Songs And Games In Teaching English Language To Lower Secondary Pupils
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CHAPTER I. SONGS – THEORETICAL CONCEPTS
The place of songs in the ELT process
Use of songs in the ELT classroom
The use of songs within the class is flexible and does not adjust to a specific moment. They can be used at any time during course, for example: at the end of a regular session, when changing environments, finishing a Didactic Unit or specific topic and even on special occasions, at the arrival of Christmas or at the end of the course. Regardless of the school stage in which we find ourselves, “teachers use the songs as an excuse to encourage the learning of the language in a hidden and much more motivating than any other.” (Haycraft, 1978: 102) Children, thanks to them, develop essential elements in learning the foreign language as it was mentioned before. Songs can be used as texts, focusing their importance on the message they transmit to the receiver. This use is interesting when one is going to treat a special topic. If teachers want to initiate a conversation among the students, it can be used as a starting point and offer a source of discussion. As it has already been said on several occasions, they are especially useful for introducing, developing and acquiring new vocabulary since they provide a natural context for most words, verbs, prepositions, adjectives. Also, the aspect related to pronunciation activates the repetition mechanism in language acquisition, which actively works with the appropriate intonation. Songs are very required to develop or practice the retention capacity of the students. If done properly, “repetition will be conceived in a pleasant way and it will not bore the students, thus achieving active participation in the language course”. (Underwood, 1989: 44-45)
Finally, in the classroom, songs are used to motivate students due to the extraordinary strength they have among people. In this respect, teachers must increase the musical interest of students by teaching different musical genres and their performance during English courses.
Motivation is a decisive factor in the teaching-learning process, so I decided to investigate songs as a motivating method for teaching foreign languages. I will expose the benefits that music brings us, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of this and the criteria for their selection. On the other hand, the promotion of motivation entails the implementation of teaching-learning strategies; in this respect, if the student is motivated, he will develop strategies to learn; if the teacher already has them, he should use them and if they work, teaching motivation grows even more.
Learning strategies use a set of resources for their implementation in a motivating way. One of the resources that can be used for teaching English language is represented by songs. I will justify, therefore, the use of this resource as beneficial and adequate for the teaching in this respect. “Listening, learning and singing songs in class represent a practice of incalculable didactic value. There are ideal oral texts to practice aspects such as rhythm, speed and correct pronunciation. In addition, as a playful activity, the songs represent an alternative to other repetitive motivating exercises”. (Schoepp, 2001: 4). Music has an affective component, since its evocative power can change our mood depending on the type of melody we are listening to or according to the lyrics of each song. It is a trigger and a way to express our own feelings. It has also been known that musical knowledge is globally processed in various parts of the brain, but not only in the areas of sound processing and language, but also in other centres, such as those intended for vision. Hence, music has an evocative power that stimulates the visual imagination, the linguistic environment, memory and so on. On the other hand, one property that songs have is the scarce use of spatio-temporal and personal references, which facilitate listener’s appropriation: “We make them our own and we get them to tell us about our world and, in this respect, they connect with our affective plane, they have the capacity to act on our emotions. This affective and experiential nature of the songs makes them a motivating and significant material to be exploited during the language classroom”. (Lems, 2001: 41)
In order to achieve more lasting learning, the involvement of emotions is fundamental, and songs are a way of expressing feelings in a more simple way, since music has great power for the stimulation of emotions, sensitivity and imagination without forgetting the consequences that derive from the ability of songs to get hooked while they remain in our memory. Gatbonton and Segalowitz (1998) show that this aspect is “totally beneficial in the context of a foreign language learning process”. (Gatbonton, Segalowitz, 1998: 120) Thanks to the songs, repetition exercises can be practiced by students perceiving them as a necessary practice, therefore in a communicative and natural context. It is a real fact that music is present in the most important and happy moments of our lives (such as weddings, communions and so on) and it is obvious that, in everything that makes people happy, the motivation underlies as a determining factor. Hence, this concept constitutes the fundamental element in educational practice and especially when the task of learning a language is addressed. In addition, the songs are the reflection of the culture that has penetrated in human interior, being a form of expression and communication.
On the other hand, according to Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, which includes linguistic and musical intelligence, “it is positive for the education of people to encourage the development of all intelligences”. Gardner (2004: 102) There are many students who need visual stimuli to learn, but others who need stimuli of another type such as tactile, kinetic or auditory one. The latter type of students especially benefit from learning through songs, since people whose learning style is mainly auditory learn best by listening to texts, conversation in class and especially through songs. Abundant in the previous mentioned aspect, the theory of Howard Gardner on the multiple intelligences distinguishes between several types of intelligences: the visual or spatial ones, the verbal or linguistic ones, the logical-mathematical ones, the kinetic ones, the musical ones, the interpersonal and the intrapersonal ones. Working with songs motivates and stimulates students with verbal, musical, interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence, since a song involves both the lyrics (verbal), music (music), sharing with others learning and even singing (interpersonal) and also reflection and introspection (intrapersonal). Therefore, a teacher can work almost all types of intelligence through songs. Likewise, for students with kinetic intelligence, activities with movement can also be included, such as choreography. As for the students with a great logical-mathematical intelligence, problems solving activities such as prediction of rhymes, detection of failures and so on can be proposed, being a motivating factor for them.
Another solid theory on which the use of songs during the foreign language courses is based is the Affective Filter Hypothesis of Krashen, S. (1983). According to this author, the process of learning acquisition is achieved in “a climate of security and confidence for the student, while teachers have to provide their students with a pleasant and positive atmosphere in which they feel comfortable and motivated”. (Krashen, 1983: 78) In this ideal context of learning, songs play a very important role for both teachers and students, since, as Varela (2003) points out, “songs develop all the linguistic skills and activate the two cerebral hemispheres”. (Varela, 2003: 66) In this respect, songs can be used to:
– teach vocabulary
– practice pronunciation
– remedy frequent mistakes
– stimulate the debate in class
– teach culture and civilization
– study the linguistic varieties of the language
– encourage creativity
– develop oral and reading comprehension
– develop oral and written expression
– review morph-syntactic aspects
– motivate students to learn the foreign language
– develop the rhythmic and musical sense
Therefore, all the researchers agree that songs have great pedagogical value because of their importance regarding the cognitive and affective development of people, being a source of stimulation in any learning process.
Advantages and disadvantages of teaching English as a foreign language through songs
Based on the positive arguments that Griffe (1992) observed, some of the advantages one may find when using music and songs in the language classroom are:
“1. They provide variety in the pedagogical practice of the foreign language class. As it is a different resource to the textbook and to the activities that are normally used for language teaching, it allows students to focus on changing the activity concerning their interest in an innovative one.
2. They create a positive classroom environment: relax students, create a fun work atmosphere and provide safety to students who feel insecure.
3. The song can also be used as a text, but in the same way as a poem, a story, a novel, an article.
4. Another use of the songs is to mark a change on special occasions like Christmas or even to work different skills” (Griffe, 1992: 22-23), for example:
• Conversation class. It can be used to discuss its form, content and encourage debate as it is the case of poetry or other written discourses.
• Vocabulary class. Songs are especially suitable for the introduction of vocabulary because they favour a context.
• Grammar class. In songs, the grammatical structures are used in a natural context that helps students to recognize their use.
• Pronunciation class. Tonality, rhythms and accents of music favour the learning of pronunciation.
“5. Creativity is favoured.
6. Cultural aspects of the foreign language object of teaching / learning are introduced.
7. Students’ participation increases as well as the communication between students themselves, reducing in this way the protagonism of the teacher.
8. The psychological distance between teacher and student is reduced.
9. They create interest for students, since it is a fact that the new generations have grown up in an environment of musical globalization in which current pop figures are part of their lives. This can be a point of connection with the world of the student that serves to motivate their interest and participation in class, language and learning process.
10. They have a great emotional load that makes students feel identified.
11. Due to its linguistic input, there seems to be a deep relationship between rhythm and discourse. Being sensitive to rhythm is a basic and necessary first step in learning a language and what better than to expose the rhythm to the students through music?
12. For its cultural input, music is a reflection of time and space in which it is produced, so songs are very suitable to be used as historical reflections. Each song is a cultural capsule full of social information”. (Griffe 1992: 23-26)
In his opinion, McIntire (2007) has exposed nine reasons why it is beneficial to learn a foreign language through songs, such as:
“1. Songs almost always contain authentic, natural language.
2. A wide variety of vocabulary can be introduced to students.
3. Songs can be obtained in a very simple way.
4. They can be selected to meet the needs and interests of each student.
5. Grammar and cultural aspects can be introduced into songs.
6. Another advantage of songs lies in their brevity, which allows us to use them even though the available time is reduced.
7. Students can listen to a wide range of accents.
8. The lyrics of songs can be based on some of the situations that surround people in their daily life.
9. Students consider songs to be fun.” (McIntire, 2007: 44)
On the other hand, there are also certain drawbacks and limitations regarding the use of songs in the teaching / learning of foreign languages, for example:
1. Sometimes, some structures are abbreviated, which makes it difficult for students to understand the content: I wanna … instead of I want to …
2. With regard to the translation of the songs, some melodies that are very catchy in the foreign language, lose the charm when translating them into the mother tongue since sometimes the lyrics of songs are not so attractive when people know their true meaning.
3. Another disadvantage is that if teachers have a limited time, they can not please the musical tastes of all students, because some of the songs that are interesting for some, can be very heavy for others.
Criteria for songs selection in the context of teaching English
In order to select the songs that will be used in the English class, Choksy (2001) argues that “in order to be a good level of motivation in students’ perception, teachers should try to find music that they like”. (Choksy, 2001: 97) On the other hand, the lyrics of songs that teachers choose must be appropriate to students’ level of competence in the foreign language. In this respect, when it comes to see if the linguistic content is the right one at the level of the students, teachers have to consider:
1. Age: The teacher has to take into account the age, tastes and interests of the students as these will vary according to the circumstances of the teaching / learning situation.
2. Level of vocabulary, structures and functions: teachers must consider that the level of difficulty should not be too easy, because it would be boring, or very difficult, because it would demotivate them, but always related to the knowledge acquired previously.
3. Authentic and / or adapted songs: Although the first ones are very motivating, they can become more difficult in the class context; however, the adapted ones are very useful for pedagogical and didactic reasons since they correspond to the level of competence of the students and in this respect, they have been modified taking into account the age of students, the level of vocabulary, structures and functions.
4. Interests and tastes of the group of students: Students’ motivation for the songs in English as a foreign language depends on these factors and they are undoubtedly the most important aspects to take into account when making choices. Among the different types of songs, one may find:
– Counting song: those songs appropriate for children of the first or second cycle, since at these ages they love songs that are to be told and somewhat repetitive. An example would be There are ten in the bed.
– Action songs: in this respect, students accompany the song with certain gestures, mime, body movements, postures, etc. This type of songs is based on the Total Physical Response Method, for example Head and shoulders.
– Traditional songs: they develop students’ socio-cultural competence. As teachers, they should encourage students to discover details about the lifestyles and socio-cultural aspects of the Anglo-Saxon culture: Christmas, Easter, Birthday, Carnival, sports, Eating habits, family, animals, songs, etc. In this way, teachers provide their students with a series of specific socio-cultural elements.
