and clusters can be
taught through songs. One example is the song “Old MacDonald” in which the vowels are demonstrated through
animal noises. Regarding suprasegmental features, stress, rhythm and intonation can be practiced in a natural way.
Now I will point out specific strategies (Murphey, 1992) to practice the previous features:
➢ hand-outs with the words in which the stressed syllables are made bold, so students should know which syllables
to stress.
➢ sing the song while students tap with their pencils.
➢ Teachers go through the song gradually, line by line until students understand it.
➢ Odd one out in which students discriminate sounds.

As far as vocabulary is concerned, songs are appropriate to work on memory skills and to work on different semantic
fields. Moreover, they may be an excellent tool for a discussion or debate on the topic they suggest or even used as
the basis for a writing project or composition based on the debate. Depending on the activity, a song can serve as a
good way to encourage team work to exchange, revise and extend words. In order to contextualize vocabulary Role-
play songs can be used as for example “The bear song”. To stress conscious memory work, the following types of
songs can be useful:
➢ Cumulative songs in which students give a verbal response and have also to remember their previous classmates’
responses before giving their own. An example is “The twelfth days of Christmas”.
➢ Counting songs, forwards and backwards. One example is “The ten Indians”.
➢ Actions songs in which movements and extralinguistic devices are used. One example is “This is the way”.

As regards culture, songs are a great opportunity to develop socio-cultural competence. For this purpose, we can use
songs about the English-speaking countries as for example “New York”; songs about festivals and celebrations as for
example “Happy Birthday”; or songs about customs, games or routines as for example “This is the way”.

Sociocultural Competence is one of the five subcompetences of Communicative Competence and it will be defined
as the awareness of the social and cultural context in which the foreign language is used.
The term Communicative Competence and its approach was a reaction to the traditional methods in favour of a
balance between grammar and real language use.

First, Chomsky (1957) defined LANGUAGE as the innate ability to produce grammar rules, called Language
Acquisition Device. Native speakers subconsciously know of the grammar rules of their language, which allows them
to make infinite sentences in their mother language. This is what he called “Competence”.

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 Topic 17. Songs as Poetry and Literary Creation in the English Language Classroom. Typology of
Songs. Techniques for Using Songs to Learn Phonetics, Vocabulary and Culture.

However, Hymes (1966) added to this definition of LANGUAGE its RULES OF USE. Hymes then replaced Chomsky’s
concept of “competence” with his own concept of “Communicative Competence”. He thought that a native speaker
doesn’t only produce grammatically correct sentences (competence), but also knows in which situations to use them,
that is, where, when and with whom. Hymes distinguished the following 4 aspects:
• Systematic potential for creating language.
• Appropriacy, what language is appropriate in each situation.
• Occurrence, native speaker knows when something occurs in a language.
• Feasibility, native speaker knows if something is possible in a language.

Later in time, Canale and Swain (1980) defined COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE as the knowledge and skills
required for communication in a foreign language. They used the term Communicative Competence to refer to the
relationship between knowledge of the rules of grammar and the rules of use. The term Communicative Competence
was divided into four:
• Grammatical competence: produce comprehensible utterances considering grammar, vocabulary,
pronunciation, spelling…
• Sociolinguistic competence: knowledge of the sociocultural rules of language and discourse.
• Discourse competence, which is the ability to produce coherent spoken and written texts using cohesion.
• Strategic competence: the ability to make any adjustments during an interaction.

Savignon (1983) offered a description of how these 4 competences interact because he thought that Communicative
Competence was a dynamic rather than a static concept.

The goal of this approach is to help Primary students become Communicatively Competent in a second language.
This approach was incorporated by the Council of Europe in 2002 aiming to establish Communicative Competence
as the goal of foreign language teaching. For this reason, the term communicative competence is also present in our
education system. The Organic Law 2/2006 of 3rd May of Education, modified by the Organic Law 3/2020, of 29th
December highlights the importance of developing both oral and written skills in Primary Education to improve the
communicative competence in the foreign language teaching. The term Communicative Competence is divided in:
GRAMMAR COMPETENCE: use the linguistic units according to the rules established in the linguistic system.
DISCOURSE COMPETENCE: accommodate our discourse according to communicative situation and the speakers.
SOCIOLINGUISTIC COMPETENCE: interact in specific contexts, in accordance with a linguistic community.
STRATEGIC COMPETENCE: define, correct or in general, adjust during the communicative situation.
SOCIOCULTURAL COMPETENCE: awareness of the social and cultural context in which the foreign language is used.

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 Topic 17. Songs as Poetry and Literary Creation in the English Language Classroom. Typology of
Songs. Techniques for Using Songs to Learn Phonetics, Vocabulary and Culture.

In order to develop this topic, the following bibliography has been used:
- Alburquerque, R.: En el Aula de Inglés. Longman. London, 1990.
- Brewster, J.; Ellis, G.; & Girard, D.: The Primary English Teacher’s Guide. Penguin. London, 1992.
- Matthews, A.; Spratt, M. & Dangerfield, L.: At the Chalkface. Nelson. Edinburgh, 1991.
- Murphey, Tim.: Music and Song. OUP. Oxford, 1992.
- Richards, J.C.; Platt, J.; & Platt, H.: Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics.
Longman. London, 1992.

To sum up, I have developed the use of songs as a resource of the English Language classroom.
First, I have examined the contributions of songs to the English Language classroom: Psychological roots,
pedagogical and methodological reasons. Songs as a poetic vehicle and literary creation. Second, I have provided a
classification of songs: action, traditional and pop. Third, I have explained the Techniques to use songs in Foreign
Language Teaching. Fourth, I have developed the main linguistic aspects which can be improved through songs:
pronunciation, vocabulary and culture; and I have showed how drama develops sociocultural aspects and
Communicative Competence.

What I have basically done is to explain the importance of this topic in Foreign Language Teaching. But, as teachers,
it’s necessary to bear in mind the perspective of the Organic Law 2/2006 of 3rd May of Education, modified by the
Organic Law 3/2020, of 29th December highlights the importance of developing both oral and written skills in
Primary Education to improve the communicative competence in the foreign language teaching.

As teachers, we must improve our students’ capacity or ability to carry out tasks or face situations, called Competence.
They are 8: a) Linguistic communication competence, b) Multilingual competence, c) Mathematics, science and
technology competence d) Digital competence, e) Personal, social and learning-to-learn competence, f) Citizenship
competence. g) Entrepreneurial competence and h) Cultural awareness and expression competence.

Working on these capacities we encourage the full development of students’ personality and facilitate their
integration as citizens in a world where international communication is increasing. That is why learning a foreign
language in Primary Education is a necessity in our society.