Using Songs in Teaching English to Very Young Learners

The aim of this study is to examine the importance of using songs in the English language classroom. This study will identify if using songs in the English language classroom will promote vocabulary acquisition, and if using songs in the classroom will motivate the children to learn the English language, and will songs raise the children’s cultural awareness. The study was conducted at Eastern Mediterranean Doğa Kindergarten in Northern Cyprus, in total forty kindergarten children aged four participated within the study. The participants were examined through a pre-test, post-test, interview, a questionnaire and through classroom observations and field notes. The pre-test and post-test were designed and developed according to the selection of songs which had been chosen to teach the target vocabulary by the researcher. The adapted version of The International Attitude/Motivation Test Battery by R.C. Gardner (2004) was used for the questionaire, and in order to enrich the results of the study interview questions were written and developed by the researcher. Face to face interviews were carried out for the interview questions and for the questionnaire due to the participants being very young. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and translated into English by the researcher. The instruments were analyzed using the statistical package (SPSS 17). The results of the pre-test confirmed that the children had not acquired the target vocabulary beforehand. The post-test results confirmed the increase of scores therefore confirming vocabulary acquisition of the target vocabulary which was taught using the selection of songs. The results of the questionnaire revealed that when songs were used to teach the target vocabulary in the English language classroom the kindergarten children were motivated towards the lesson. The results of the interview questions revealed that iv when songs are integrated in to the foreign language classroom it raised the awareness of the cultural differences between the languages, the English language and the participant’s native language, which is Turkish. Keywords: songs, motivation, foreign language learning, very young learners, vocabulary, culture.