– Jazz Chants: Songs with a lot of rhythm and rhyme are an essential element. They are usually related to children's experiences, thus favouring the improvement of auditory and oral skills, while improving pronunciation in English as a foreign language. An example of Jazz chants is These are my blue jeans.
– Songs for special occasions: songs that are sung at certain parties or times of the year, for example Christmas songs (We wish you a Merry Christmas) or Happy Birthday.
– Folk songs: songs from American and British folklore for example Far West Life (Oh, Susannah).
– Pop and rock music: they are motivating because they may be most frequently heard on radio stations in our country.
When choosing a song to work on during the English course, Yee (2015) considers important “to take into account a series of factors that will help teachers to make the most appropriate choice” (Yee, 2015: 44-46):
– The song must have good acoustics, both for the classroom and for the hearing ability of students: those with noisy background or instruments should be omitted and the voice should be pure and clean, clear.
– The songs must be repetitive and the message will be simple, orderly and with a basic verb tense.
– Teachers should avoid those songs with so-called slangs or with continuous cultural references that need precise explanations since it will occupy a lot of time in the class.
– Especially if teachers work with young children, it is important to use songs that are based on physical movements coordinated with the music so that learning will become more fluid.
– It is not advisable to choose songs with very long verses, since this reason will force teachers to repeat the song too many times so that students can assimilate it, leading to an inevitable boredom on their part and an excessive use of the session time.
– The level of vocabulary, structures and functions is an essential factor to consider; they should not be too easy because students would get bored or too complex since they would be demotivated and should always be related to the knowledge previously acquired.
Reasons to teach English through songs
Until a few years ago, English has been taught through too structured and formal methodologies that provoked for students a negative image of the language and sometimes even feelings of rejection. To end this problem and reduce the academic burden imposed in the language classroom, teachers have to adapt the songs and have made them an important ally. Songs, as a fundamental part of the use of music as a tool, are a resource for learning foreign languages. Through songs we acquire the language in a natural way in a context of real communication, since again like music in general, they are part of our daily life. They also have a series of characteristics that ensure success in the classroom: they are fun, enjoyable and help teachers achieve linguistic objectives such as learning vocabulary, facilitating the learning of structures, improving pronunciation and intonation.
Students have fun listening to songs, empathize with them and are motivated while in class breaks the climate of seriousness and hateful monotony. But what are the real reasons why teachers should use songs in the classroom? According to Cremin (2015), “one may find the so-called psychological aspects that address the reasons related to the functioning of human brain” (Cremin, 2015: 88):
1. They contribute to the achievement of language thanks to the repetition that they accomplish unconsciously.
2. Some students have serious affective deficiencies and songs are subtle allies to alleviate them.
3. The two types of memory are concentrated: short and long term ones.
4. They are part of people’s daily life making individuals feel familiar with them.
5. People like to listen to their own voice.
6. They present simple texts, so listening to the songs does not require much effort on individuals part and becomes a relaxing activity.
7. Although they are a text, they motivate students much more than a reading lacking in music and rhythm.
The author also mentions the pedagogical and methodological reasons. They are concerned about the relationship between songs and teaching, teachers and in general, school:
1. Students have fun through songs, they are motivating and encourage the imagination as well as prepare them for the subsequent listening of stories.
2. The classroom is filled with variety by introducing new less formal resources.
3. The distance between student and teacher decreases.
4. The communication between students is greater due to the fact of singing.
5. Formal teaching is reduced.
6. Teachers should increase the need to work with language if they want to understand the song or pronounce it correctly.
7. Grammatical structures of language, vocabulary and pronunciation are practiced and taught, as well as listening skills are improved.
8. The lyrics of songs introduce new aspects of culture into the classroom.
9. Attention and concentration skills are improved.
The definition of songs
Taking into account the importance that the popular song has had in teaching English as a foreign language and of course the children's song within them, one would confirm that this second group is still valid, not only in society, but using the media that are now considered essential for the dissemination of information such as the audiovisual. Why children's song and not the song in general? Hence, some songs that teachers use during the process of teaching English as a foreign language are not found in the compilations of the audiovisuals. Another factor to consider is if teachers understand that the children's song refers to a repertoire in which children are protagonists. In this respect, they are those who participate directly in the melodies, games or activities, without needing help from adults, or if there are any, they are mere reproducers of what the children are doing. Therefore, it is essential to understand this genre as a period in which the child needs the presence of an adult for proper songs transmission.
Of course, one may see that in many cases it is a little complicated to break down the definitions of the song itself, with the folk or folk song and also in relation to the children's song that is often within the popular song, because many elements are common.
The word song according to the Karp (1983) has “several meanings, some of them being more related to the musical world and others simply make references to possible situations or expressions that are used in everyday life”. (Karp, 1983: 57-62) The given definitions are:
“Composition in verse, recognized as sung, or made on purpose so that it can be put into music”. (Karp, 1983: 57)
“Music with which this composition is sung”. (Karp, 1983: 57)
“Lyrical composition in the Italian way, almost always divided into long periods, all of the same number of verses hendecasyllabic and heptasyllabic, except the last, which is shorter.” (Karp, 1983: 58)
“Old poetic composition, which could correspond to different genres, tonalities and forms, many with all the characters of an ode”. (Karp, 1983: 59)
“Thing said with insistent or heavy repetition”. (Karp, 1983: 61)
“News or unfounded pretext”. (Karp, 1983: 62)
In the Larousse Encyclopaedia of Music (1981), the term given to song has many meanings and this is the reason why one may include in this section those definitions that help to better understand the characteristics of this term, being related to the present research:
“Composition in verse to be sung, both of popular origin, as of cult origin.
Music of a song.
Lullaby: sing that serves to rock a child and also some soft instrumental compositions.
In literature: lyric composition, divided into long stays, all of equal number of hendecasyllables, except the last one that is brief.” (Larousse Encyclopaedia of Music, 1981)
According to Sadie and Tyrrell (2001), one may find the following song definitions:
“Composition in verse to be sung.
Music of the song.
Lyrical composition divided into long stays of the same number of hendecasyllables, less the latter one, which is shorter”. (Sadie, Tyrrell, 2001: 172)
The definition found in the Dictionary of Music is as follows: “Short piece for solo voice, with or without accompaniment, in a simple style”. (Dictionary of Music, 2016) The songs are common to all cultures and to all eras. Although fragments of ancient Greek songs have reached us, the beginnings of the current Western tradition can be found in the unaccompanied songs of the 12th century, including the music of troubadours, Minnesinger and Meistersinger and the tradition of the lauds. In France and Italy, during the thirteenth century, the song with instrumental accompaniment was already a phenomenon of significant proportions. These songs evolved to become the Renaissance chanson of Dufay and Binchois and others. The song for several voices arose during the second part of the 15th century. Among the composers of the period are Obrecht and Josquin and in the sixteenth century, Sermisy and Jannequin. During the early years of the seventeenth century, in England the song was accompanied by lute, as evidenced by the collections of Dowland and his contemporaries. In France, there was a current that began to cultivate air de cour, being refined as court compositions with lute or key accompaniment. The advent of the monody in the early seventeenth century transformed the character of the song, giving it a freer declamatory style. All this was incorporated into the new genres of the cantata, the opera and the oratorio. From the eighteenth-century, in the context of German song the romantic lied was born in the 19th century; the works of Duparc and Fauré marked the resurgence of the French song in the last part of the 19th century. Impressionism is projected in Debussy's songs. Among the English composers of the twentieth century who have cultivated the genre include Bax, Britten and Holst.
For Shuker (2016), the definition of the song, as well as its characteristics, is as follows: “Without a doubt, the most widespread formal type within the traditional repertoire is that of the songs. They correspond to a multitude of sorts and species. The union of text and music forming the determined entity as a song seems as old as the same music, since from the examination of the compartments of the peoples that still remain in primary cultural area, it can be deduced that vocal performance has always served man as first incentive for movement and for dance. In ritual practices linked to religious beliefs, to the lives of individuals, to social communities or to the course of life during the natural year, vocal music and, therefore, the song even in its most primitive manifestation and rudimentary, it has always been an indispensable ingredient.” (Shuker, 2016: 66)
This work does not focus on the exclusive use of manuals as a starting point, but also the repertoire has been found in audiovisuals. In this respect, one must take into account the definitions that we can collect in this medium. The online environment regarding song definition is interesting because not only the definition of song is presented, but also because when presenting the classifications, examples are shown that illustrate textually the different characteristics of the songs that are grouped in each of the types, as following: A song is a musical composition for the human voice a cappella, or with instrumental accompaniment that expresses a text. Generally it is for a single voice, although it can also be for a duet, trio, or for more voices, what happens is that on this occasion, it is generally considered a choral song. The words of the songs are traditionally of poetic versification, although they can be religious verses of free prose. Songs can be classified in many different ways, depending on the criteria followed. One division could be divided between artistic songs that are the most elaborate, popular music songs that are important in society and folksong that have a more historical component. Other common methods of classification can be the purpose to be achieved with them sacred, if it is religious or secular if they have nothing to do with religion, the style they represent lieder, ballad or simply the time in which it had its origin such as Renaissance, Baroque and so on. Colloquially, although it is incorrect, the word song is used to refer to any musical composition, including those that have no text (however in the musical styles that are predominantly vocal, a composition without sung pieces is often named instrumental). In European classical music and in music in general, the current use of the word is considered incorrect as the term song can only be used to describe a composition for the human voice.
1.3 Tips and ways for integrating songs in ELT classroom
Learning strategies
When teaching through a song during the English courses, teachers must consider how to do it; they can not launch themselves to carry it out without knowing the proper form. Firstly, the students must be situated within the context of the song before listening to it, knowing the elements that are treated in it and checking that they know those that are key ones. Some songs are receptive understanding which means that the end is not that the children sing it but that they understand it and perform the actions. Teachers want students to become familiar with the rhythm of the language and have contact with it. In general, “the steps to teach through songs follow a similar pattern; on the one hand, they can listen to the song and observe the actions performed by the teacher or on the other hand, listen to the song and while the actions are being done, sing to the same time”. (Hollingsworth, 1992: 382) If the movements and actions are appropriate, they will serve to illustrate to the student the meaning of the words and follow the rhythm. When teachers have taught a new song, they must reinforce it and repeating it means making sure that students have learned it correctly, understand it and remember it. However, in the classroom there are children who refuse to sing and speak; these are those who are in the so-called "silent period". Teachers must not force them to perform the task, as they will feel uncomfortable. In this context, teachers will achieve the opposite result as well as a permanent rejection of this type of activity. On the contrary, teachers must respect children attitude even if it is not the desired one and observe if these students, in spite of their silence, understand and involve themselves in a non-verbal way. Depending on the topic teachers want to work on, they can propose different types of activities.
