Harmonious learning: songs in English for ESP

1 Introduction

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) plays an important role in the English language modules in many degree courses in countries where English is not the first language. In Italy, the majority of degree courses have an English language module, and very often this is ESP. There is now more than in the past a greater overlap between what happens in general English lessons and ESP lessons, but one tool that is little used in the latter is song. Songs are very popular and useful in general English lessons and are used for a variety of tasks (as discussed below). However, in ESP they do not appear to be in the teacher’s toolbox, especially in Higher Education settings.

This article reports on a project at a university in the south of Italy to promote the use of songs in ESP lessons. It starts with a brief look at the relative literature and then explains the project and method used. Results are presented and discussed, and some conclusions drawn.

2 Literature review

Anthony (2018:1) defines ESP as:

an approach to language teaching that targets the current and/or future academic or occupational needs of learners, focuses on the necessary language, genres, and skills to address these needs, and assists learners in meeting these needs through the use of general and/or discipline-specific teaching materials and methods.

He further comments (2018:12) on this definition:

You may be intrigued by the idea that ESP uses both general and or specialist-field material and methods to meet the needs of the learners. This means that in some cases, the materials and methods used in ESP classrooms will be identical to those used in traditional GE [General English] classes.

This comment reinforces the presence of, among other things, songs in the ESP classroom. However, this use cannot be random, as it must be aimed at a specific objective to fulfil a specific need. Jordan (1997), Richards and Rodgers (2014) and Dean Brown (2016) show the importance of needs analysis in ESP and how this very often highlights a specific language skill that needs to be focussed upon for particular students, but that usually all four skills (reading, writing, speaking and listening) must be addressed in some way during the lessons. Listening, which Nunan (2002: 238) terms the “Cinderella skill in second language learning”, is sometimes woefully neglected but, in his opinion, it is “assuming greater and greater importance in foreign language classrooms”. One listening task that is frequently seen in general English classes is one that uses a song of popular music.

Harmer (2007: 319) claims that music:

is a powerful stimulus for student engagement precisely because it speaks directly to our emotions while still allowing us to use our brains to analyse it and its effects if we so wish. A piece of music can change the atmosphere in a classroom or prepare students for a new activity. It can amuse and entertain, and it can make a satisfactory connection between the world of leisure and the world of learning in the classroom.

Songs add another element, that of words, thereby changing this emotive element into an emotive and linguistic one. There is nothing new to using songs in the classroom; a number of suggestions can be found, especially online, about how to use songs in the classroom (see, for example, Alegria 2017; Cassel 2018; Eken 1996; Lorenzutti 2014; Lynch 2023; Simpson 2015). Lorenzutti (2014) gives ideas of how to use songs and calls for a use that goes beyond just the “gap-fill” exercise. A rationale for using songs must always be found. Richards (1969:161) notes “songs provide a means of increasing the amount of repetition possible without losing the learner’s interest” and that they “establish sounds; rhythm and stress; formulae; syntactical items; vocabulary.” Another early writer (Jolly 1975: 11) suggests that songs should be used in language teaching as they are in the “middle ground between linguistics and musicology, possessing both the communicative aspects of language coupled with the entertainment aspect of music”. Mora (2000: 148) goes further in claiming that “[t]he musicality of speech has an effect not only on the pronunciation skills of EFL students but also on their entire language acquisition process” and that “the repetitive lyrics in songs have a positive effect on the students’ language acquisition level” (Mora 2000: 151). Schön et al. (2008: 982) try to give a motivation to this type of thinking when they note, “what may be specific about music and language in song is that they share the same modality and allow a rather unique overlap of spectral and temporal information. Such a combination may be more efficient than a combination across sensory modalities”. Piri (2018: 78) concludes that “teaching of English can be highly effective if it is based on intensive music/song usage”. Wang (2008) puts the first reason for using songs in the classroom as being that “Popular English songs are motivating” while Djahim (2017), in an article that concluded that songs are an effective tool in the classroom, examined the affective, linguistic and cognitive reasons for using songs. Finally, Lynch (2023; online webpage) summarises the above considerations by claiming that songs:

contain authentic language, are easily obtainable, provide vocabulary, grammar and cultural aspects and are fun for the students. They provide enjoyable speaking, listening, vocabulary and language practice both in and out of the classroom.

