LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 17:4 April 2017
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Using Songs as a Prompt for Writing an Academic Response Paper:
A Comparative Analysis with the Traditional Reading Based Prompt

Syeda Shabnam Mahmud, M.A. in TESOL, M.Phil. Researcher

Abstract

The paper investigates whether the use of songs as a prompt for writing an academic response paper can bring a noticeable change in the performance of the students’ in-class writing activities. The study is conducted by collecting data from 50 students of the Composition and Communication English Course of East West University of Bangladesh where all the students have almost the same level of linguistic competency. Among these 50 students, 25 students are given the lyric of a motivational song and are asked to write a response paper on a given prompt whereas, the other 25 students are also asked to write a response paper on the same prompt after listening the audio version of the same motivational song along with its lyrics. The data analyses of the scores of response papers show that even though the two groups are similar in terms of executing pre, while and post activities in the classroom and also in using same prompt, there has been a remarkable positive difference in the performance of the group which has been exposed to the audio version of the song. This paper also tries to find out the students’ perception regarding inclusion of songs in an academic scenario.

Keywords: Inclusion of song, enjoyable learning process, response paper.

Introduction

In Bangladesh, over the years, ELT experts have recommended many ways of improving the quality of students’ academic write up. Out of these many suggested ways, two techniques of teaching writing are popular among the ELT practitioners of Bangladesh. The ELT practitioners usually try to elevate students’ academic writing quality either by teaching them the structure of composing a particular genre of academic composition, or by providing them the sample materials that exemplify the ideal version of that specific type of academic write-up. Following these ways, generally, students can improve the structure of their academic write up. However, in case of upgrading the “content” of an academic write-up, the students’ performance, in general, is not satisfactory. This paper attempts to deliver a technique of upgrading the content of students’ response paper write-up through the inclusion of songs as prompt. Songs, that combine music and lyrics in a string, exhibit the nature of target culture, provide relaxation and recreation to human mind and an authentic material (lyric) to teach the target language, have always been negligible in its application in the ELT classroom despite its multifaceted characteristics ( Shen, 2009).Though occasionally the evidence of incorporating songs in teaching speaking and listening have been found, very few attempts of using songs in teaching writing have been made so far.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Syeda Shabnam Mahmud, M.A. in TESOL, M.Phil. Researcher Lecturer, East West University, Dhaka, Bangladesh sarahshabnam15@gmail.com
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