Implementation of Songs for Improving ESL/EFL. A Review of Peer-reviewed Articles Published in the Last Decade (2010-2020)

The English language does not have a particularly sophisticated grammar, compared to other languages such as German, Japanese, or Russian. However, English has an irregular phonemic orthography, meaning that spelling and pronunciation do not always correspond in a predictable way. This writing system, also known as defective script, makes the task of learning English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a Foreign Language (EFL) particularly challenging. To this, one should add the fact that English pronunciation has a relatively rich phonology with a particularly large number of vowel phonemes, which vary regionally.

English pronunciation, therefore, is a learning challenge that more directly affects listening and speaking more directly, but also reading and writing. There is a considerable amount of literature that discusses various techniques and methods for improving English pronunciation, one of these being the usage of songs. By the word “usage”, it is implied that songs are being either read out loud, sang, listened to, analyzed, or studied by means of writing and reading exercises. There is ample evidence that the study of music at all educational stages has cognitive, psychomotor, and socioemotional benefits in students’ learning processes. Songs can also contribute to boosting student’s motivation, producing a more positive learning atmosphere, and increasing students’ engagement, apart from improving vocabulary acquisition and language usage.

In this oral presentation, an overview of peer-reviewed articles is provided by looking at the publications that discuss the benefits of the usage of songs in ESL/EFL published between 2010 and 2020. More concretely, the scope is limited to studies that discuss the benefits of songs on pronunciation. The retrieved articles were classified in categories attending to the nature of each study, summarizing the main findings of the selected articles in a table. In conclusion, songs can be used as an effective pedagogical tool for improving English pronunciation in ESL/EFL.

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