Pronunciation is one of the reasons for using songs as a means of teaching English. It is true that pronunciation is the black sheep of language teaching because students find it boring and monotonous and perhaps this is due to the excessive use of repetition exercises or the standard level of English that is used in the classrooms at the time to explain. Music is the tool that exposes students to all levels of English depending on the purpose teachers intend to achieve with an activity. “Children consider this activity to be fun and relaxing, aspect that will increase their interest and attention, making it easier for teachers to work on certain aspects of pronunciation”. (Brown, 1991: 18) Many activities can be performed without students perceiving them too formally and showing rejection and these can be activities that refer to concrete phonemes, endings of words, find out words that are pronounced the same, find differences between oral and written language and so on.
In addition, teachers can teach real English which is not taught in the classroom, in the elision appear (loss of a vowel or vowels at the end of a word), linkings (chaining of words), contractions and reductions of the language (reduced speech). It is a way of making the language more attractive and therefore, it facilitates learning. Students will want to imitate the accent, the rhythm and the pronunciation. Another aspect of the language teachers should teach with songs is represented by be vocabulary and syntactic structures.
The most common activities for this focus on filling gaps while listening to the song, the words to complete will be omitted according to what we want to work. “Teachers can also eliminate those words that have rhyme but they should not omit too many words since it would be impossible to solve the exercise”. (Hedge, 2001: 102) These two exercises are known as filling the gaps and Does it really rhyme?. Another type of task is the one in which words are entered with error, either they do not appear in the song or in another part of the lyrics, and students must locate and modify them. We should not include too many. For example, we can focus on one type of word and change adjectives for their opposites. This activity is called Where is the mistake?. The comic strips in English propose that students draw the song in comic strip cartoons looking at their lyrics. In order to perform this activity, it is essential that they understand the letter and that we make sure of it and it can be done individually or in small groups, according to the purpose of the task. “We can motivate our students by presenting the results on the walls of the classroom, which will encourage their desire to do well and to be creative.” (Hedge, 2001: 136)
Sorting the verses of a song is a very useful and simple activity. The verses are presented in a disorderly manner and it is the student who gives them a correct order. We know this activity as Order the lyrics. Some songs create debate among the students, therefore we can use them to introduce a topic and previously to a debate. We can also translate the songs into our language but in an attractive way, using innovative didactic materials such as dictionaries through the network. “Through translation we can explain the meaning of different words and possible confusions as it is the case of the False Friends (Word of another language that resembles, in the writing or in the pronunciation, to a word in the mother tongue of the speaker, but that has a different meaning, for example: confident, in English means to be sure of himself but reminds us of a confidant)”. (Arends, 2014)
Finally, the one known as "Why don't you continue? or for high levels since more knowledge of vocabulary and structures is needed, as well as of auditory skills. Students are given the lyrics of a song but with omissions of complete verses and we will work it in two different ways, depending on the goal teachers want to achieve: they can put the song and complete it as they hear it or on the other hand that they invent how the letter could continue depending on the meaning of the previous verses.
To use the song as a resource that favours the development of learning strategies, one must define it as a foreign language learning strategy. Based on several authors, such as Arends (2014), “teaching-learning strategies are a set of techniques with which it is intended that students put into practice a series of mental operations that are systematized in a conscious way about a language that is not native and in this respect, its learning process is automated”. (Arends, 2014: 50) This author also defines the learning strategies of a learning English as: “procedures that intervene in learning in general, and therefore, also in the development of a non-maternal language. This type of strategy shares the distinctive features of the procedures in that they manifest themselves in sequences of actions aiming to achieve a learning objective. Likewise, learning strategies are not only the result of internal mental processes of the individual, but also of social interaction during the teaching of a non-native language in this case”. (Arends, 2014: 52)
On the other hand, Daniel Madrid (2000) in his article Learning Strategies lists some definitions of learning strategies pointed out by various authors that deal with this topic, among which we highlight the one provided by Oxford (1990) since it has a vision of the process: “Learning strategies are specific actions of a learner to make the learning process easier, faster, more enjoyable, more effective and more transferable to new situations” (Oxford, 1990: 8) Therefore, while other authors focus only on the cognitive, the Oxford model introduces pleasure and fun as an important factor for that learning process to occur in a satisfactory manner. In this respect, it classifies teaching-learning strategies into direct and indirect strategies. The former directly include the foreign language, require mental processing and are used to develop communicative competence. Indirect strategies do not directly involve the language being studied, but they are very useful to support and control learning. One can conclude that learning strategies are responsible for establishing what is needed to solve the study task well, determining the most appropriate resources to use, controlling its application and making subsequent decisions based on the results. These strategies in turn are subdivided as follows:
Direct strategies
From memory (to retain and remember the new information).
Create mental associations.
Associate images and sounds.
Give physical answers.
Cognitive (to make sense of learning and produce language).
Practice the communicative contents.
Encode and decode messages.
Analyze and reason.
Use resources to organize information and use it.
Compensatory (to help students overcome knowledge gaps to continue communication).
Guess the meaning.
Solve communication problems (communication strategies).
Indirect strategies
Metacognitive (to coordinate the learning process).
Delineate what is going to be learned.
Sort and plan what is going to be learned.
Evaluate learning, analyzing problems and looking for solutions.
Affective (to regulate emotions).
Reduce anxiety.
Encourage students.
Control emotions.
Social (the student learns with others increasing their level of interaction with the target language).
Ask for clarifications, verifications or repetitions.
Interact with native and non-native speakers.
Empathize with others.
Songs as a teaching resource
Most of the pop songs that young people listen to are usually in the English language. Murphey (1990) goes so far as to affirm that “English is the international language of this musical genre, since it is the majority language of the music that is broadcast on radio stations.” (Murphey, 1990: 9) Thus, the songs are a good didactic resource when performing certain activities in the English language class. However, we must also consider that the use of songs in the teaching of a foreign language can lead to a series of difficulties at different linguistic levels:
1) At the phonetic level, the pronunciation of the words may vary according to the requirement of the music, in addition of being able to become unintelligible by instrumental accompaniment on many occasions.
2) At the grammatical level, syntactic structures are difficult to understand, since they may not follow a logical order for reasons of rhythm and accentuation, differing from the standard variety.
3) At the semantic level, the songs can include both a colloquial lexicon not appropriate for the class, and a vocabulary that is too poetic and difficult.
However, according to Boud et al. (2014), “song lyrics are normally written in everyday language and tend to use high-frequency vocabulary”. (Boud et al., 2014: 9) Murphey (1990) responds to this considering that, although it is true that the songs present many irregularities with respect to the norm, “the language we use daily also incurs irregularities”. (Murphey,1990: 210). Dubin and Olshtain (1977) add that “there was even a time when in the language teaching profession, pedagogical advice warned against song for language instruction; also, song material gives learners an incorrect model of spoken language since the songwriter is free to distort normal intonation in order to comply with the requirements of the rhythmic pattern of the musical line or phrase.” (Dubin, Olshtain,1977: 199)
In effect, the songs present a series of disadvantages, but also the spoken language (for example, the background noise of the interviews can make the words inaudible). These disadvantages are not important in order to offer authentic, more stimulating material for students. Undoubtedly, from a humanistic point of view, if the teacher does not feel interested or motivates him to work with songs, he will never be able to awake the curiosity of the students. No matter how good a material might be, it may fall flat in the hands of a teacher who does not know how to present it. Songs, if only listened to and sung, may only become passive routines in a language learners' repertoire and the language in them not available for spontaneous use. Manipulation exercises to transfer, or bridge, the language in song to language in use are needed. These “not only promote deeper language acquisition but convince teachers of the usefulness of songs as language examples in the classroom”. (Murphey 1990: 215-216) Songs are to be used not as a padding for downtime in class, but as activities that achieve the programmed objectives. Students must be taught to use the words of the song in other contexts and for other purposes, these being the transfer activities to which Murphey refers. Otherwise, the work potential of the songs would be limited.
Nunan (1996) states that for activities to constitute a “good communicative language lesson” (Nunan, 1996: 133), they should meet the following requirements:
1) Derive the input material from authentic sources.
2) Introduce the student in problem solving activities in which he will have to negotiate the meaning.
3) Incorporate tasks related to the real communication needs of the student.
4) Integrate the four macro-trails.
5) Introduce the student in the creative use of the language.
Songs as didactic resource proposed in this paper comply with all the requirements stated. Practically, when preparing the activities to be included in each unit, it is useful to start from didactic principles for designing, selecting and structuring them.
Coulter (2014) proposes the following principles for activities:
“1) They must be varied, including texts of different types.
2) They must be presented in an orderly manner, according to the level of difficulty, and in relation to the communicative needs of the students.
3) They should include sociolinguistic considerations: present oral and written texts of different geographical, social and different registers, without underestimating any.
4) They must expose sexist, racist stereotypes, etc.
5) The language must be both an object and an instrument of learning.
6) They must be suggestive, playful and motivating.” (Coulter, 2014: 129-131)
According to the communicative approach, in the English Philology degree courses, the English language is both an object and an instrument of learning. Obviously, the use of songs would be very motivating, and these could be presented gradually. Although it is true that proposing activities on the theoretical level seems easy, it is not so easy to put them into practice in a way that respects communicative and successful principles. The following linguistic activities, according to Cook (2002), are some examples that can be performed with songs.
“1) Phonetic activities: differentiate segmental and supra-segmental phonemes; compare the English vowel phonemes.
2) Grammatical activities: fill in gaps for morphology and put the words into the correct order for syntax.
3) Semantic activities: search for synonyms, analyze semantic fields and false friends.” (Cook, 2002: 130-133)
“4) Translation activities: direct translation of songs that already exist parallel texts” (Hill 2002: 16), to proceed to compare the different versions and practice pragmatic elements.
One can also perform discursive activities through images (photos, covers of the CDs or video clips without sound), asking the students to advance what the theme of the song may be, to reflect on the content or to make an outline of the story that treats the song. When there can be several interpretations of the same song, “the interesting thing is not to decide which would be the most successful, but to try to understand the different interpretations” (Christenson 1998: 165). “The more metaphors a song uses, the more variety of interpretations there will be”. (Williamson, 1989: 237). If we use songs chosen by the students, another activity that can be performed is to establish the difference between their vision, that of their classmates, and the author's intention.
Another type of very motivating activity, and in line with new technologies, is to ask students to search the internet for a certain song and everything related to it (biography of the singer, if the song has any special meaning and so on). In this way, active learning is promoted, making known -through an exhibition- to the rest of the class the obtained information.
Gavin Dudeney (2000), starting from the Beatles musical group, proposes “to complete the titles of some of his songs” (Dudeney, 2000: 47). Deepening in the audiovisual activities, next we go to see the didactic possibilities of the video. Patricia Trainor (1989), analyzing the use of video in general, distinguishes different ways of listening: “listening to repeat, to understand and to learn a language” (Trainor 1989: 179). She proposes that first it is better to listen to the video without seeing the images, so as not to distract attention; later one can see the video, with the precaution of not turning it into a passive activity.
Finally, one may propose singing as an activity. Although many teachers think that it is not appropriate for adults to sing in class, Calvet (1980) states that “in order for communication to exist, the information must be transmitted both in the sender-receiver address and vice versa. If the students just listen to the song, the communication only works in one direction; on the contrary, if they sing, those same words serve to communicate.” (Calvet, 1980: 75) Hence, one may propose as activities both listening and singing, as well as reading and writing. The songs should be included as a systematic resource in the teaching of English because, apart from singing, most of the activities do not require musical skills either by teachers or students.