Tegg’s (2018: 278) study on this subject is useful since he identifies eight activities: cloze/gap fill; discussion; sing-along; focus or comprehension questions; ordering activity; writing activity; true/false statements; dictation (full or partial text). He also identified purposes for using songs (given here in the order of respondents’ answers): to motivate students with an enjoyable activity; practise listening comprehension; create a relaxed atmosphere; teach authentic language and culture; introduce new vocabulary; accommodate different learning styles; practise familiar vocabulary; teach, multi-word units; teach pronunciation and prosody; introduce new or practise familiar grammatical items; practise fluency in speaking; give students the opportunity to produce language without feeling observed; prompt for spoken interaction; prompt for writing assignment.

These are usually seen in general English lessons, but these advantages might well be exploited in an ESP lesson as well. Songs do not play an important role in ESP. Indeed, in several recent studies on ESP (Anthony 2018; Dean Brown 2016; Hyon 2018; Paltridge and Starfield 2014; Woodrow 2018) there is not a single mention of songs. This is probably not surprising since, according to Paltridge and Starfield (2014: 2) ESP is “the teaching and learning of English as a second or foreign language where the goal of the learners is to use English in a particular domain”, and at university level this is either academic English or occupational/vocational English, such as the main examples we find in their texts (2014): English for Science and Technology; English in the Workplace; Business English; Legal English; Aviation English; English for Medical Purposes; English for Nursing; Thesis and Dissertation Writing; English for Research and Publication Purposes. At first glance, it might be difficult to see a role for songs in any of these courses (knowing the words of Beatles’ songs would probably not be one of the perceived needs coming out of a needs analysis for doctors’ use of English).

Popular songs are, by definition, authentic as they are not composed to be used in the classroom. This is also one of the problems of using them and why Tregg (2018) noticed that they are little used in mainstream English textbooks; that is to say that there is also the legal, copyright issue. In this project the songs were being used in singular situations for a specific group of students and the material produced for the classroom use was not officially printed by a publishing house. Indeed, mainstream use of such songs would involve complicated issues of copyright. Schlager (2008) writes clearly about the law referring to the fair use of copyrighted material in face-to-face teaching. This is a matter that is often overlooked and one that needs careful and sensitive handling.

One case in which songs are discussed for ESP is in Elterman’s (1983) work, which suggests using songs in sociology courses. In this project, songs were used in ESP courses, one of which is a Sociology course with an ESP module in it.

However, there is not only validation for using didactic tasks with songs in different areas of EFL; there is also a call to carry out research in this field. In her paper concerning students’ personalised corpus-driven investigation into the use of song titles (in this case by Bruce Springsteen), Mansfield (2022: 250) reached the conclusion that “there appears to be more than enough evidence to disregard scholarly criticism that the language of pop culture in general and pop music in particular, is not a valid area of investigation”.

The main interest behind this project can be formulated into two questions:

1. Do students on ESP courses perceive songs as a valid form of exercise?

2. What functions do the students perceive the songs as performing?

3 The project

This is part of a longer study into the use of songs.^[1] This research project involved students on two postgraduate master’s degree courses at the University of Calabria: Social Work and Social Policy; Sociology and Social Research. The second of these is a relatively new course and has attracted a limited number of students. English is a compulsory module in both courses, which took place during the Covid pandemic and were conducted online. Each course lasts 42 h, comprising twenty-one two-hour lessons. Both courses were designed as ESP courses, the overlap between these two “soft” sciences meant that a great amount of the material could be used in both with adaptions to make them domain specific. Nineteen songs were included. The songs were used in specific language learning tasks as well as being a way in which to introduce the topic of the lesson and encourage discussion – for example, the Beatles’ song “When I’m 64” was used as a means to learn specific vocabulary as well as introducing the topic of issues regarding more mature people.^[2] The students are asked to match phrases from the song to pictures (e.g. mending a fuse; sending a valentine [card]; knitting a sweater, etc.). This leads into a reading task about an ageing population and a discussion in small groups about the effects of this and what social workers are called upon to do for one group and from a sociological point of view for the other.

