Will listening to Western songs help English pronunciation?
Graduation Thesis
Presented to
the Faculty of the Department of
English Language and Literature
NotreDameSeishinUniversity
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirement for the Degree
Bachelor of Arts
by
AsamiKan
2010
Contents
Abstract ...... i
Chapter One: The motive for the thesis and the theories of scholars
1.1Introduction ...... 1
1.2Listening skill ...... 2
1.3Pronunciation ...... 3
1.4Learning from listening to music ...... 6
1.5Focus of thesis ...... 7
1.6Summary ...... 8
Chapter Two: The questionnaires and the experiment
2.1Introduction ...... 9
2.2 The questionnaire/ the experiment ...... 10
2.2.1 Overview ...... 10
2.2.2 The subjects ...... 10
2.2.3 The questionnaire ...... 10
2.2.4 The songs of the experiment ...... 11
2.2.5 Procedure ...... 13
2.2.6 Result ...... 14
2.3 Summary ...... 21
Three: Results of the questionnaire and the experiment, and the considerations on them
3.1 Introduction ...... 22
3.2 Overview of the main findings ...... 22
3.3 Details of the findings ...... 24
3.4 Answering the research questions ...... 27
3.5 Limitation of the study ...... 28
3.6 Implications for acquiring English pronunciation ...... 29
3.7 Summary ...... 29
References ...... 31
Appendices ...... 32
Abstract
This thesis researched “Will listening to Western songs help learning English pronunciation?” because if we could use music to acquire pronunciation of English, it must be good news for everyone to enjoy English.
In Chapter One, the motive for the thesis was discussed referring to the work of some scholars. This research said that listening to the western songs can be a good way to acquire English pronunciation.
In Chapter Two, a questionnaire and a data collection sheet were given to 30 people. The questionnaire asked about their English level, theirattitude toward the western songs, experiences of music, and opinions to English and pronunciation of it. The data collection sheet was to see how much the subjects can catch and understand the meaning of the words.
In Chapter Three, the results of the questionnaire and the data collection sheet were presented. The results showed that listening to the western songs has possibility to acquire English pronunciation.
Chapter One: The motive for the thesis and the theories of scholars
1.1 Introduction
Haven’t you experienced that the people from the other countries did not understand what you said in English?It is very important to learn English grammar, of course. However, to have a smooth communication with people from other countries, we should learn good English pronunciation as well. There are many ways to learn pronunciation, for example, studying abroad, joining the English lessons, watching movies and TV programs in English, listening to music and so. In this thesis, we will pick up “listening” because many people like listening to music, and listening to music does not feel “studying” so motivation for learning pronunciation may increase. Also, listening may have a great possibility to acquire English pronunciation because when we listen to music, it is easier to remember the sounds and rhythm. A lot of people like music. If we could learn pronunciation from what we like, a lot more people will like English as well. It must be enjoyable for everyone to speak English with good pronunciation.
1.2 Listening skill
A lot of Japanese people say they do not like English very much because even though they could understand the grammar, they cannot catch what foreign people are saying. This is the biggest problem Japanese people face when we hear English. Jeremy Harmer (2004) says not only Japanese people, but speakers of different first languages often have problems with different sounds. For example, Japanese does not have sounds like, /v/, /θ/ and so. If someone who does not know English hear a word “five”, he would say it [faibu] not [faiv]. Here is another example; /b/ and /v/ for Spanish speakers, there are not the same two sounds in their language. Therefore, if they cannot distinguish between these sounds, they will find almost impossible to tell the differences of English sounds. The ways how the sounds of English and Japanese (and other languages as well) are made are not the same. Therefore, it is natural to have some troubles when English learners hear English sounds. To train our ears, we need to get used to the sounds of English.
Harmer says in his book that there are two ways to deal with this. First, we can show English learners how sounds are made through demonstration, diagrams, and explanation. Another way is to draw the sounds to their attention every time they appear on CDs or in our own conversation. By doing this, learners’ ears will be trained. When the learners can hear correctly this is the beginning for them to pronounce English correctly.
1.3 Pronunciation
Problems Japanese people face when we pronounce English are caused by the same reasons as I mentioned above. English has a lot of sounds that we do not have. We only have five vowels in Japanese, but English has 12 vowels and eight diphthongs. Table 1 has a chart of the phonetic symbols in English.
