Vocabulary Acquisition Through Music

RESEARCH

The practical part of my diploma thesis will be dealing with the research I carried out in the time span of 3 months, with 53 subjects (students), in four different groups. The research consisted of five different parts by means of which I wanted to find out the answer to the question if music can help the learners with vocabulary acquisition, and to what extent.

The first two sections describe in detail the parts of my research and the researched groups. The third section provides the results of the first questionnaire, the fourth section covers the song-lesson experiment describing the sequence of activities, the course of the lesson in the groups, evaluation and its results. At the end of this chapter a comparison of the results will be provided.

PARTS OF THE RESEARCH

My research consisted of a questionnaire- based on a song, and two collections of results.

The very first part of the research represented the first questionnaire by means of which I needed to find out what attitude to music the students had, and mainly what kind of music they liked, what kind of music they did not like, which song was their favourite, and if they liked singing. These items of information were the most significant, and the “song-research” was based on them.

After the questionnaire followed the research based on a song. This song had been chosen by the subjects of research, or song chosen by myself fitting into their favourite genre. This song was used in a sequence of different activities during one lesson (45 minutes). The research was carried out in January.

The third part consisted of two short activities before the second questionnaire, and the questionnaire itself that was focused on students’ evaluating the lesson, and especially on gaining results from the first research. Strictly, how many words, phrases, or sentences the students recalled without and with the song after two months.

The last part included a worksheet with pictures next to which the students were supposed to write the denotations and the worksheet also included lines where they could write anything extra they remembered from the song (other words, phrases, or sentences). At the end I did an interview evaluating the lesson in comparison with the previous lesson based on song. This data was gathered in March.

DESCRIPTION OF RESEARCHED GROUPS

As said before, the research was carried out in four different groups which differed in age, number of males and females, and level of English, which are actors that might have influenced the research, and therefore they should be described more accurately.

1) Secondary school group (SSG)

It was the ninth class of secondary school in.. consisting of 18 pupils (6 girls/12 boys) at the age of 14/15. The boys were hockey players, which can have some influence on some results. They were pre-intermediate learners of English.

2) Grammar school group (GSG)

The students at the grammar school in... were in their first year of studying. There were 16 students (9 girls/ 7 boys) at the age of 15/16 in this class. They were intermediate learners of English..

3) Language school group A (LSGA)

This group consisted of 9 students (6 men/ 3 women) between 25-46 years old. They were pre-intermediate learners of English.

4) Language school group B (LSGB)

This group consisted of 10 students (6 men/ 4 women) between 28–51 years old. They were interemediate learners of English.

PLANNING THE RESEARCH LESSON

In the theoretical part I expressed the opinion that if a lesson is based on a song in order to use its full potential, and to get the best of it (in our case to find out if a song has the ability to help acquire vocabulary more easily, or to greater extent than any other way of teaching ), the teacher should think about a lesson plan, and prepare it.

The basic rules I followed, when planning a listening lesson, were already described in the theoretical part, but still there were some more I took into consideration while planning my research lessons based on a song. These were:

- the most important is the input of information which can be visual, auditory, tactual, and kinaesthetic
- Diversity, movement and repetition must be involved
A nd some rules written by renowned authors.
- “A good lesson needs to contain a judicious blend of coherence and variety” (J.
Harmer, p. 122)
- “If a listening text is to be repeated a number of times, there must be a clear and definite purpose for listening each time” (M. Underwood, p. 32).
- “Tasks should be success-oriented” (P. Ur, p. 27).
- “At the level of teaching sequence we have to ensure the presence of three elements, Engage, Study, Activate” (J. Harmer, p. 126).

RESULTS OF THE FIRST QUESTIONNAIRE

Seeing that the foundation for the following section (Description of the song- lesson experiment) is the questionnaire, let us have a look at its results.

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