An Experimental Study In The Influences Of English Songs On Music Students’English Listening And Speaking Abilities

Language and music are both composed of sound segments, whereas the former originated from the latter and ultimately led to the creation and development of literature. And literature in turn enriched the language and influenced music. The common characters between language and music lie in that both consist of time, rhythm, and pitch, etc. As one of typical rhythmic language, English can be closely interrelated to music. Henceforth, many English teaching and learning activities, especially in primary stage, were carried out through mixed application of rhythmic music and English, for instance, in the form of singing, chanting and tongue twister, etc.From the implication of interrelation between music and English learning, the author of this dissertation aims to analyze the current English learning status of music students in senior-middle school and their advantages in learning English under the guiding principles of Krashen’s Input Hypothesis and Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences. The author intended to explore an effective way of arousing students’interests in English learning, improving their sense of language and abilities in English listening and speaking through daily application of English songs as an auxiliary teaching method. Furthermore, such effective way can also improve and optimize the English teaching and learning process, so as to achieve high efficiency in English teaching and the final goal of relaxed learning environment for students.The author of this dissertation selected the students of music specialties in second grade of a senior-high middle school as the experiment participants. One objective reason for choosing these students as subjects was that the author had a long period of internship in this class, which ensured a familiar interpersonal relationship with students and teachers. This provided a beneficial prerequisite for establishing a cooperative spirit and mutual-reliable atmosphere. The other reason was that those music students had to pass a musical test measuring their musical abilities or potentials before they could be enrolled by this school and they were required to take tremendous amount of daily music training even after their enrollment. With sufficient chances to get in touch with music, the musical intelligences of these students were undoubtedly quite high. Before the actual experiment was carried out, the author selected a total of eight English songs in considering the current English level of these students and their music preference. Then these songs were assigned to them with more prepared background information. Students were asked to learn singing the songs during their break time (about20minutes) among classes every day. The time span of the experiment lasted eight weeks. The author used questionnaires and English listening test papers both before and after the experiment, and personal interviews with both teacher and students. Through the analyze of experiment results, the change in students’ interests for learning English as well as their listening and speaking abilities can be observed.Through the above analysis and demonstration, the following conclusions could be obtained:first, the application of English songs in language learning can actually arouse students’interests and initiatives; second, through practicing English songs, the students’ listening and speaking abilities can be improved.