Title: Song Creation With Familiar Music for Young EFL Students
Stream: Foreign Languages Education & Applied Linguistics (including ESL/TESL/TEFL)
Presentation Type: Live-Stream Presentation
Authors:
Miori Shimada, Anaheim University, United States
Abstract:
This study discusses song creation in young learners’ English education in Japanese public elementary school settings. According to Paul (2003), songs enable children to focus better and remember things with less difficulty. In addition, Slattery and Willis (2003) suggest songs are greatly helpful for children to feel ‘English is easy’. Moreover, Curtain and Dahlberg (2016) insist that songs learned in the target language bring the double benefit of culture and grammatical structure to language learners. Although many scholars point out the advantages of using songs for language education, there are still many teachers who are disinterested in incorporating songs into the core part of their language lessons. Therefore, it is important for teachers to acknowledge the effectiveness of music and acquire the technique of improvising songs for their language classrooms. The songs the presenter developed based on the familiar music of English and Japanese traditional songs as well as other interesting songs by the EFL professionals will be introduced. The study also compares the list of music selections by English teachers in Japan with that of university students in the current teacher education class. The result shows that most English teachers and teacher candidates in this study prefer ‘English’ traditional songs for their song creation. Other materials including Eric Carle's picture books and the song CD Wee Sing series will also be presented for the audience to expand ideas towards song creation. They will have opportunities to try singing some songs and feel the power of songs during the session.
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