Here is how some of the other songs were employed:

She’s leaving home (Beatles) – This song is structured as a gap fill, but before listening and filling in the gaps the students are asked to identify the grammatical type of word that is missing. Having listened and completed the blanks the students, in small groups, discuss the meaning of the song (a young woman leaving her family to go away with a man because she was unhappy at home). This then functions as the lead into various tasks concerning children running away from home.

In the ghetto (a Mac Davis song sung by Elvis Presley) – The lyrics to this song have been slightly changed so that they now are not correct. While listening to the song, the students must identify the mistakes and correct them. After having discussed the meaning of the song (a young boy killed in Chicago while stealing a car), the students analyse sentences from past written exams which contain errors made by students who participated in the exams.

Family Business (Fish) – This song concerns domestic violence. Words and phrases have been removed and written at the side of the page near the line they were removed from but with no other indication of their position in the line. Students are required to read the lyrics and replace the missing elements, listening to the song in order to check their answers. There is an open class discussion about the meaning of the song and this leads into a reading task about different forms of domestic violence and subsequent discussions.

Hello, Goodbye (Beatles) – Students are asked to listen to the lyrics and determine what techniques for learning vocabulary can be deduced. This involves small group discussion. At the end of the task, students should be able to note that there is a lot of repetition, there is also the use of opposites (e.g., hello, goodbye). The song finishes with a playful use of language, which leads into a task concerning antonyms and a further discussion on techniques for vocabulary learning.

Fruit Song (Meeropol)^[3] – This short (twelve lines long) song is adapted as a gap fill exercise with a word bank of the missing words below the lyrics. Students complete the song and then listen to two versions (Billie Holliday and Annie Lennox) to check their answers. This leads directly into discussions in small groups about racism and prejudice in society and what the role of the social worker, or sociologist, is.

Help (Beatles) – In this song, some words have been omitted from the lyrics and the students must solve cryptic, crossword style, clues to find the missing words (e.g., “not older” is the clue for the missing word “younger”). This leads into timed discussions in groups of two or three of statements that include the word “help” (e.g., “Discuss how knowing English can help you”, “Discuss what help you have given to people in the past”). The discussion time for each of the eight topics is 3 minutes.

I’m a loser (Beatles) – Some words have been removed from the song lyrics and the letters of each word placed in brackets in the form of an anagram. Students must unscramble the letters to find the correct words. The song deals with love and the loss of love. It leads into a reading text about different types of love in which students must match examples of these different types with the name of that love. This in turn is followed by reading texts, tasks and discussions concerning LGBTQ^[4] issues.

At the end of the course, the students were administered a questionnaire, following as closely as possible the suggestions laid out in Dörnyei and Taguchi (2010) for questionnaire design.

4 Analysis and results

Seven students from the Sociology and Social Research course, and forty-five from the Social Work and Social Policy course completed the questionnaire. Not all questionnaires were fully completed, but all the replies have been included in these results. This explains why not all totals come to 52; sometimes students did not answer a particular question while they were able to give more than one answer for others, in which case the total could exceed fifty-two. The questionnaire was in English as were the majority of answers, which are reported verbatim here.

It is useful to include a variety of songs in order to cater for different tastes. Of the nineteen songs used in the course six had more than two people who said it was their favourite song with Yesterday (eighteen) gaining the most votes, followed by In the Ghetto (thirteen), Hello, Goodbye (eight), Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (five), Help! (three) and She’s leaving home (two).

All the songs appeared in the handout prepared for the students with other exercises. The songs were all used as exercises and were linked to other exercises as well. This means that often the grammatical-lexical aspects of the lyrics were involved in the tasks but that also the semantic and cultural aspects were important. Most songs were chosen for the opportunity they afforded as a primer for further reading or as a prompt for discussion, within the domain of the degree course. Some other tasks in the handout stood alone from the songs. Eighteen different types of exercise were nominated as the best ones, but the type of exercise most nominated was “exam simulation” and maybe this should not be too surprising in an English language module that finishes with a written and oral test. The students are very exam oriented.