1.4 Methods using songs in ELT classroom
Techniques for using the songs in the ELT classroom
At the time of selecting songs for use in the English classroom, “it is advisable to consider several aspects which range from the type of student to whom the song is directed to and the objectives we intend to achieve with it”. (Underwoord, 1989: 104) Firstly, it should be taken into account the students to whom the song will be directed to and with it, the subsequent activities. In this section, several factors must be taken into account, which are:
-The age of the students. The musical tastes between one course and another vary a lot and the song should be close to them. To try to find songs for the youngest students of this educational stage, teachers should try to find either children's songs or songs that appear in some of their series of favourite movies (example, Disney). Likewise, as they go on to embrace older ages, they should leave behind the children's songs and immerse themselves more in those that are heard on the radio, on television and those that they themselves listen to day by day.
-Another aspect to take into account is the level of knowledge they have regarding English language. This characteristic, in general, usually goes hand in hand with the age of the children, since as they grow and learn more, their level increases. Despite this, there may be situations in which the age of the students is quite advanced and the level, however, very low. This factor is very important to be taken into account since, with the use of the songs intended to be achieved is to encourage and motivate the students and not the opposite effect. Therefore, if we choose a song appropriate to their tastes but of a level too high for them, they will not be able to understand the song or perform the proposed exercises, so the students will develop a sense of frustration. For this reason it is important to analyze well the content of the lyrics and the pronunciation of the singer, verifying that both the lyrics and the oral comprehension are in line with the class level.
-A third characteristic would be the sex of the students. This is an aspect that also influences musical tastes and that, therefore, must also be taken into account. There are songs that, in general, attract girls more (they are usually pop songs, soft, that speak of love) and others that, for other reasons, are more motivating for children (like songs of rock type, songs tougher). Therefore, to select songs in a class in which there are both boys and girls should either select a song that is quite neutral and that may equally like both sexes, or work one day with a song that may be more attractive for the girls and, another day, for the boys.
Once these three characteristics referred to the students have been consulted, the characteristics and properties of the songs should be evaluated and this way closing the circle of those songs that can be selected for a correct staging.
Songs can be used either as an exclusive resource in a few specific days to achieve a specific objective (such as: enrich the vocabulary of a topic, work a specific grammar) or, as a way of expressing students actions, tasks or routines. These tasks can be, for example: pick up the material, start the class, say goodbye, keep quiet. Thus, when singing the song, the children will understand what task or action they must perform at the same time they will also learn vocabulary related to greetings, farewells, routines, actions.
For these songs to be used correctly and their use to achieve the expected goal, it is recommended that they be sung daily and even more than once a day, always accompanied by many gestures, mime or dance, so that students understand from the beginning the meaning of the song and that, when it is sung, they recognize it quickly and can sing it at the same time they perform the action that is requested in it. These songs, too, will always be short and very repetitive.
Regarding the techniques of use of those songs used with a more specific and more exclusive purpose, these vary a lot, depending mainly on the activities that they want to carry out through their listening. In spite of this, generally the use of these songs begins with their mere listening accompanied by the lyrics of the song. It is recommended that this listening be repeated more than once, so that “the students better internalize the melody of the song and can even learn as a part of the lyrics”. (Rivers, 1981: 33) After listening to it several times, and taking advantage of the fact that we already have the lyrics of the song and that the melody is assimilated, the next step is to sing the song together and then sing it again, but this time accompanied by small percussion instruments like, for example, the keys, or through their own palms, marking the rhythm of the song at the same time that it is sung. Finally, so that the song is well assimilated, the students can learn some movements or gestures that express what the song says at each moment. This will help them not only to better understand the lyrics of the song but also to memorize it more quickly. In addition, the performance of gestures accompanied by the song motivates them a lot and will make them enjoy the song more.
Following these steps, the students will be sufficiently used to the song to be able to proceed to the execution of other activities or games and get more out of it. Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, this is just one of the many techniques that exist to introduce a song to students. Therefore, it is the teacher himself who must decide which technique may work best to introduce the song, depending on the characteristics of their students, the objectives they want to achieve and the activities they want to work with.
Apart from that, there are several phases that sequence the work with the songs in the classroom such as:
Framing: It refers to the contextualization of the song with which one is going to work. In this phase, the teacher provides the student with knowledge considered relevant about the subject that is reflected in the song.
Focusing: This is the stage of understanding the song. At this point, the teacher provides a task that students must complete while playing the song.
Diverging: It is known as the expansion stage and during this phase, the teacher proposes post-audition activities that are focused on expression and communication.
Activities that can be performed after the use of the songs
The number of activities that can be done before, through and after listening to a song in the classroom are endless. Also, although a long list of activities is already known, it is also very important to know how to take the main idea or the basis of each of the activities and modify it as necessary so that it becomes an ideal activity for the students to whom it will be directed.
Among the long lists of activities that we can find, one proposes several of them, of which I have selected the following:
– Gap filling: Students must fill in the blank spaces that appear in the lyrics of the song at the same time they listen to it.
– Order the lyrics: The students, separated into groups, will have the stanzas of the lyrics of the song in disorder and, at the same time as they listen to the song, they will have to order them.
– Vocabulary and synonyms: To enrich the vocabulary of the students, they will be given a list of words that they already know previously and they should look up their synonyms in the lyrics of the song. Another option would be to give them the lyrics of the song with several underlined words and they should write a synonym that they know of those words (in case they do not know any they will be able to consult the dictionary).
– Drawing: After listening to the song several times (without having the lyrics in front), they will make a drawing about the idea that they have subtracted from it. Then, they will work with the letter and make a second drawing, comparing the differences between the first drawing and the second.
– Discussion: After working on the lyrics of the song, the students will have a few minutes to reflect on it and then they will have to talk to each other about the song, encouraging conversation and reviewing the vocabulary.
– Singing the song: Following the purpose of students working rhythm, fluency, pronunciation and intonation, they must sing, either all together or separated by groups, the song previously heard, following the lyrics of the song given by the teacher.
– Dictation: Part or even the entire song is dictated (before your audition) and then, listening to the song is used as a dictation correction technique.
– Wrong words: The objective of the activity is to find the wrong words found in the lyrics of the song given by the teacher. To do this, reading the lyrics, they should listen to the song and see what words do not match the audition.
– Listening for word order: Students are given a list of words that appear in a song and at the same time they listen to it, they must number these words in the chronological order in which they appear in the song.
– Vocabulary: In the lyrics of the song delivered by the teacher will appear several underlined words and in the margin will be written their definitions (in English). Through the context, they must guess which definition corresponds to each word.
Likewise, Vogt and Echevarria (2008) also propose a series of activities that can be performed depending on the song, objectives and the level of the students. Some of these activities that she proposes are:
– “Rewriting the lyrics: In this activity the students will try to invent a new letter for the melody of the song
– Focus on …: It is about having to focus on something concrete, such as a certain structure.
– Sung dramatizations: It consists in dramatizing a song by using gestures to express its meaning.
– Summary of the song: After listening to the song, if it tells a story, students can write their summary in their own words.
– Creative work: Through the use of the story that narrates the song dialogs can be created and these will be represented later by the students. They can even create comics through this dialogue.” (Vogt, Echevarria, 2008: 126-127)
The LIPDUB, a different proposal in the classroom
This point focuses on the idea that later developed as an educational proposal focused on particular aspects of teaching in accordance with the specialty studied, the English language. Therefore, it is necessary to explain what this project is about, focused on the realization of a Lipdub. It is possible to be not well known due to its novel nature and not yet firmly established in teaching, but from my point of view, it is very useful if it is approached from the proper perspective and with clear objectives to be achieved. “Among the many possibilities that music offers to the service of learning English, is this tool: the Lipdub”. (Jacob et al., 2010: 27)
The first thing we need to know is what a Lipdub is. It is a music video made by a group of people who synchronize their lips, gestures and movements with a song, either popular or from any other source, recording it only in a sequence in which the people participating while the music plays. Many of these assemblies are being extended by the educational field, already appearing in schools. In this manner, a large number of factors such as the participation of the educational community, promoting relationships and communication among members of the centre, transmitting a message, publicizing and, therefore, publicizing the centres and increasing creativity, are encouraged as well as the spontaneity of the students, among many others.
The Lipdub have an important participatory value since the collaboration of all those who participate in it is sought. The message, the music, the choreography, the recording are elements chosen in a consensual manner, for which the educational community becomes an integral whole. This experience is based on the creativity, spontaneity and authenticity of all the people who are part of it. Valverde (2010) justifies “the appearance of the Lipdub within the classrooms due to the historical moment in which we live and when education has a large amount of resources and resources to improve educational processes”. (Valverde, 2010: 182) This diversity of media has repercussions in the educational contexts in which they are created, modifying the communicative interaction, from unidirectional to multidirectional, the spatio-temporal situation of the environment and the opening towards new educational possibilities for autonomous, collaborative and cooperative learning of higher quality. “No technical knowledge is needed for its realization, so a school is a viable place to be the right scenario, an amateur level is valid and good attitude is essential to face the unforeseen events”. (Algarra, 2016: 89)
If we review his brief and recent history in the educational field, the first Lipdub with these characteristics is published on the web in 2008, recorded in the Faculty of Communication Sciences of the Hochschule Furtwangen University in Germany. After this first initiation, many universities and schools have been encouraged to try this experience creating their own Lipdub. Tom Johnson (2007), specialist in social networks and communication, mentions the keys of what he calls “a good Lipdub: The first point is spontaneity. It must seem like an improvised montage, little organized and in which the feeling of joy and freedom predominates constantly. Another point is authenticity. The situation of the Lipdub must seem real and poorly prepared, which implies that the quality is not typical of a studio video. Next, one may emphasize participation. The group of people involved must be synchronized and coordinated, communicating the message that the selected song expresses and transmitting to the viewer a positive attitude. It is considered important that the song be happy and with rhythm. Finally, fun. The participants must show a happy and fun attitude in the Lipdub.” (Johnson, 2007: 135-136)
When bringing this type of experience to the classroom and more specifically, to the English classroom, we must adapt its characteristics to the educational purpose that we propose to achieve. In the English classroom, the message that will be transmitted will be in English accompanied by a melody with rhythm to facilitate the choreography. All students must be able to understand the message in order to transmit it and, therefore, implies a learning or reinforcement of everything it comprises: grammar, vocabulary and, of course, pronunciation and listening. In this respect, with the realization of the Lipdub, we put into practice the so-called 4 skills of the English language: writing, reading, listening and speaking. The students are involved in the task since it is a way of learning English breaking the monotony of the classes, with the textbook and repetitive structure, therefore the motivation grows and the results that we can extract from our students will be excellent and qualitative, getting to know new frontiers of their learning.
The methodology used in this proposal is not a single and individual but is composed of several methods that seek to satisfy a specific educational idea. It will focus on finding the most effective way to develop the proposal that is going to be carried out. Teaching action is the fundamental pillar of all methodology since it is fundamental in the learning processes and school teaching.
