The Role of Songs for ELL in Extramural Contexts

Abstract: Investigations of the Swedish upper secondary school show that almost one fifth of the students struggle with low motivation. Hence, this paper concentrates on two different contexts in which increased motivation for ESL has been highlighted: contexts where songs and music are used, and extramural contexts. Nevertheless, there is a research gap in the combination of these two aspects. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the role of songs in extramural contexts regarding motivation and vocabulary acquisition. Moreover, the purpose is to investigate these contexts in the plurilingual and culturally rich country of South Africa and thereafter explore how this can be implemented in the Swedish ELL classroom. Hence, a student questionnaire and two qualitative interviews with youth leaders were used to answer the two research questions: To what extent does the use of songs in extramural contexts affect the perceived vocabulary acquisition among high school students and youth leaders in South Africa? Furthermore, how does extramural use of English songs affect the perceived motivation and joy for learning English as a second language? The results revealed a positive impact of songs in extramural contexts, where social media was the most common context, both regarding motivation and vocabulary acquisition. Nevertheless, the effects were stronger when using songs productively, and the genre that had most effect on the vocabulary was HipHop. Hence, there is much to bring into the Swedish ELL classroom from the song-based extramural contexts, which can fulfil and develop requirements from the Swedish National Curriculum.