When answering the question “Do you think that by using these songs your English has improved?”, 45 students replied in the affirmative while only three replied negatively. Twenty-five students stated that this improvement was due to the fact they had learnt new words; thirteen stated that it had helped their pronunciation; six that it helped their listening skills in general, while two stated that this approach had helped their motivation.

To the question “In the limited time we had to learn English, do you think this was an effective way to teach English?”, 37 answered affirmatively and eight negatively Students noted that this “untraditional” approach was “interesting”, “enjoyable” and “simple” and that it helped “memorize new words”.^[5] However, a great number of these positive answers were qualified with “yes, but … ” being a frequent reply: Yes, but “I preferred to repeat grammar”; “there is need for more time”; “important to do more exercise similar to the exam”; “there is a problem of attention”. These qualifications were repeated in the directly negative answers as well (“No, because … ”).

Some individual students recognised the variety of functions that the songs were intended to fulfil, such as “social significance”; “to explain concepts as (sic) drugs, gay rights, discrimination”; “motivation”; “cultural activities” and on occasions several would highlight the same aspect, such as “used for explaining everyday situations and social problems”; to learn “new idioms” or to “discuss various topics”. Five students said it was to “practice listening”, nine that it was for “improving English pronunciation” while the largest group by far, twenty-two, noted that the purposes of this activity was for “learning new words”.

Forty-seven students wrote that they thought it “was a good idea to use these songs in the lessons” although some wanted to qualify their answer further with a “but”: for example, “but add more grammar”.

When asked whether they would “have preferred a wider range of artists to have been used” thirty-four replied in the affirmative and seventeen responded negatively. The students wanted more “contemporary artists” and “other musical genres” as these might “capture the attention” more, but there were no suggestions as to which contemporary artists could be used. One person wrote that “Pink Floyd and U2 also sing about social and political issues” and so these could be used. Another student had no problem with the selection employed because “The Beatles made music history”. Three noted that the Beatles’ songs were “simple” and so should be used. One student who answered that a wider range of artists should not be used justified this by writing “I give more importance to song as instrument than artists of songs”.

The questionnaire also dealt directly with some of the ideas connected to song use and used a Likert scale of one to five for the students’ replies.

Results in Table 1 shows that students feel that songs are not out of place in their ESP lessons and that they certainly saw the benefit of using them even though they were not a part of the final exam. A result of 3.5 on the scale demonstrates that students are still very much connected to a traditional approach to English lessons with a clearly identifiable grammar element. 2.7 in item g (the songs used are relevant to my degree course) suggests that the students are uncertain as to the relevance of the songs to their particular degree course, and there is uncertainty as to whether there were too many in the course; a song was used in every lesson. However, the students seem to agree that the inclusion of songs, together with other tasks, made the English course enjoyable. Indeed, it is well known that an enjoyable atmosphere in the classroom is conducive to learning (in line with Krashen 1986, and his idea of “affective filters”, or in the works of Dewey, Montessori, Piaget, Vygotsky, etc., see an overview of these in Aubrey and Riley 2019).

As noted above, Tegg (2018) had grouped together different functions for songs in language lessons. The questionnaire also included these, with others, to see whether the students perceived these functions clearly or not. From the list they were presented with, the students were asked to choose seven (in order of preference from one to seven with one being the most important). They were also asked to write “No” against any function that they deemed irrelevant. Only seven students responded negatively, while five wrote “no” against “nothing”, meaning that they did not think that songs added nothing to the lessons. The results are reported in Table 2.

The replies have been ranked by the number of replies that this choice received irrespective of the score (one to seven). The average of the ranked scores has only been used to sort items that had the same number of people choosing them with the rank score giving an idea of which was considered more important, but this information is not shown in Table 2. Some students used the “no” option to show that they thought that a particular item was not relevant at all. Four thought that the songs did not help for the “specific language we need for our degree course”. Five wrote that they did not consider the songs to have added anything.

All seventeen items were chosen by a number of students. This would seem to suggest that they are aware of the purpose of a song even if it was not always explicitly explained in the lessons. Students could only choose seven of the listed functions; this means that even though they might perceive all of the functions as being applicable they could not say this. 50 % or more of the students chose the first six functions in the table as being relevant. The “not relevant” answer was used by very few (seven) students. Some functions were rarely chosen, the least chosen being selected by 12 % of respondents.