1.5 Activities using songs
1.5.1 Gap fill
Gap fill activities promote the following basic skills categories:
Cultural and artistic skills:
– Know musical genres from other eras and contemporaries
– Recognize the musical band as a representation of a style and a time
– Appreciate and recognize the elements and characteristics of different musical genres
– Enjoy a musical audition of any kind.
Information processing and digital competence skills:
– Search information about representatives of musical genres
– Listen to online songs or watch videos
– Make presentations on a required topic
Linguistic communication skills:
– Know, acquire, expand and apply the vocabulary of the subject
– Exercise a comprehensive reading of texts related to the theme of the unit
– Sing Beatles songs understanding their meaning
– Create song lyrics
Learning to learn:
– Interpret information about different musical genres incorporating the specific vocabulary
– Organize information in mental maps and maps
Autonomy and personal initiative and emotional competence skills:
– Be able to sing a song in English in public
Gap fill activities also promote the following stage objectives:
Communicate through means of verbal, corporal, visual, plastic, musical and mathematical expression, developing logical, verbal and mathematical reasoning, as well as aesthetic sensitivity, creativity and the ability to enjoy works of art and artistic manifestations
Course / cycle contents are represented by:
– Identification of musical genres
– Recognition of the rhythmic and instrumental elements of the different styles
– Relationship of musical styles and their corresponding cultural period
In the gap fill context, discursive models:
– Compare musical genres from different eras, origins and styles
– Set the elements of the music, and recognize them in an audition
– Express differences between musical styles
– Define students own tastes
1.5.2 Vocabulary fill in
Through the use of songs it is possible to learn grammar, vocabulary and improve pronunciation. Vocabulary fill in exercises are important (in learning with songs) and make sentences.
In summary, students recognize the importance of acquiring a foreign language. And they affirm that the use of songs in the English class is a tool that pleases them for various reasons, such as: the possibility of getting out of the traditional routine of a class, the learning that is achieved in grammar, vocabulary (typical expressions) and pronunciation; as well as the increase in motivation they experience. Also, these exercises:
• Contribute to socialization (work collectively)
• Help to improve listening (one listens to himself while singing slowly)
• Help students to express their feelings and feelings
• contain high frequency words and expressions and offer repetitions.
• help to acquire the sense of rhythm.
• facilitate memorization when it is related to a linguistic element.
Vocabulary fill in exercises are games focused on precision are also called language control games. This type of games aims to practice new language elements and develop accuracy, often through the use of pieces of language that are memorized with constant repetition in order to provide useful pronunciation, vocabulary and grammatical practice.
The exercises provide a good perspective of English culture. The use of English words introduces children into English environment. The introduction of this cultural dimension allows us to develop the vocabulary related to these topics or topics while, at the same time, providing a link with the transversal activities of other areas of the curriculum.
The exercises proposed are based on the texts of the songs that are classified according to the progress of the love relationships that occur between human beings: beginning, climax and end. In this way teachers can give practical use to the songs, or parts of them, within each moment in the different romantic relationships of human beings.
1.5.3 Grammar learning
There are four fundamental steps in this strategy that may be performed during English courses:
• The teacher chooses a grammar point, selects appropriate songs and prepares activities for it.
• The grammatical theme is presented in class.
• The song is played and the students do the exercises.
• The teacher checks the answers and makes the necessary explanations. A discussion and personal work with the material used continues.
Among the very varied didactic uses that the songs can have in the classroom of foreign languages, the repetitive nature of the songs is very useful here. The influence of the songs in the learning of the grammar of a second language has not only been studied thinking in the oral language. There are works that talk about the use of songs to study Phrasal Verbs, subject-verb agreement, the verb (verbal songs), morphological development (inflection, derivation, compound words), grammar and vocabulary (with a selection of songs); there are also small revisions on the theory of the use of songs in grammar learning. All of them recommend taking advantage of musical resources in the teaching of second-language grammar.
Batista, in his article based on proposals for activities to use songs as a tool in the language classroom, has a chapter dedicated to introducing a functional or grammatical theme: he explains “a specific activity he performed in his classes to introduce would / might”. (Batista, 2009: 159) In conclusion, he tells us that “at the beginning he used songs to break the ice, but when studying the theory related to the use of the songs he understands better what a magnificent tool they are; he also tells how pleasantly surprised he is with the reaction of his students in the realization of these musical activities”. (Batista, 2009: 161) It is common for teachers to be aware of the value of music in learning grammar when they themselves have acquired much of their linguistic competence thanks to the songs.
Running dictation
Although it is relatively easy to assess the progress of students in terms of linguistic results, it is more difficult to assess cognitive, cultural, affective and social outcomes. Some of the advantages we find when using music in the language classroom in the context of running dictation are:
Adds variety to the normal learning situations that make students feel motivate.
Formal education is reduced, renewing attention in our students.
Creativity is favoured.
The skills of listening comprehension (listening skills), attention and concentration are improved.
A special atmosphere is created, relaxing for the student and fun.
Teachers can use cultural aspects of the foreign language.
The participation of the students increases as well as the student-student communication, reducing in this way the protagonism of the teacher.
It reduces the psychological distance between teacher and student.
The existing vocabulary is enriched and the oral and written skills are put into practice in a pleasant way.
However, teachers use the songs not only for the children to have a good time, but their goals go much further. Therefore, thanks to the music:
Students introduce new structures in context with a specific meaning.
They improve their learning and pronunciation in the foreign language.
Important aspects of the language culture are shown.
1.5.5 Song composition
Song composition emphasizes the importance of contextualizing the reality of young people as readers of their own context, adapting the classroom as a space for dialogue with their daily and immediate world that revolves around songs to achieve better reading levels, taking advantage of this element as a motivator in the process.
The compositional act will be the axis on which this type of exercises will revolve. In this respect, a series of intervention proposals will be performed that seek to work on composition within the music classroom, where students can be authors and create their own creations. For this it will be crucial to clarify certain sections and concepts of music education in order to establish the basis of what this work will be, since it has been the confusion itself that has led us to this situation where concepts such as interpretation or composition are considered and treated in the same way, restricting and limiting the expressive and communicative capacity of the music mentioned above.
These are the objectives set for the song composition exercises. They range from specific field objectives, to more general interdisciplinary objectives where certain aptitudes acquired throughout the career can be developed.
Main goal is to:
– Bring the musical composition to a real music classroom through a series of didactic proposals for further analysis.
Specific objectives are as following:
– Create various resources and tools that bring the musical composition closer to the classroom.
– Make through these resources different intervention proposals that work the compositional act.
– Implement the relevant intervention proposals.
– Observe and analyze exhaustively the response given by the students to the proposals made.
– Reflect finally on the development and the process of the work performed by students.
1.5.6 Composing
With these exercises activities are facilitated for the management of the vocabulary in the context of the song. These exercises are of a very literal level and are only used as a warm-up for the realization of others more oriented to develop textual, sociolinguistic or pragmatic competences than linguistic ones. In the first exercise, the student chooses 10 letters and scrambles them. Then he chooses 7 words and writes them with all his disordered letters and changes the sheet with one of his classmates so that they assume the challenge of discovering the words and writing them in English. Then, the student must locate in the text of the song through a scan reading, three sentences that contain the message of the song. Finally, the teacher offers the student a group of universal concepts that could be present in the theme of the song, from which he simply chooses one, several or propose another topic that is not suggested.
1.5.7 Writing
Nowadays, English is a fundamental subject and writing exercises, unlike the audio-lingual method, proposes:
1. to not exclude the mother tongue, as it is a concept that the student has and can serve as a reference to learn the similarities of the second language and also the differences.
2. to make repeated statements meaningful and understandable with respect to use, meaning and context.
3. Learning the grammar rules should not be for discovery purpose. The process of deducting the grammatical rules of a second language is very long and can be accelerated if the student's conscious grammatical knowledge is at a good level.
4. It is necessary to perform parallel reading, writing and listening activities, since the knowledge of reading and writing of the mother tongue will help to develop this ability in the second language, while reaching the level of understanding and desirable oral production.
5. The process of interpretation or translation at the natural speed of the spoken language of the second language is a process that is gradually achieved and it is not entirely appropriate to use it in person who starts learning a second language. That is why it is necessary to advance according to the level that is being learned.
Talking about learning writing strategies opens a big window to the optimization of the language training process; however, it is important to reflect on how this learning is consolidated thanks to the work of the teacher through a vision from the teaching.
Methodologies that integrate the known with the new into writing exercises are presented as following:
• These methodologies show students how to connect previous knowledge with new knowledge. For the learning of the foreign language, the knowledge that the student has about their mother tongue and a connection between them is taken as the main element.
• Flexible methodologies: They are an advantage for both students and teachers as it allows the use of different methodologies, strategies or procedures appropriate to each situation.
• Methodologies rich in cultural content: Language is intrinsically connected to culture. This kind of methodologies opens space for the student to appreciate both their own cultural elements and those of foreigners and their languages.
• Methodologies that value the affective factors: By generating an affective atmosphere in the classroom, the teaching / learning process of the foreign language is facilitated and creates in the students a sense of equality and autonomy.
Principles for designing writing techniques are:
1. Do not exaggerate in a single skill
2. Use techniques that are intrinsically motivated.
3. Use authentic language, in context.
4. Carefully consider the form of the responses
Activities to verify writing comprehension are:
– Do: The student physically responds to an order.
– Choose: They are selected from different alternatives such as images, objects and texts.
– Translate: Draw what you heard.
– Answer: Answer questions about the message.
– Condensing: Make schemes or take note of a reading.
– Extend: Give an end to the story heard.
– Duplication: Translate the message into the mother tongue or repeat it verbally.
Bottom-up exercises in the context of writing are:
1. Discriminate the outline of intonation in the sentences. Listen to a song and divide its words in lyrics by columns between those that rise or those that fall in intonation.
2. Discriminate between phonemes: Listen to pairs of words in few lyrics of a song. Some pairs that differ in their final consonant and some that are the same. Enclosing the word equal or different depending on what is heard.
3. Selection exercises for the morphological endings: Listen to a series of sentences in a song in which the word "yes" is enclosed if it ends in -ed or the word no is enclosed if it does not have this ending.
4. Listen to a short dialogue in lyrics where some words are missing so that they have to be completed later.
Top-Down exercises in the context of writing are:
1. Distinguish emotional reactions: Give a sequence of statements describing the emotional reaction that was heard in the song lyrics.
2. Get the essence of a phrase. Listen to the description of a feeling expressed through a song and reproduce it on a piece of paper.
3. Recognize the issue. Listen to a song and decide where the action occurs. Enclose the correct location of three options.
Interactive exercises in the context of writing are:
1. Build a semantic network with associated words. Listen to a song chorus and associate it with all the words that come to mind.
2. Recognize a familiar word in a song and relate it within a category.
For the development of written skills it is necessary to incorporate some other key activities, which must be concrete and aim for an evaluation and constant monitoring of the students and their work regarding the scriptural process.