Table 1: A chart of the phonetic symbols in English
Vowels / Diphthongs / Consonantsi: / bead / eı / cake / p / pin / s / sue
ı / hit / ɔı / toy / b / bin / z / zoo
ʊ / book / aı / high / t / to / ʃ / she
u: / food / ıə / beer / d / do / ʒ / measure
e / left / ʊə / fewer / k / cot / h / hello
ə / about / eə / where / g / got / m / more
ɜ: / shirt / əʊ / go / ʧ / church / n / no
ɔ: / call / aʊ / house / ʤ / judge / ŋ / sing
æ / hat / f / fan / l / live
ʌ / run / v / van / r / red
ɑ: / far / θ / think / j / yes
ɒ / dog / the / w / wood
What is more, English has more consonants than we have, and also the pronouncing system of English is not the same to Japanese. English words often end with consonants, for example, beat [bi:t], felt [felt], people [pi:pl], and a lot more. Japanese words, however, do not end with consonants except some words like ending with “n”. In Japanese, combinations of vowels and consonants are clearly pronounced, for example, beat [bi:to], felt [feluto], people [pi:pulu], and in Japanese’s own words, sora (sky), sakura (cherry blossom), daigaku (university). As I mentioned above, English and Japanese basically have different pronouncing way. When English speakers speak, there are many movements in their mouths which Japanese people do not have. The ways of using lips, teeth, tongues, and so are different or Japanese people never use. To distinguish the differences between the sounds of English and Japanese, we should look at how English sounds are made throughdemonstration, diagrams, and explanation.
We have other problems which is intonation. Harmer says, this is an important area of English pronunciation and this is also difficult point for Japanese people. When we speak English, we will find it difficult to identify the different patterns of rising and falling tones. However, we should not abandon intonation learning, he says. Most of people can hear when someone is being full of drive or bored, when they are surprised, happy, sad, and so. Therefore, it is one of the ways to give learners opportunities to recognize such moods by using tape, or watching movies. Then, we can practice imitating the way these moods are articulated. Even though we cannot explain the technicalities of the different intonation patterns, it is very important to get used to know the patterns.Harmer says, to produce correct sounds or intonation tunes are important, but rather than to acquire them he attaches greater importance to listen and notice how English is spoken. He says the more aware they are the greater the chance to acquire English skill will rise.
1.4 Learning from listening to music
Alan says listening to music has some advantages. He says that music is highly memorable. It makes people relax and its rhythms correspond with basic body rhythms. What is more, its messages touch deep inside people’s emotion. Whatever reasons, music stick in the head and echoing in our minds.
Music is everywhere and a lot of people have music tastes. Therefore, it is very available to us, and by using what we like our motivation will immediately rise.Murphy (1992) mentions, however, music itself will not help anyone how to use English. Just listening to and singing songs will not make learners can speak in English, but everything we do is associated with the sound we are hearing and which is always echoing deep inside our minds. Therefore, the use of music has a great possibility to stimulate positive attitudes to the acquiring of English. Most people have experienced with amazement how quick we remember songs. Even though we forget nearly everything we learn. He says that for a variety of reasons, songs stick in our minds and become part of us. We will see some of the reasons he mentions. (1) In our life, it is very hard to escape music. In the restaurants and cafes, shopping malls, in our cars, everywhere we hear music. (2) Generally, songs use simple and conversational language. So, we can use the songs as a sample text for our learning. The fact that the songs are easy and useful makes us more motivating. (3) Most importantly, songs make people relaxing. Songs provide fun and encourage learning without thinking they are learning. (4) It seems easier to sing in English than to speak it. So, to get used to the sound of English, listening to the songs and singing them are very good. Our bodies remember the sounds and rhythm. For these reasons, music seems to work effectively for our learning.
1.5 Focus of the thesis
From the review, we can see that there are great possibilities to use music for acquiring English and English pronunciation. This thesis will try to ask university students to find out whether listening to the western songs really help us to acquire English pronunciation.
In the next chapter, we will conduct some research to find out the
Research Question One: Will listening to Western Songs help Englishpronunciation?
Research Question Two: Which kinds of songs are effective?
We will study these two research questions, and then look at the results of the questionnaires in Chapter Three.
1.6Summary
In this chapter we looked at some research about listening, pronunciation, and learning English from music. In the next chapter, we will look at the possibility of acquiring English pronunciation by listening to the western songs from data gathered from questionnaire.
Chapter Two: The questionnaires and the experiment
2.1 Introduction
In Chapter One, we looked at some theories of scholars. They said that to learn English and its pronunciation, the use of music is a good way because it is highly memorable, and always in our life around us. In this chapter, we will examine whether listening to Western songs help acquiring English pronunciation and what kind of song is effective for it.
A questionnaire and a data collection sheet of the experiment are given to my friend at Seishin, and the other universities asking to answer them.
2.2The questionnaire/ the experiment
2.2.1 Overview
The questionnaire was designed to find out about the subjects’ levels and motivation toward English, motivation toward pronunciation of English, experiences of music, and behavior to Western songs to know whether they help the acquisition of English pronunciation. The data collection sheet assessed how much the subjects can really pick up the words and possibility of pronunciation acquisition by subjects’ self estimation. The aim of those was to find out whether listening to Western songs will help our acquisition of English pronunciation.
2.2.2 The subjects
The subjects were NDSU students and students at OkayamaScienceUniversity and ShujitsuUniversity to gather data from subjects who learn and experience different things, and have different interests. There were 30 subjects, 23 females and seven males. Their ages were 20 to 22.