The highest ranked functions reflect the previous answers: “learning new vocabulary” and “pronunciation” were in the first two places with 92 % of all respondents claiming that these were important functions of the song. Obviously, students see a clear link between the tasks using songs and new words and they appreciate the chance to hear the language being used so that they can ascertain the correct pronunciation of the words. Students are very often worried about their pronunciation skills, as they “know” that English pronunciation can be difficult (even though most of them have no discernible difficulty in this area). Students easily recognise that the songs are giving them practice in listening as this is in third place, with 83 % clearly stating this in their preferences. 71 % see the songs as being helpful beyond the learning of single words and assisting in learning phrases, while 60 % see them useful in learning grammar. We have already noted that grammar is seen as being particularly important and that the students identify a need for learning it. It is enlightening to realise that students can appreciate the value of songs and related tasks in reaching this goal. It can be a means of introducing grammar learning into the lessons without necessarily labelling it as such. For other students it might well be more profitable to highlight explicitly the task as a grammar exercise so that they are more aware of what they might be expected to take away from the lesson. Sometimes a teacher’s lesson plan might show that a learning outcome of the lesson could be the learning of a particular language point, but this is not necessarily stated to the students.

Half of the students felt that the songs helped create “a good atmosphere for learning”. This general idea was more noticed than the specific, but related, idea of “reducing anxiety about language use” which only 12 % opted for. Although many students saw songs as assisting them in learning new words and grammar, a smaller percentage also recognised the function they can play in revising grammar and vocabulary (44 and 31 % respectively). The fact that songs were also used to introduce culture and cultural activities was clearly not evident, likewise the important role of prompting spoken interactions or writing activities. This might be a problem of the way the lessons were held. Distance learning by means of computer platforms is not necessarily conducive to organising or taking part in oral activities. It is easy to put students into pairs or small groups so that they can talk to each other when they are all in the classroom with the teacher, but less so with large groups via computer screens. 17 % of respondents saw that the songs were used to introduce other activities in the handouts, but this may not appear to be such a salient function in comparison to the more chosen ones and may well go unnoticed, as is the function of introducing authentic material into the classroom.

The prosodic nature of the language is brought out by these songs for 12 % of those who replied.

Forty students replied that they would “recommend that the teacher use the same songs and exercises next year with other students”, five said “no”. Six suggested “yes, but find more new songs ‘not only Beatles’”, others also said “modern artists would capture the attention”. In general, the use of songs was seen as “interesting”, “Useful”, interesting “because these songs talk about arguments that are close to our future job” as well as this being “a different approach” that “helped my motivation” and that it was “Relaxing and pleasant”. While four students thought it was “Useful for learning words”, eight felt the need to “do more grammar”. One student wrote, “Not all know the Beatles, with this songs (sic) they learn to appreciate the real good music. Combine the business with pleasure”.^[6]

5 Conclusions

This idea of combining “business with pleasure” is important in language teaching but can sometimes be overlooked in ESP lessons in Higher Education settings. This project has tried to highlight how the use of appropriately chosen songs can become a motivating and helpful activity in ESP lessons even at university level education. The degree courses involved in this project lend themselves particularly easily to this approach, whereas it might prove more difficult to accommodate songs in some of the specific ESP course mentioned earlier (e.g. Aviation English or English for Nursing).

Past literature has gone some way to justifying the use of songs EFL lessons, Tegg’s 2018 research being especially helpful. It is important that any songs used are not just time fillers, but are employed to serve various functions. In this project, the songs were mostly adapted to perform as a direct linguistic task, but very often the cultural and social aspects involved in the lyrics were employed to place the lesson within the specific domain of its course. This dual nature made the use of songs especially motivating and efficient for the aims of the ESP lessons.

This project has underlined that tasks involving songs can be designed and adopted for ESP lessons. However, sometimes it might prove more profitable to clarify (even after the activity has been completed) why the song was used. This would avoid the learners referring to them only as a means of learning new vocabulary (even though this is an important function). By doing so, it could be hoped that students come to appreciate the affordances that the songs offer and thus accept the multifunctional use of songs not only in the EFL classroom in general, but in the ESP classroom too.