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INTRODUCTION
This thesis is chosen because we personally have been interested in knowing more about the usage of songs in the teaching and learning of English language. Hence, needing to do a review of an Academic Exercise thesis for our Research and Methodology course, we chose to go for our all-time favourite topic and we are lucky to find a thesis that is done by using a topic that is closely related to our interest. We chose “THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SONGS IN THE TEACHING AND LEARNING OF ENGLISH AMONG THE MALAY STUDENTS” by FARIDAH BT ABDUL HAMID, FACULTY OF EDUCATION, UiTM Kampus Seksyen 17, Shah Alam in the year of 1999.
THE PROBLEM STATEMENT
Based from the research problem given, we do not agree with the introduction of the problem as the researcher said that “English is not a popular subject among Malay pupils. They lack of interest and have very little or no opportunity to use the language.” This is because in our opinion, the researcher should not generalize the statement as if all of Malay students do not favour English subject. This is because, the researcher at that point did not conduct the research yet and hence, the assumption that English is not a popular subject among Malay pupils is irrelevant and not applicable. Even though it can be seen that most of Malay students maybe not have such competence in English language if compared to the other races, but that does not mean Malay students do not like English. This is because the statement differs among different background of students and the type of schools that they are in. For example, student that are brought up in a MRSM school since Form One, the interest in learning English is indeed very high and most of the students speaking English voluntarily and English is one of the subjects that the students like. This is very contradicting with what the researcher said and we believe the environment of the researcher and the school chose by the researcher affected the statement made. Hence, it is very risky to make such statement when in fact the researcher does not know the overall preferences of students in Malaysia. However, both of us have reached an agreement with the statement that “ The The general assumption is that most learners find the English lesson to be uninteresting and boring. Thus, Thus, discouraging them to learn.” This is because, it is better to say “the general assumption” instead of totally making a statement of the student s’ favour. favour. The students are 1| AE REVIEW
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undoubtedly find English lesson to be uninteresting and boring since the approach of teaching is very traditional and no variety. While for the problem statement, is acceptable as it does contains the main reasons on conducting the research and simple enough to be understandable.
THE PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH
The purpose of the research is very obvious as it is intended to make teachers aware with the benefits of using songs as a teaching aid in English class. This is because songs provide lot of help in language teaching and learning as they consists lot of words related to a certain theme or emotions. The songs provide valuable insights as to how they can contribute towards education. Students nowadays are mostly IT literate and that they are more interested in listening to songs. Thus, using songs will highly increase their interest and aid in helping them to understand words better. Besides that, we reckon the research is precious for the language teachers as this can be a guide to conduct more captivating and effective methods of teaching English language in the classrooms. Teachers can manipulate the songs to present a lesson using variety of methods. For example, if the teacher is about to teach on the issue of environment or humanity. This topic is bore some and very informative if it is to be taught by using the traditional way and hence, by integrating songs into the lesson, teachers can teach new words based on the lyrics. This can trigger the teachers to develop new ideas in differs their techniques in teaching English in the classroom. Furthermore, as for the students, songs can offer variety of entertainment. It helps them to have fun in the classroom. This is important in motivating the students to gain confidence in using the English language inside and outside of the classroom. They might be immersed in the songs but subconsciously they can gain knowledge from using songs as they can be used to practice, revise or introduce new items in language learning. Thus, this enable the students to easily understand the meaning attached to certain words and can remember better. In short, we strongly believe that the study is very positive in all of the aspects as it benefits the teachers, students, language teaching and learning in general.
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THE RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
In our opinion, the objectives of the research are very specific and have its own targets. Each of them is well explained and can be conducted with particular instruments in finding whether the objectives are met and answered. Besides that, the objectives stated are relatable as English teachers in schools are aware of the problem that they face with passive student who refuse to participate actively in class. Furthermore, songs give them the opportunity for enjoyment to take place and in this way language can be practiced easily and indirectly as can be seen in the 2
nd
, 3rd and 4 th
objectives of the study. An advantage of using songs is that it diverged from the traditional routine of using textbooks and teachers can teach beyond the text and make the learning session cheerful and lively. Songs can build up confidence and give motivation for the students to learn the language. Hence, it is good if teachers use songs as the students will feel the pleasure of listening to music and at the same time learn how the words should be pronounced and being exposed to the rhythm and sentence patterns of the English language.
THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Firstly, we agree with the focus of the study in which to see the effectiveness of using songs in language teaching and learning. It is aimed to identify whether there is any significant difference in students’ performance before and after the songs sessions are conducted, that is by using English songs as to the conventional way of teaching. But throughout deeply view the 1 st and 2 nd research question, it can be seen that both questions are of the same intention in which to see the improvement of the students’ after the teaching session using songs. The research question can be improved by stating “Will the Experimental Group that is taught by using the songs will have an improvement in the test scores if compared to the Control Group that did not undergo the song session?”. This question combined both of the questions and much more clearer and complete. For the last question, it is acceptable as it will look into the students’ responses towards both methods used in teaching the English language. By identifying the students’ responses and feelings towards the method used, it can help the researcher to come with a
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conclusion in the findings later whether the method is indeed effective or not. It is very essential to ask for the students’ responses and not simply focus on the test scores alone because how the students’ feel when being taught with the method is a vital indication to the effectiveness of the research.
THE RESEARCH LIMITATIONS
There are some limitations of the study that can be indentified and the first one is that the experiments is done to only 40 respondents consists of Form 2 students of Sekolah Menengah Agama Wilayah Persekutuan, Kepong, Kuala Lumpur. The sample cannot be used to represent all of the population that students that are learning English language in Malaysia. This means that the result cannot be used to generalize a larger population. Besides that, the sample used was from a school located at an urban area that the overall proficiency of the students was considered good. Therefore, these factors need to be taken into consideration as the number of students; the level of proficiency and the location of the school do affect the result of the study. We believe that the research could be improved by conducting the experiment to more than one school that is located in an urban and rural area. By doing so, the difference between both findings can clearly be analyzed and the researcher could make a better generalization as the population is bigger. Besides that, the number of students should be more and thus, contributing to a wider range of the level of proficiency.
Moreover, the other limitation of the study is that there were some distractions happened during the lessons. The reason is the lesson was conducted in the classroom and it was not suitable for the “Experimental Group” as they somehow need to listen to the songs and the normal classroom setting of the classroom was not conducive for the learning session. The students were distracted by the sounds from the outside and the researcher need to constantly control the volume of the cassette player so that all of the students could listen to the songs but at the same time making sure that the session did not disturb the others. The researcher did state that the Resource Room was fully booked and that was one of the solutions to prevent the distractions. As for the improvements, we believe that the research could use other alternatives and not relying on booking the Resource Room alone as we might be facing unexpected situations. Thus, the researcher needs to have a
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contingency plan like booking the Music Room. If there were still no other alternatives, the research could conduct the experiment in the classroom.
The last limitation of the study is that the time of the experiment carried out was not appropriate as the students just finished with their Mid Term Examinations and that they were not prepared and not in the mood for learning. Hence, the researcher can improve by conducting the experiment at a better time for example during the beginning of the year as they are still fresh and excited to start the lesson or just before their Mid Term examination as this will help them to refresh on their understanding of the English language.
THE LITERATURE REVIEW
We believe the main strength of this research is that the topic used is very relatable and has a lot of literature review to support the research. The sources of literature reviews are very wide and not only being taken from one field of review. Besides that, the literature reviews do support the fact that we tend to have a narrow view of language, restricting it to that which is spoken and written only. Many language teachers forget that “song is language”. On first impression, song and speech seem to be qui te distinct in the aspect of language. The teacher tends to dismiss song as just one particular use of language, looking upon it as not being a valid tool in language study as what is being said by (Gelman, 1973). In fact, the relationship between song and language is an easily recognizable one. This can be supported by (List, 1963) which stated that “Both speech and songs are: vocally produced, linguistically meani ngful and melodic.” It is a universal truth that songs and language goes hand in hand and Vaughan Williams describes songs as nothing less than “speech charged with emotions”.
Besides that, the presentation of the literature review that is being divided into 3 sections are very clever indeed as it eases the reader to understand more and can see at the previous studies of experts and researchers concerning the use of songs in the language. Their views on songs and how it can be related and relevant to the teaching and learning of English can be taken as guidelines in conducting the research.
Hence, we can see the
literature review section is well stated and supported.
