Teaching Efl Through Music and Songs

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“Teaching English in Israel” Teaching EFL through Music and Songs Ohalo Collage, 2013 Chen Mizrahi Music is an essential part of human existence. Music is used by human beings to express their thoughts and feelings about their inner world as well as their social world. It is hard to imagine a culture without music. (Brown, 1994, p. 61) [2 ]. This essay is about using music and songs, in the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom. It presents first the advantages of using songs .it discusses the disadvantages, and finally the way to cope with the limitations. In the early 1980s, Howard Gardner proposed the theory of multiple intelligences. He stated that each student is unique and he learns in different ways. One of these intelligences is the musical intelligence. Learners with musical intelligence will benefit greatly from learning through songs. However, it does not mean that learners with other intelligences cannot use songs to learn. They can learn from music through the different tasks relate to the song. There are many reasons for using songs in EFL classroom. Murphy states that the two major advantages of using songs in the EFL classroom are: Music is highly memorable and it is highly motivating (2002, p.3) [3] . Songs are undoubted leads to positive attitude, and it enhances exposure. It has potential for relevant expansion of materials and topics. Songs can also be useful tool in the learning of vocabulary, sentences structures and sentence patterns, not to mention their reflectivity of mother tongue culture (Murphy,1992) [3]. Songs can provide valuable speaking, listening, and language practice. Kevin Schoepp (2001) [3] divided the reasons into three groups: Affective; Cognitive and Linguistic reasons. The affective filter, (Krashen 1982) [3] , is the
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