Within this group of alternatives, it is important to mention and develop options such as:
• Time for writing: spaces for reading, writing, rewriting and organizing ideas should be encouraged
• Suggested topics: It is necessary to motivate students to use writing as a means to express their ideas, opinions and feelings, without leaving aside the audience to which they are directed.\
• Feedback: Both the student and their classmates and the teacher should review and feedback positively and with constructive comments about the writing that has occurred.
• Mechanisms of instruction: They emphasize to the student about the errors that are committed frequently in the writings so that the same person who self-reviews and corrects their work, among these can be those related to grammar, writing and so on.
• Models: It is necessary to show the student and motivate him from his own experience in writing, so that he verifies that everyone can make texts and that these are given according to the ages and interests of the writer.
• Time for reading: Students should be presented with a variety of materials and readings that serve as motivation and as an alternative for students to select topics of interest.
• Integration of the curricula: It is convenient to let the student direct his writings towards the subject that motivates him, and that makes relation with other areas of knowledge in a way that interdisciplinarity is generated and the motivation for the writing is developed.
• Follow-up: One must be an enthusiastic and well-prepared teacher, who can guide the students and make a positive and constant follow-up to the work, showing them their skills and difficulties in the process. These aspects are necessary in the initial process of writing, because we must not forget the motivation, the knowledge of the teacher and the results that are expected at the end of the process, since everything must be oriented to the monitoring of some established parameters that will lead to the completion of the process while expecting the work of the students.
1.5.8 Miming
Each player thinks about a letter from the name of a song. The challenge is that he is not allowed to talk or make noises, just mime. It is a good game to improve the understanding of words or situations in English, as well as to improve communication with others. When a student discovers the word other have to represent, he has to think carefully about the best way to do it and make an effort so that his colleagues discover it. This type of games are ideal for practicing English, it also increases creativity, strengthens social skills and encourages teamwork. One of the best ways to learn English words is to do it with mime, using gestures and signs. The idea is to review the easy words or names of things. This activity will help to reinforce the meaning in another language and the representation with mimicry makes it more memorable and the children remember it.
1.5.9 Matching exercises
The main goals of matching exercises are:
• That the students and teachers study the most common rhythmic aspects of the English language and assimilate them.
• That these students get to know and be interested in the rhymes and recitation material as an important chapter of English oral tradition literature.
• That they exercise in the search of this material.
• That they come to establish a classification of genres within the material of rhymes.
• They study and discover the role rhymes have played in a certain song.
• That they explore the areas susceptible to the use of these rhymes.
• They discover ways of exploitation.
• They focus on their use as a means of improving pronunciation and, above all, the natural rhythm of the spoken chain, and outline some methodological principles so that students can benefit from the different prosodic aspects of learning English.
Methodological procedures in this context:
– Will be based on the study of the most basic and recurrent patterns of English oral discourse until familiarizing oneself with the most usual rhythmic cadences, so that the natural tendency of the English language to the iambic rhythm is assimilated. This will involve:
• An investigation of theoretical treaties.
• The hearing of sufficient sound material that reflects a correct performance.
– Follow, then (could also be done at the same time), the search and collection of rhymes and other material related to the rhymes, using printed collections of rhymes, limericks, jingles, songs, etc., which have a traditional character.
– As a next step, a selection will be made of the material that meets the requirements that are demanded in the project, that is, that the rhymes, songs, etc., reproduce the rhythmic patterns identified as most recurrent in the English oral discourse.
– A taxonomy of the material will be established below to classify it by rhythmic patterns, degree of difficulty and if it is more suitable for children, young people or adults.
– Educational exploitation design.
CHAPTER II. GAMES – THEORETICAL CONCEPTS
2.1 The place of games in the ELT process
In language learning, the game is considered a fundamental resource, together with newspapers, advertising, etc. They can give us current and useful material to produce language games. The play with words – on words and with words – is seen as “one of the means that most attracts the curiosity of children, implicitly leading them to reflect on language and access the meta-linguistic dimension”. (Brumfit, Moon, Tongue, 1991: 55) Games and learning have in common several aspects: the desire to excel; the practice and training that lead to an increase of skills and abilities; the implementation of strategies that lead to success and help overcome difficulties. The didactic of language should enable, according to some researchers, by definition, the individual to consciously master the system and the rules of the linguistic system, providing great satisfactions of this ability. Another advantage that comes from using games in a linguistic environment is the range of capabilities they require, linguistic, paralinguistic, motor, reflective, concentration, action, capabilities. On the other hand, games are a good way to understand and get in touch with different cultures and peoples, geographically distant, and therefore are indispensable in teaching a foreign language with intercultural perspectives. In addition, the game contributes to the development of the participants in the intellectual – cognitive plane, in the volutive – behavioural one and in the affective – emotional one, while it represents a great enhancer of learning. It is therefore accepted by teachers and scholars that individuals have to approach the learning of an L2 in a playful way. In pedagogy, the game is considered as a resource and instrument of learning, as an evolutionary and pedagogical language and no longer as a moment of relaxation of study obligations. It has to be used as a means for total personal growth and not only as an instrument to achieve technical-cognitive learning.
Regarding the didactic of a foreign language, “the playful activity should be used with specific criteria, based on psycho-pedagogical data, to achieve the maximum result”. (Rizzardi, 1997: 145-166) What counts is not so much the result in terms of immediate linguistic productivity but the process itself of the experience. Resorting to the ludic instinct is, in teaching ELF, an indispensable condition to motivate the use of communicative elements of a different language with respect to the mother tongue. When students play and, in particular, they play to simulate, being generally more willing to give life to communicative situations in which the limitation of linguistic elements does not create brakes or inhibitions. The game situations reproduce in a natural way communication’s characteristics. The game involves the students in a total way, creating for them the need and the desire to communicate. The foreign language has to be used to play, sing, draw, paint, cut, paste, watch videos and take part in many activities. Resorting to fantasy, imagination, creativity is always a source of pleasure and fun for students. Productively used, games can represent an inexhaustible source of stimuli for the use of the ELF and production of real situations. The didactic choice will then be to organize motivating activities capable of stimulating free communication and in a certain sense obliging students to express themselves.
The approach to the teaching of ELF then, will imply a very open and sensitive attitude to all learning modalities, including those of a playful nature, which individual can consider one of the fundamental instruments for a more effective learning of the language. I think it is appropriate to mention the definition that Danesi (1988) proposes for "Didactic activity", to broaden the concept of the game that teachers are developing. The didactic activity implies "the concrete development of any pedagogical activity" Danesi (1988: 41), therefore it will include the activities that the teacher proposes and those that support learning. It is among the last ones that we include activities of a playful nature. Teachers know that recreational activities are considered a fundamental part of the "Didactic Unit" proposed and defined by Freddi (1994) as "the programmed development of a series of operational phases around a nucleus formed by the linguistic items that are to be taught." Freddi (1994: 111) This reference to the "Didactic Unit" seems essential to emphasize that nothing that is proposed to students should be chosen at random, but that everything must be brought back to the teaching / learning objectives that they have proposed. Much has been written about the game and about the different applications to the teaching children different foreign languages .
Teachers know that children learn a lot by playing, knowing how to play, transfer this ability to the ELF they are learning, feeling more secure because it is an activity they know and enjoyable at the same time, therefore motivating them to learn. The game can be a more authentic way of acting and it will be the repetition – a characteristic that many games possess – that will contribute to effortlessly fixing the linguistic contents in the EFL and this also applies to adults. Game and playful activities also favour a relative linguistic creativity in the EFL, especially as it concerns the communication, and it helps us to know the culture of another place. For each game or playful activity to be useful, it is necessary to pay attention to a series of things, as following:
a) the game must be well chosen for the group: the level and personality of the students are key factors when choosing which games to play with them. Important factors such as the number of students, age, language needs and learning styles are also important. It is important that all games require some ability or language knowledge to reach the goal and this language must be consistent with the level of the students and the specific time of the program;
b) Motivation is very important, so the teacher must be very sure of the game he is going to propose, get to know him and transmit his enthusiasm to the students in order to motivate them;
c) Teachers need to propose a series of rules: they must be clear, they must be respected and they should never be changed in the middle of the game. Also, they must verify that the student has understood what he / she has to do in each moment. If the student feels lost or has some doubt, it can lead to an abandonment of the activity, therefore, the game ceases to be profitable, becomes ineffective;
d) Teachers also have to create a certain dose of competition among the participants and in the end it has to be possible to identify the winner or winners;
e) the treatment of the error must be careful: teachers must not interrupt with their corrections, it is better to take note and work the errors at the end of the game;
f) game has its own communicative function. Before playing teachers must teach the necessary exponents for the development of the game in the EFL that they are teaching, as well as the specific vocabulary of each game;
g) games can be used at all times during teaching, in the presentation of new contents, in the practices, in the reviews of learned contents or in the work of skills. They can be used to start the class as "icebreaker" activities, or at the end of the class as closure. Teachers can adapt them and use them both in expressive and interpretive skills. They are a good mechanism to present, review and consolidate vocabulary. Each teacher will know when is the right time to perform them;
h) teachers have to present the game as another tool for the practice of the EFL, so the students will perceive it as useful and relevant. It would be appropriate to present it as an activity to present or practice the language, instead of as a game. This way the students will not understand it as a waste of time;
But, above all, the game offers many advantages in the teaching-learning process of a language:
a) turns the student into an active element, responsible for their learning and leaves the teacher the task of guiding, coordinating and promoting creativity;
b) promotes a relaxed, relaxed, participative atmosphere of exchange and mutual trust in the classroom, the students maintain an active attitude and face the difficulties of the language in a positive way;
c) helps students gain more confidence in themselves and lose fear of making mistakes;
d) decreases the intervention time of the teacher;
e) the very structure of the game means that students exploit their knowledge of the foreign language with flexibility and are more focused on the content of their preferences than on their structure (the teacher is in charge of controlling them);
f) it is a useful instrument to focus attention on the contents: surprise, laughter, fun, provoke students' interest in the activity they are doing;
g) its use is very versatile: it can be used to introduce content, consolidate, reinforce, revise or evaluate them;
h) favours the idea of progress. The games have a beginning and an end, to advance through the game implicitly implies the idea of progress;
i) provides the teacher with a wide range of varied and enjoyable activities, essential to maintain or increase the motivation of the students;
j) allows to work different skills and develop capacities. The student must look for solutions and activate strategies to overcome the challenges and solve the problems that arise in each activity;
k) activates the creativity of the students as soon as they have to invent, imagine, discover, guess, in order to solve different situations. Creativity, in turn, stimulates brain activity by improving performance according to the principles of the psychology of learning;
l) develops social attitudes of companionship, cooperation and respect, in addition to being allowed to use his personality and intervene as an individual belonging to a culture;
m) creates a real need for communication with which students have the opportunity to test their knowledge and put into practice both the skills of expression and oral and written comprehension, with all the difficulties that entails.
