THE USE OF MUSIC, SONGS AND SONG LYRICS IN AN ESL CLASSROOM AND THEIR MOTIVATIONAL IMPACT ON THE LEARNERSCafuta, Jaka (Avtor) Kennedy, Victor (Mentor) Čagran, Branka (Mentor) Javornik, Marija (Komentor) Hempkin, Kirsten (Komentor) ESLsongsmusiclearning/teaching a languagemotivationThis MA paper explores different ways of using music, songs and song lyrics in an ESL classroom, different experience of teachers and other researchers with this area, and the effects music and songs have on students and class work. The theoretical section includes scientific findings, experience and reports of researchers and teachers, relating to a wide spectrum of using music and songs for teaching English in many different ways. It also explores the area of motivation, its position in the learning process and the correlation between motivation and the use of music and songs in the classroom. The empirical section presents a more practical follow-up to the theoretical section, and is roughly divided into four “sub-sections”: the first sub-section was designed to research the opinions and experience of English language teachers from Maribor, Celje and Velenje (and their immediate surroundings) about using music and songs in an ESL classroom. There were 89 elementary school teachers included in the survey, which was also the instrument for data collection in this sub-section. The data shows that most of the teachers use music and songs quite often in their classrooms and have a predominantly positive experience with it. Most teachers strongly agree that music and songs enrich the lesson and activate the students. However, there are some who believe that music and songs take up too much time in the already over-stuffed schedule. Teachers use different sources to find their music and songs and also present these songs in different ways. Nevertheless, it is very uncommon for them to sing and play the songs to the students themselves- they usually use a cd or the internet. Most teachers use children’s songs and also believe that using songs is most effective with younger learners in the 1st triad. The majority of teachers also believe that music has the most powerful effect on student motivation and participation, however, they don’t see music and songs as good alternatives for standard language exercises and drills. Overall, most believe that an occasional, but regular use of music could change classroom practice in a very positive way (which is why many of them are already (more or less) including it into their English lessons). The second sub-section refers to a case-study implemented for researching the effect of using music and songs for teaching English on student learning achievement. The data was collected with the help of specially designed tests of knowledge (pre-tests and post-tests) and the case-study itself, in which 3 English lessons with music and songs were carried out in two groups of students from grade 9 (control group (9 students) and experimental group (8 students)) from one of the elementary school in Maribor. The results show that the two groups had different initial knowledge before the experiment even began- the experimental group scored higher on the pre-test of the 2nd conditional structure. Even though there were no other statistically significant differences between the two groups, the effect size measurement has shown that music has a medium to strong effect on student learning achievement. However, there was a statistically-significant difference in scores on the 1st conditional tests in the experimental group relating to progress within the group. I believe that same progress would have been seen in with the 2nd conditional structure too, but the students had already “aced” the pre-test, so it was almost impossible to achieve a statistically significant difference with the post-test. The third sub-section deals with researching the effects that using music and songs in the classroom has on student engagement, student motivation and classroom atmosphere. The data here was gathered with the help of a specially designed observational checklist with a chronological scale for observing classes/lessons. The results here were unanimous and show that all three categories under study were rated much high[J. Cafuta]20162016-11-22 16:38:33Magistrsko delo/naloga64691sl