The Power of SONGs
It seems true that few people doubt the effectiveness of songs/chants in foreign language classroom. That's because music is likely to be absorbed into our subconscious quickly and subtly, and songs are the powerful medium for acquiring knowledge of second language and for reinforcing already-known language properties(such as pronunciation, meaning, grammatical aspects, etc.).
Songs have some features in common with spoken language. Both songs and speech are vocally produced, therefore they use particular tempo, beat, rhythm, melody, stress, intonation to convey the expression of feelings and the intent of the speaker. Songs also have meaningful discourse which seems like a short simple opera made up of interactive dialogue. That should be one of the reason we teachers and learners consider the method of using songs/chants innovative and exciting in foreign language classroom.
Now I'd like to talk about how I usually invite a song to the English class and feed it to the children without explicit instructions, through ROLE-PLAY and GAME like activity, soliciting the children to notice some particular sound-patterns and to internalize how each letter sounds.
The following is the song titled "Whose Boat Is This?" which is supposed to introduce for the lesson 9 of 5th grade textbook. My students and I seemed to have digested the song successfully with no burden or stress(It was just a series of interactive oral discourse for learning 'possessive case and pronoun' added with much excitement of rhythm, melody, beat, etc.). The song goes like this:
Whose Boat Is This?
Mom/Ann: Whose cap/car is this? Whose is this?
Ann/Dad: It's mine. It's mine.
Mom/Ann: Whose boat/bag is this? Whose is this?
Ann/Dad: Oh, it's not mine. Oh, it's not mine. Oh, it's not mine.
Mom/Ann: Whose boat/bag is this? Whose is this?
Dad/Mom: That boat/bag is mine.
Firstly, I introduced the song to the children and checked which item is whose after talking about three characters("Who do you see?", "Who is he/she?", "What are they speaking/singing?", etc.) in the song; Ann, (maybe)Ann's mother and father. The song was repeated a couple of times without losing Ss' interest/attention till Ss fully understand what's happening in the song and how the song goes.
Secondly, I let three teams stand up, take each role and sing with picture cards/real objects(cap, car-shaped pencilcase, book instead of real boat, bag, etc), and then switch the roles. After singing team by team by..., Ss do this process individually(S-S-S), that is, three volunteers are asked to come up to the stage(front) and play a beautiful(?) opera with some props(cards or real objects). It's not just a simple childish boring song to lose grown children's(upper grader's) interest and attention but easy complicated fun frustrating parts of musical I think, that is to say, for children, especially for grown up children, only listening to the song(simple sounds) without having to think is too easy and boring but speaking/singing through the song that needs complicated mental process(thinking) is not.
Lastly, I put some game element into the song to play games with my poor(?) students. I've got(actually stole) a couple of stuffs from each team to fill my box called Lost & Found and foster a imaginary situation of a very realistic nonfictional OPERA. The teacher start the opera/song like "Who's water(showing a water-bottle to Ss) is this? Who's is this?" and the owner of the water stands up to speak/sing like "It's mine. It's mine.", coming up to the stage/front, T gives the water back to the owner and pick up one more thing and speak/sing to the owner of the water like "Who's watch is this? Who's is this?" and the owner of the water responds like "Oh, it's not mine. Oh, it's not mine. Oh, it's not mine." and so on. The first team that is given back all stuffs by speaking/singing without mistakes will be the first winner or get points as the number of things the team gets back. If they make mistakes in speaking/singing or show me no response, his/her stuffs(such as book, bag, pin(hair pin), pen, water, watch, etc.) will be really stolen by the teacher!
Additionally, the teacher could make a little effort to lead the children to notice how a particular letter sounds by doing when stealing some stuffs like this;
S1: Teacher, Teacher, mine. Here. (He seemed to beg T to steal his pencil case.)
T: No, no. I have a Book. I like B-words. B, B, B, do you have anything for B(drawing the alphabet B in the air with a finger)? Belt? Bag? Boat? Box? Bottle?
S2: Teacher, ball. This. Ball.
T: Wow, thank you. It's a ball. B, b, ball.
When the teacher picks up a thing from a Lost&Found basket to give it back to the owner, she doesn't do that randomly but advertently to make Ss pay attention to the first sound/consonant of each item. The words which have the same beginning sound are shown together in the song to get children's attention to another English language feature/appearance -sound pattern.
Ss will also notice something about "syllables" feeling that it's not easy or smooth or natural to sing the song if the item word is substituted with long(multi-syllabled) words(pencil-case, mechanical pencil, water-bottle, etc.).
Songs are being considered really attractive and effective for most of the teachers and learners in language learning. I couldn't agree more that the potential of Songs and chants in the foreign language classroom increases in value, however, I'd like to point out some weakness of the property. That is, so many redundancies(Oh, it's not mine×3) in the song/chant are quite different from real authentic oral speech. There seem to be found unnecessary repetitions or unrealistic, exaggerative and metaphorical expressions over the song/chant far from our real life, and that's what we teachers/learners should not ignore when depending on the songs too much.