Д. В. Каснянчук

Криворізький державний педагогічний університет

Науковий керівник: викладач Л. Ф. Сорочан

Using Songs in Teaching English in Secondary School

Nowadays English is widely spread all over the world. Needless to say, that most children of all ages want to be able to understand what people say to them in English, either face-to-face, on TV or on radio, in theatres and cinemas, on tape, CD's or other recorded media. The objective of this article is to reveal the relevant use of songs in teaching English in secondary school.

To start with, let's focus on some peculiarities of adolescents' psyche, which is rather unstable and full of contradictions. However, the aspects of cognitive development are almost formed. For instance, involuntary attention is more staunch and the ability to distribute attention is improving. According to these issues, we consider using songs to be a good method of learning a foreign language [1; 24].

Undoubtedly, listening is an essential part of learning any new language. Pupils need to be able to listen to a variety of things in a number of different ways. In the first place, they need to be able to recognize paralinguistic clues such as intonation in order to understand mood and meaning. They also need to be able to listen for specific information (such as times, numbers of things) and sometimes for more general understanding [2; 135].

Contrary to popular belief, that knowledge of grammar and vocabulary is more significant than the ability to speak and listen, we are pretty sure that the amount of listening tasks should be as big as of any other types of work. There is no doubt, that for some learners listening parts can be rather difficult and make pupils embarrassed. Some principles should be fulfilled to avoid such drawbacks:

• teachers should encourage pupils not to be shy and listen as attentively as they can;

• help pupils prepare to listen: give ''key'' vocabulary before they listen, ask them to make predictions about what the recording will be about;

• playing a track in segments, chunks if it is necessary;

• encourage pupils to respond to the content of a listening, not just to the language;

• different listening stages demand different listening tasks [2; 136].

These issues are the basis for all kinds of listening tasks as well as for using songs. Firstly, songs as a form of verbal communication are the means of more lasting learning and expanding vocabulary, because they include new words and phrases, which are found in a new contextual environment that helps to activate them. In addition to this, not only grammatical structures are better absorbed, activated, but also lexical and grammatical material is more firmly fixed. Thirdly, songs help to improve the skills of foreign language pronunciation. Apart from that, songs promote aesthetic education of pupils, team building, a full disclosure of artistic merit.

Songs could be used:

1) for the phonetic start at the beginning of the lesson;

2) for a more lasting consolidation of lexical and grammatical material;

3) as an incentive for the development of language skills and abilities;

4) as a kind of relaxation in the middle or end of the lesson when the children are tired and need relaxation, relieves tension and restores their functionality [3; 89].

Work on the text can be broken into three stages: before listening, during listening and after listening.

Preparatory exercises: exercises on overcoming of difficulties. To make this process successful, some types of exercises can be used:

– counting words with a certain sound;

– after listening to the text, counting up the quantity of interrogative, affirmative and negative sentences in it;

– picking out, from the list of words, the vocabulary presented in the text. Moreover, to overcome grammatical difficulties, certain patterns of exercises could be used either:

– to fix in the heard text nouns in plural / pronouns / verbs in past tense;

– to try to guess on a context value of unknown words in the known grammatical form.

Undoubtedly, there may be also some problems with lexical context, which may be solved by using such kinds of tasks:

– to count up the words designating color, form, etc.;

– to define value of a new word on a context, after listening to the text;

In addition to this, there are also some speech assignments:

– to pick up the title;

– to define, how many characters take part in the text;

– to remember proper names / the name of the countries or cities and etc., mentioned in the text;

– to write down the basic maintenance of the text in the form of keywords;

– to make plan, after listening to the text;

– to comment on words or actions of any person in the story;

– to retell the matter of the heard text in a native language;

– to listen to the text and to retell its maintenance in a foreign language [4].

To sum up, using songs in teaching English is a good device of learning new vocabulary and grammar in secondary school. It would be rather useful and entertaining for pupils, as it gives them strong incentive to develop listening and speaking skills.

СПИСОК ВИКОРИСТАНИХ ДЖЕРЕЛ ТА ЛIТЕРАТУРИ

1. Виготський Л.С. Педологія підлітка // т.4 – М., 1984.

2. Harmer J. Нow to teach English. – London: Longman, 2001.

3. Underwood M. Teaching listening. London: Longman, 1984.

4.Study English, 2000 – Режим доступу: http://englishclub. narod.ru/methods