While listening to songs in English has long been used in classes, research by Dr Dennis Murphy Odo, Associate Professor at Pusan National University in South Korea, has now shown that it’s particularly useful for L2 vocabulary learners. Further, he has brought together the data from a number of studies that previously looked at the benefits of listening to songs to learn English to combine this knowledge.
As reported in EurekAlert!, Dr Murphy Odo found that learners who were taught using English songs not only did better than those who weren’t, learning more L2 vocabulary, but that pop songs were the most effective. This was attributed to their generally high production values and appeal to the students.
“These results will encourage teachers to use songs not just as a fun activity to fill time in their lessons, but also as a helpful way to reinforce learners’ knowledge of new vocabulary in English. This work can give language teachers and learners confidence that using songs in the second or foreign language learning classroom will help them to learn English vocabulary more effectively,” Dr Murphy Odo says .