2.2.3 The questionnaire
A questionnaire is to find out the subjects’ levels of English, usual behavior toward the western songs, experiences of music, and opinions to pronunciation acquisition of English. The aim of this questionnaire was to compare and find out the relations between the results of the questionnaire and the data collection sheet of the experiment by getting the subjects’ basic opinion toward English and the listening of Western songs before the data collection. The English version of the questionnaire is in Appendix A and the Japanese version is in Appendix B. A questionnaire and the data collection sheet of the experiment were given to my friends and club members at NDSU and other universities as I mentioned above.
2.2.4 The songs of the experiment
As experiment, nine Western songs are selected and the subjects are asked to listen to the songs and see how much they could catch the words and see how they think about listening to Western songs for the pronunciation acquisition. As music types, pop, rock, R&B, ballad, punk, and folk are picked up to see whether there are any relations between the favorite types and the types which the subjects could pick up the more words. Also, to see whether there are any music types which are easy to pick up the words for the subjects. And, the speeds of nine songs are different. Songs which have fewer than 70 words per minute look upon as slow song, 71 to 90 words per minute as middle tempo, and over 91 words per minute as fast song. Then, the songs are in Table 2 below. These songs are chosen to know what kinds of songs are useful to acquire English pronunciation. So, there are different music types and speeds. Also, carrying out the experiment, we chose the songs which the subjects would not know because if they have known the songs and the lyrics of the songs, we will not be able to get impartial results. And, we chose the songs which the subjects would like because we think it is important to learn things from what we can enjoy.
Table 2: A chart of the songs for the experiment
Title / Singer / Band / Type / SpeedBeautiful / Patrick Nuo / Pop / Middle
What about me? / Shannon Noll / Rock / Fast
Wondering / Good Charlotte / Punk / Fast
Sunset / Powderfinger / Rock / Middle
Walking Away / David Craig / R&B / Fast
Eight Days A Week / Beatles / Folk Rock / Middle
The Reasons / Hoobastank / Ballad / Slow
Let Me Know / Aaliyah / Ballad / Slow
Something In the Way She Moves / James Taylor / Ballad Folk / Fast
A data collection sheet for the experiment was made by using the songs above to find out how much the subjects could catch the words and see how they think about listening to Western songs for the English pronunciation acquisition. The English version of the data collection sheet is in Appendix A and the Japanese version is in Appendix B.
2.2.5 Procedure
The questionnaires were distributed to my friends at NDSU, members of theband circle at NDSU andother universities, and students in other universitiesto gather data from subjects who are interested in English and who are not, subjects who like English and who don’t, and subjects who have musical experiences and interests and who don’t to see whether there are any effective relations for pronunciation acquisition between the experiences and motivation toward English and music.
To gather those data we made a questionnaire. A data collection sheet of the experiment was also made to find out how much the subjects can pick up the words and see how they think about listening to Western songs for the English pronunciation acquisition. To do the experiment, the subjects are divided into small groups to ask their opinions in detail. There were two or three people in each group.For the experiment, CD player was used and we played each song about for a minute or until the end of the first part of the song. Then, the data was put into Excel.
2.2.6 Results
In this section we will look at the data from the questionnaire. First we will look at the subjects’ knowledge about the songs, and how the subjects feel about the songs. Then we will look at how many words the subjects can get, and understand the meaning of the words. Also, there is the difficulty of the songs, and the possibility that the songs can help the pronunciation acquisition of English. Last, we will look at the subjects’ basic opinions about Western songs and English. The results appear in the following tables.
Most subjects do not know the songs. However, 17% of the subjects know Song 6 “Eight Days A Week” of The Beatles. Most subjects like the songs and the rhythm of the songs. Over 70% of the subjects feel they like Song 1, 2, and 6. If the subjects like the songs, the number shows they like the rhythm of the songs as well. Many subjects pick” so-so” for the question “Do you like the lyrics of the song?” However, Song 1 and 6 get higher percentages, 43%.
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Table 3: A chart of the data from the experiment
Know / Like / Rhythm / LyricsNo Yes / No so-so yes / No so-so yes / No so-so yes
1. Beautiful / 100% 0% / 0% 20% 80% / 0% 13% 87% / 3% 53% 43%
2. What about me? / 97% 3% / 0% 27% 73% / 3% 17% 80% / 0% 90% 10%
3. Wondering / 90% 10% / 7% 30% 63% / 7% 23% 70% / 3% 87% 10%
4. Sunset / 100% 0% / 10% 30% 60% / 13% 17% 70% / 7% 63% 30%
5. Walking Away / 87% 13% / 17% 17% 67% / 7% 27% 67% / 0% 80% 20%
6. Eight Days A Week / 83% 17% / 0% 27% 73% / 3% 30% 67% / 0% 57% 43%
7.The Reasons / 100% 0% / 23% 20% 57% / 20% 23% 57% / 10% 77% 13%
8. Let Me Know / 100% 0% / 10% 40% 50% / 17% 37% 47% / 13% 60% 27%
9. Something In The Way She Moves / 100% 0% / 13% 27% 60% / 13% 23% 63% / 7% 77% 17%
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