STUDENT MOTIVATION
MÚSICA POPULAR
Lirica users can learn
the gerund through
the music of Nicky
Jam (above) and others
18 The Linguist Vol/57 No/5 2018
ciol.org.uk/tl
When academics María Martínez-Delgado, Inma Pedregosa and Paula
de Santiago were asked to develop a music app, they grabbed the chance
to discover the linguistic and motivational benefits of learning via song
T
he use of music as a tool for language learning
has gained the attention of researchers for
many decades. Scholars such as Bartle
1
and
jolly
2
supported the use of music in language acquisition
for both the linguistic and motivational benefits. This
interest increased with the Communicative Language
Teaching (CLT) method, which highlighted the
importance of using authentic texts, conceived for
purposes other than language learning. This is one of
the advantages of music, as learners experience natural
language input as if it were a real-world activity. Music
also helps to increase self-confidence and motivation.
3
The benefits of using music in language learning are
vast. Songs are an ideal resource for practising listening
comprehension as they involve the two essential
processes: the 'bottom-up' process by which the
listener builds up meaning from sounds, words and
sentences, and the 'top-down' process by which the
listener activates his/her schemata using background
knowledge to improve understanding.
4
Listeners need
both the linguistic knowledge and relevant prior
knowledge of the world to fulfil the comprehension task.
Through listening to lyrics, their vocabulary increases,
and by singing catchy phrases they get better at
vocabulary recall.
5
Furthermore, we listen to songs that we like again
and again, and repetition is an important part of the
learning process. it is also worth mentioning the
paralinguistic aspects offered by songs. Through songs,
listeners are exposed to language variants, and different
tones and voices. With videos, they are also exposed to
body language.
Learning in the digital
Siednji
Leon
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BY
2.0