The game is essential in the development of communicative competence and learning strategies. The main competence that must be developed during the learning of a foreign language is “the communicative competence that allows the student to apply the EFL in an appropriate way in the different communicative contexts”. (Hymes,1980: 120) In this respect, communicative competence is based on the notion of human interaction and implies the ability to interact with other individuals belonging to the same linguistic group. Teachers define communicative competence as the ability of a person to behave effectively and appropriately in a given speech community; this implies respecting a set of rules that includes both those of grammar and other levels of linguistic description (lexicon, phonetics, semantics) and rules of language use, related to the socio-historical and cultural context in which it takes place the communication. It was Hymes who defined it in the sixties as "when to speak, when not, and what to talk about, with whom, when, where, in what form." (Hymes,1980: 125) The teacher's task will therefore be to enable students to use EFL in different communicative situations. Knowing a foreign language implies not only knowing the lexicon and the grammar, but also knowing how to choose and use the most suitable variety in each situation. It involves knowing how to choose and use appropriate linguistic acts, knowing how to accompany verbal communication with other codes of non-verbal communication, to know the rules of the interaction and to know what are the norms of the society and the culture of the target language.
According to the CEFR and its action-oriented approach, communicative competence encompasses other competences, which one will call sub-competences, as following: linguistic competence (which in turn is formed by grammatical, lexical, semantic, phonological, orthographic and orthographic), sociolinguistic competence and pragmatic competences that include discursive and functional competence. Linguistic competence refers to knowledge, explicit or implicit, of the system of rules of language and is the ability of a person to produce grammatical statements in a language, respecting the rules of grammar at all levels (vocabulary, word formation and sentences, pronunciation and semantics). The sociolinguistic competence is one that allows to adjust the language used to the contexts in which this use occurs. In this respect, it consists of knowing when some forms or others should be used.
Speakers have to know how to use a more or less formal register depending on the context. They must adapt the expression to the information shared by the speakers. They must know the origin of the speakers by the variants they use, etc. The pragmatic competence is the ability to make a communicative use of the language in which not only the relationships that occur between linguistic signs and their referents are taken into account, but also the relationships that exist between the language system and the interlocutors on the one hand and the communicative context on the other. It was Bachman (1990) one of the first to refer to “pragmatic competence” Bachman (1990: 52). According to the CEFR, “pragmatic competence includes:
– Discursive competence, which is the ability to use different registers. It refers to the domain of grammatical forms and meanings
– Functional competence, which is the ability to achieve communication purposes in a language”. (CEFR, 2017)
There are a number of purposes for which the language is used: to speculate, reject, retract, deny, classify, ask, forgive, congratulate, greet, thank, etc. All these are speech acts, that is, how we do things with words. Speech acts can vary from one culture to another as they are the reflection of different value systems. In addition, we also have to take into account strategic and socio-cultural competence. The strategic competence is the ability to eliminate difficulties of the communicative process. Compensate for interruptions that may occur in communication due to insufficient competition or to enhance the effectiveness of communication. Socio-cultural competence refers to the knowledge that the speaker must have about the social and cultural context in which the language is used. It covers three major fields: “that of cultural references of different order, that of routines and conventional uses of the language and that of social conventions and ritualized non-verbal behaviours”. (Nisbet, Chucksmit, 1986: 22) The game helps us develop this kind of skills. The games that are used for a more active development of communicative competence are those that are based on the concept of simulation of reality and that allow the student to use the EFL forms in a consistent manner and constantly related to the situation, to the interlocutors, to the argument, to the place and to the moment in which the communicative act is fulfilled. To exercise communicative competence, role-playing games and simulations of many situations and in many contexts can be proposed, making students get into the roles they have to interpret fully. But there are also many games that do not encompass all the competitions, but allow the development of some of them.
To practice linguistic competence, teachers will use activities directly related to the domain of the linguistic code: grammar rules, lexicon, word and sentence formation, pronunciation, spelling and semantics. We can use crossword puzzles and enigmatic games that help improve spelling skills; the games of minimum pairs that help to stimulate the phonological competence, the naval battle with verbs, the "Fugue of vowels", a bingo of words or numbers, soups of letters, the hunt for treasure, the game of nonsense, etc. For the development of pragmatic competence we use games that enhance the capacity to construct and interpret texts – oral and written – using mechanisms that give formal cohesion and coherence in meaning. We can play "Optimists against pessimists", "Who does not advertise is not sold", "The endless story", etc. "The secret code", "Pictionary", "The faithful copy", "The hidden word" or "Over the words" are fun games that develop strategic competence.
With these and many other existing games it is intended to develop in students the ability to apply compensation strategies in situations where communication is limited, either due to insufficient knowledge of the code -or of other sub-competence-, or because of failures caused by real conditions in which it takes place. In this respect, games develop the ability to handle the different records appropriate to each situation taking into account the contextual factors and the rules and conventions of each interaction. All of them require knowledge of the socio-cultural context in which the language is used and the ability to adopt appropriate social strategies in each case. But the most important thing of all is that the competences and sub-competences that we have described so far do not have to be dealt with separately. These overlap and complement each other and therefore it is not possible to believe that an EFL can be taught by decomposing the language into individual elements that are exercised separately as proposed by traditional methods, but to make them interact with each other, as normally happens in any communicative context and in any context where the language is used.
Role of the teacher in teaching through games
The teacher has to take into account, among other aspects, the level of knowledge of the students, age, interests and needs and the context when planning playful activities, these can be done inside and outside the classroom and will be promoted situations that the students will have to face in their daily activity (presentations). It is important for the student to know the practical utility of the playful activity in formal communicative situations, so that it is “a significant learning and avoids the feeling of loss of time that is sometimes generated”. (Richards, Lockhart, 1998: 81) Many teachers consider that once given the instructions of the game students can now work alone and this is not our criterion. In the same way that the teacher takes a secondary role as counsellor, guide, facilitator in many of the communicative activities that take place in the classroom, during the games, the teacher must adopt that same secondary role, guiding, encouraging and guiding to the students so that they achieve the proposed goal and even explaining some game they do not know. Our experience has taught us that while students play, they often fall into discouragement, checking their mistakes, especially when they perform exercises in the multimedia classroom individually, and, in many cases, we have to remind them that “they are playing and playing you learn from the error”. (Nunan, 2002: 58) The teacher should make them understand that group tasks involve a natural human relationship as simple as any other in everyday life. Increasingly teachers practice very varied forms of interaction in the classroom that tend to the play of dramatization and theatre the practice of which, leads to communication. The teacher must take into account, to implement games in the classroom certain physical aspects such as:
• the space for good communication
• the lighting
• ventilation
• decoration, colour and so on.
• the furniture
The teacher will determine which is the best technique or tactics according to the circumstances and participatory goals of each group, will select the specific objectives, will give “guidelines to take into account the timing and evaluation criteria, tools and means.” (Williams, Burden, 2002: 100) The success or failure of the game depends, in large part, on the skills of the teacher and the characteristics of the group, not on the techniques, tactics or approaches in themselves, since the possible causes of failure are, generally, in:
• Lack of teacher training in the specific technique
• Wrong selection of technique
• Inadequate driving
• Group ignorance
2.2 The definition of games
According to Key (1997), the word game has several meanings, but the one that is more related to English and games, says: "Recreational exercise subject to rules and in which you win or lose." (Key, 1997: 237) In other words, it is a voluntary activity that takes place in a specific space and time that requires an effort, mental or physical one, practiced in order to obtain pleasure and / or have fun regardless of whether it is won or lost. It is very difficult to reach a unique definition of game, since it has many meanings and among these they also have a certain relationship. In this respect, English in which games are used or the games themselves, after all, is a language with a playful and recreational component.
Bright, Harvey and Wheeler (1985), accept the following definition, which provides some characteristics to the term:
“1. It is a voluntary occupation.
2. It is a challenge against a task or an opponent.
3. It is controlled by a defined set of rules that cover all the ways to play the game.
4. Represents an arbitrary situation delimited in time and space, from the activity of real life.
5. Socially situations of the games are considered of minimal importance.
6. The game has a clear delimitation in space and time. The exact state that is reached during the game is not known a priori at the beginning of the game.
7. The game ends after a finite number of movements in space and time.” (Bright, Harvey and Wheeler, 1985: 33)
There are many definitions that have been made about this term, but from the recapitulations and analysis of different points of view for me the game is a pleasant and interesting activity in which you have to follow previously well-defined rules that the person performs Throughout the time in which he plays in order to entertain himself and sometimes for educational purposes. The game must always start from a contextualized medium to the usual practice of the person. This makes it an extraordinarily educational resource. Every time we play, strategies, abilities, skills and, for that matter, competences are put into play. It is important for teachers to know the characteristics that games should have in order to bring them to the classroom in an appropriate manner and with a specific purpose that in the case that concerns us is to teach English.
Garvey (1985) indicates that four are the characteristics that a good game must meet to be used in English class:
“1. Have some simple rules and a not very extensive development.
2. be interesting and attractive in its presentation and development.
3. not be based solely on chance.
4. Be games that the student knows and practices outside the school environment.” (Garvey, 1985: 233)
Following this line we can also add that it is a free activity, that the student practices by strong desire and that when practiced with two or more people, can create special relationships between the participants of the same game. It also has a certain function in the development of the person, which would be to train it for competition and life in general. A superficial analysis of English activity agrees to demonstrate how all these characteristics are present in many of the forms of our English task. In the same instance, the English are a game that involves other aspects such as scientific, philosophical, which entails that English is one of the main pillars of human culture. In this sense, the game also allows the child to affirm himself, to know reality, to favour him during the socializing process, helping him in his education or in his teaching-learning process. In order to properly choose the games, it is very important to know the characteristics of the games as well as the interests and needs of the students to whom the game is aimed. Being a didactic resource, games, like any other instrument, must be incorporated into the classroom in a planned manner, with a prior programming that foresees all the factors of the teaching-learning process, taking into account the purposes that will lead us to the success of the homework. In other words, it is not just about playing, but about making the most of the game as another didactic resource, making the children acquire the concepts we want to impart. We must also take into account the starting point of the students to compensate in a balanced way the level of the game with that of the students.
Jean Piaget considered that "the game constitutes the initial form of the capacities and reinforces the development of the same ones; it helps the child to make a better understanding of the world that surrounds him and thus discover the notions that will favour future learning"(Piaget, 2003: 26). Complementing Piaget's theory, one has found that according to Montiel (2008), "the game is a form of intelligent adaptation of the child to the environment, it is very useful for the development and progress of cognitive structures since it allows adapting to the changes of It is a logical expression through its rules with which children believe that exchanges between people should be governed". (Montiel, 2008: 94) Game represents also a "communication factor, since it allows you to develop your verbal, physical and intellectual aptitudes, by opening dialogues between individuals of different linguistic or cultural origins" (UNESCO, 1980: 14). "The game as a form of culture allows other facets of this (ritual, law, health, politics, love, etc.) to be externalized. Following the line of the game as a tool for the transmission of culture, Dewey (1995) also considered that "children reproduce in their games the acts performed by our ancestors. The child evolves his games in the same way as activities are evolved in the historical process of humanity". (Dewey, 1995: 28) All the above reaffirms how through direct experiences with tools of daily use, boys and girls managed to learn their functions and also enjoyed being able to have fun with these, in the various games invented by them. Now, "the game is a form of behaviour that includes both biological and cultural resignations, is pleasant, intentional, unique in its temporal parameters, qualitatively fictitious and owes its realization to unreality, we see that through the game the human being it is introduced into culture and as a communication vehicle its capacity for imagination and symbolic representation of reality is broadened". (Griffin, Butler. 2005: 25) Furthermore, the game is understood as part of the life with which human beings grow, as this is the clearest expression of human behaviour, which in turn allows subjects to express themselves as a result of their emotions, their senses, and thoughts that are reflected in the acts of play that this subject performs. Another author from a psychological theory is Sigmund Freud, who defines the game "as a correction of unsatisfactory reality. This theory makes reference to the past, something that the child brings in his conscience, not to what he will receive in the future, since it is not a pastime or a pleasure is an expression of something vital. But this correction is also, in part, related to the future through the fictitious realization of desires" (Almond, 2015: 20). What it suggests is that children, since they are small, always try to express themselves freely through play, as something vital.