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THE RESEARCH DESIGN
The researcher use a simple random sampling and this is very good in order to let each member of the population has an equal chance of being selected. The researcher randomly selected the subjects which involved both males and females and their social background and proficiency levels are also varied. The subjects are randomly taken from Form 2 Othman and Form 2 Omar and only twenty subjects from each class were chosen to be the Experimental and Control Group respectively. The instruments used to conduct the experiment are song activities, conventional activities, pre and post test and questionnaires. The song and conventional activities are agreeable to the research questions as they are indeed need to be done in order to find whether the students’ have an improvement when taught with and without the usage of songs in learning English. The songs chosen are relatable to the topic of the lesson as being outlined in the KBSM syllabus. The advantages of using songs as the new approach is that it provides the foundation of the lesson as a source of vocabulary and idioms, to teach Grammar in a stress-free atmosphere, to improve their pronunciation besides stimulating overall learning potentials. It can be considered as a new approach that has a change of focus from the traditional usage of textbooks. Besides that, the Pre and Post Test is another fundamental method in conducting the experiment as the researcher can see the differences between the results of both of the groups. The questions of the Pre and Post Test are the same for both Experimental and Control Groups as to ensure its validity. Basically, the Pre Test is given before the treatment session is conducted and consists of 3 sections which are the Synonym and Antonym, Reading Comprehension, and Word Forms and Grammar. The scores of the test will give the research an overview on the students’ current level of proficiency. Meanwhile, the Post Test is administered after the treatment which is by using songs into the lesson. The result of the test will be compared with the Pre Test and this will give an overview of the effects of using songs in the lesson if compared to the conventional method used. This is a systematic way of measuring the effects of the songs used and the data can easily be analyzed later during the analysis. Moreover, in finding more about the subjects, the researcher did construct a set of questionnaire in extracting the students’ background and their proficiency in English. Their personal responses towards the different approaches are also recorded in colleting of the 6| AE REVIEW
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data. The questionnaire is personally delivered to the students and this data collection technique is very beneficial as to obtain basic personal information that could not be recorded by using the other techniques.
THE RESULTS OF MAJOR FINDINGS
Based from the Research Questions asked, it can be seen that the findings do answer the questions and this can be seen in the first major finding in which the result of the Pre and Post Test clearly showed that the Experimental Group; which is the group that is being taught by using the songs obtained higher mean score if compared to the Control Group which is being taught conventionally. From the analysis mentioned, it has proven that the Experimental Group has a higher level of performance than those of the Control Group and hence, this indicates that the use of songs was more effective in improving the students’ performance when compared to the conventional way. Besides that, based from the observation done, the researcher found that the students from the Experimental group were more active and eager in participating into the discussions if compared to the Control Group. Some of them even continued singing even after the lesson had ended. This showed a positive result of the usage of songs which is it impacted the students and that the Research Objectives stated in the research such as to bring fun, enjoyment and interest to learning in student-centered activities; make language easy to learn and remember through the lyrics of songs rather than repetition of dialogues and drills; and promote maximum participation of the whole class are met and that everything was perfectly conducted to answer all of the questions. Moreover, the questionnaire conducted gave an important data which is 4 of the students from the Control Group even said that the conventional method was boring and dull. This was such an impressive data as it can be used to support on the study which stated that usage of songs is effective and that the conventional way is indeed dull and boring. This answered the Research Question that is stated; in which whether the students believe learning English through songs is more effective if compared to the conventional method used. It is undeniable that the songs session was very motivational and this might be due to the characteristics of the songs itself as they have certain catchy rhythm which attracted the students’ attention and made the learning session fun and entertaining. It can be concluded
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that using songs can encourage the students to learn and lead to some improvements in their learning of the English language. In conclusion, it can be said that all the Research Questions are answered and the research indeed is a successful one.
THE RECOMMENDATIONS
This research could be improved in many ways and one of the recommendations that we would like to state is that the number of subjects should be more by using a larger sample which means a larger number of subjects and also from different schools, dealing with students from different background. If a larger students were involved, this study could present a more valid presentation of data on the topic chosen. Moreover, the scope of the study could be wider, hence increasing the number of issues concerning the effectiveness of songs in language teaching and learning. Furthermore, the study could be done in the Resource Room of language lab if it is possible as to avoid the distractions. The time of the study could be revised and the most suitable time is that the study should be done at the beginning of the year or in the middle of the semester as to avoid from clashing with the examinations or the school holidays. Besides that, the teacher can improve the lesson by choosing a suitable song to be used as to motivate learning. The songs chosen must be of their level of proficiency and easy to be comprehended. This is to ensure that the materials used match the students’ ability in order to achieve the objectives of the study. Lastly, it is important for teacher to know that choosing the most appropriate method of teaching will determine the outcome and results of the students’ learning. It is not a guarantee that the students will be successful when learning through songs but it is rather believed to have a potential for success if used wisely. Hence, the teachers need to be aware of the benefits of using songs as it fit to the current trends in language teaching and learning.
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