Marinković, Iris.
(2017).
The role of out-of-classroom exposure to foreign music in L2 development of Croatian learners of English.
Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of English Language and Literature.
[mentor Geld, Renata].
Abstract
In the field of language teaching, or any teaching for that matter, learning techniques are an area which has been researched for years and which was given a lot of attention from both teachers and students. However, when it comes to learning languages, the possibility of easier acquirement of a language through music has not yet been fully researched. The issue was to find available studies and empirical research for drawing plausible conclusions about the connection between listening to songs in a foreign language while learning that language. This lack of research, especially research done in Croatia, was one of the main reasons for choosing this topic. In order to see if we might obtain some interesting results on the subject while investigating a thesis which was not yet proven, we decided to conduct a study that might shed more light on the topic.
This study aims to assess the possible connection between listening to music in a target language, in this case, English, and one’s knowledge of English. More accurately, whether the amount of time one spends listening to music in the target language and the conscious effort one invests in the understanding of a song actually help the individual to learn and master the language. For this purpose, we designed a questionnaire for students who have been learning English for at least five years. Thus the 7th and 8th grade of elementary school and high school students were asked about their habits of listening to music in English and their opinion about the role of songs in English in their learning process. The results obtained are vague. With the majority of the subjects reporting to listen to songs in English on a daily basis and having high grades in English, few correlations were found between variables, but not enough to prove the claim that music aids the language learning process. Albeit, they did not completely refute that premise.
For this type of study, where the subjects are questioned about their habits, a higher number of subjects is needed in order to obtain conclusive results. For the time being, this study provides a glimpse into the habits of an average Croatian learner of English between the ages of 13 to 18 when it comes to listening to songs in the English language.
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