Within the psychological theory is Vygostky who considered the game "as a spontaneous form of cognitive expression through which the child shows us his knowledge. All games somehow have their rules and symbolize (put into play) socially transmitted content, have an address (what the social experience brings to the child)" (Vygostky cited in Franc, 2002: 5). Feedback to this theory concludes that for Vygotsky "the game places the child above its possibilities, which favours the development of cognitive and affective potentialities, reflects and produces socio-cultural schemes, and activates mental representation and anticipation of results" (Vygostky cited in Montiel, 2008: 95). Also, according to Miller (2015: 36-50) looked at the game from an educational point of view, says about it: "it is important for the success of the education of the child at this age, that this life he feels in if so intimately united with the life of nature, be taken care of, cultivated and developed by their parents and by their family". Another researcher of the game aspect is Huizinga who considers that "the game is fundamentally united to the human being since it is an absolutely primary vital category of life and as such is the origin and sustenance of human culture" (Werner, Peter, Thorpe, and Bunker, 1996: 30). For Huizinga the "characteristics of the game are, seeing them as something free, where an evasion of real life is made, considers that the satisfaction of the game is its own realization, believes that this generates order, tension, change, emotion, solemnity, rhythm , and enthusiasm" (Huizinga, 2002: 40). Complementing Huizinga (1968), "the game is not life" current "or life itself. Rather it consists in escaping from it to a temporary sphere of activity that has its own tendency … the game departs from ordinary life by its place and by its duration". (Huizinga, 1968: 23) For Huizinga "the nature of the game is a vital category irreducible to any other. The function of the game is the function of the living being, which can not be determined either biologically or logically". (Huizinga, 2002:40)
Another author who also shows his position in front of what he considers as a game is Bruner, as quoted in Franc (2002), “giving the game various functions; it is a means of exploration and invention in which there is a separation of means-ends that enables an invention and permanent creation, with a transforming function that transforms the external world according to one's desires, provides pleasure by allowing the overcoming of obstacles without which the game is boring” (Franc, 2002: 23) It was also found now from the perspective of functional pleasure according to Thorpe and Bunker (1997), "the game has as a peculiar feature the pleasure. The emotional situation that the child feels in front of the game, is a state of consciousness where the imagination transcends reality and overcomes it, it is the area where only the spirit reigns and freedom fulfils its creative role" (Thorpe and Bunker, 1997: 30). On the other hand it is important to rescue how the game becomes one of the fundamental rights cited in the United Nations as Borja and Martín (2007) consider, after stating that "the child has the right to receive education, free and compulsory, that allows him in conditions of equal opportunities to develop his skills and his individual judgment, his sense of moral and social responsibility and to become a useful member of society, explains that the child should fully enjoy games and recreations which should be oriented towards the ends pursued by education". (Borja and Martín, 2007: 10)
Now, according to the definition of the play, Rousseau (1762) says that "play is a mode of expression of the child and his happiness. He is self-regulating of his behaviour and exercise of his freedom". (Rousseau, 1762: 68) It is important to recognize that the game is the tool with which teachers use to intervene in the classroom, but for boys and girls, it is the way to enjoy the pleasure of their lives. In addition, the game is the most important manifestation of boys and girls, it is their natural way of learning, of representing their world and of communicating with their environment, expressing their desires, fantasies and emotions. Another author who describes the game is Moreno (2002) as "the game is a free action, executed, and felt as being outside of ordinary life, but that despite everything, can completely absorb the player, without there being any material interest in it, there is no gain in it; that it is executed within a certain time and a certain space, which develops in an order subject to rules and that gives rise to associations that tend to surround themselves with mystery or to disguise themselves to stand out from the usual world", (Moreno, 2002: 22). Also as Pellicciotta et al. (1971) consider, "the game is characterized by no other apparent purpose than its realization; correspond to an instinctive impulse; for its pleasant nature; and for being a free and spontaneous expression of the infantile world, that is to say of the world as the little one perceives it. To play is to strengthen the personality, it is to socialize. The game promotes group activities, the possibility of sharing and collaborating". (Pellicciotta et al., 1971: 78) In addition, as Borja and Martín (2007) consider that "the game involves the whole person: his body, his feelings and emotions, his intelligences. It facilitates the equality of possibilities, allows to exercise the individual and collective possibilities. Children who play a lot can be more dialoguing, creative and critical of society." (Borja, Martín, 2007: 14) The game is also an instrument of learning because it uses natural resources and environmental materials, which allow children to promote their cognitive development through the interaction they have with them. According to Moreno (2002) "the game is a vital constant in the evolution, maturation and learning of the human being; it accompanies the biological, psycho-emotional, and spiritual growth of man, fulfils the mission of nourishing, training and nurturing the integral growth of the person". (Moreno, 2002: 20)
2.3 Tips and ways for integrating games in ELT classroom
Games, in general, allow the acquisition, expansion, deepening and exchange of professional knowledge, “combining theory with practice in an experiential, active and dynamic way” (Ortiz, 1996: 326). They improve the interpersonal relationships of the students, as well as develop generalized professional skills and abilities with practical use. Also, they offer the future specialist the collective learning that he will later develop professionally in group decision making. These creative activities by the fact of realizing them dividing the class into groups of students and provoke the need to make the decisions together. Consequently, they create in the students the professional skills of the interrelated work of mutual collaboration as they learn to listen and to take into account the opinion of the other classmates. Focusing on the work of the teacher, Ortiz (1996) thinks that “games are a valuable tool, since they allow to check the level of technical knowledge reached by the students and the assimilation of the content taught in a more thorough way.” (Ortiz, 1996: 330) In this respect, they realize their errors can rectify and strengthen what they do correctly. The ludic-educational game reinforces the motivation towards a satisfactory ending: winning and this generates greater interest on the part of the student towards the technical subjects and towards the specialty, so that the level of independent preparation of the students also increases. A descriptive phrase of the game-motivation relationship as Hussain (2016) considers "You play to win, you win if you learn and, if you learn, you win." (Hussain, 2016: 52) In this respect, one can one develop communicative competence using a didactic table game, reflecting on the power of these creative activities in the development of students' communication skills in the technical language. Since, the goal of the student in the game may well be to practice the language, have fun and / or win, but whatever the goal, to achieve it will use the specific language object of study.
Some of the strategies applied in the university classroom, previously stated and analyzed in this section are:
a) The Creative Analogue Dialogue (DAC) as “a strategy personifying the concepts studied, as a widely documented strategy” (Torre, 2000: 20).
b) “The day of the word” (Hussain, 2016: 54) as an ephemeris strategy for the subject of creativity, in which experiences, processes, experiences and emotions are shared, through personal writings, generating a highly creative climate.
c) The story as a creative strategy to work the senses in special education, complemented by a didactic guide, illustrations and group staging.
d) The group staging as an integrating learning strategy, for which reason it is located at the end of the course, training to transmit messages in a collaborative way, with an educational sense (as a strategy embodied in the story)
The type of activity that the teacher organizes to carry out the educational process is decisive in the formation of the student, as one will see next. When the teacher uses the expository technique, he develops two activities in his students: attending and understanding a lecture-type exhibition and making class notes. On the other hand, when the teacher uses other activities or teaching – learning techniques, he encourages his students to develop other types of skills and acquire other types of learning.
1. When the teacher asks his students to read a material on their own, it encourages the development of the ability to read and understand a text.
2. When the teacher makes work teams to prepare and present exhibitions in class, it fosters the development of other skills: reading and understanding of what is read, structuring an exhibition, team work, preparing the support material for the exhibition and speaking in public.
3. When the teacher, once explained the theory and made a practical demonstration, instructs his students the resolution of a problem or the realization of an experiment, with its corresponding report, encourages the development of other skills: in-depth understanding of the theoretical principles and their implications (and not only the retention of these); ability to transfer the same principles to different situations; ability to apply the theory in practice and, therefore, integrate both fields.
4. When the teacher asks his students to carry out an investigation (be it theoretical – bibliographic or applied) and the presentation of the results in a written work at the end of the semester, it promotes the development of another type of skills: designing a research project , search for bibliography, prepare working hypotheses, design mechanisms to ratify or refute them, design information capture instruments, analyze the data obtained, structure the conclusions, substantiate them and draft the final report.
5. When the teacher uses in class in a systematic way, the technique of discussion of topics in small groups or work teams, encourages the development of other types of skills: teamwork, communication, know how to listen to others, respect positions of the classmates, express their own ideas, modify their own schemes based on the contributions of others, study and learn as a group, etc.
6. When the teacher is concerned about the integration of the total group and / or the integration of work teams, and performs some activities to achieve it (whether within the program or extra class), it encourages their students to develop the spirit of collaboration and teamwork, the ability to establish common objectives over particular interests, awareness or feeling of self-fulfilment through the achievements and goals achieved with the joint effort, the ability to negotiate when trying to harmonize proposals or points of different or opposing views, etc.
THE GROUP TECHNIQUES
The general scope of these techniques is twofold: they foster and accelerate the achievement of informative learning objectives, and allow the achievement of some of the training objectives. In addition, this type of techniques stimulates student motivation, since being able to participate and discuss with their classmates makes the learning process more enjoyable. In general, group techniques have three moments in their instrumentation:
1. Individual work
2. Work in equipment.
3. Work in plenary.
INDIVIDUAL WORK. When we speak of "group" we refer to all its members, without distinguishing individually any of them. The group is not an entity that exists by itself, independently of its members. These are the ones that make up the group. The group being refers simply that among its members there is a certain structure of relationships that binds them closely together but without their members, the group would not exist. Ultimately, it is the individuals who learn, although in group didactics they do so through collegial work and shared effort. Group work does not replace individual work, it accelerates it, it enriches it, it enhances it. Hence, even in group didactics, individual work is the foundation on which all learning is based. Therefore, all group techniques must be started with an individual work. Some of the activities can be done during class time; but most of them are thought of as tasks to be done outside of school. The general objective of these individual tasks is twofold. On the one hand, students work the information received in class, elaborate it, analyze it, understand it thoroughly with all its implications and learns to manage it, to apply it in different situations. On the other hand, they serve to prepare the group work that will be developed in the class session, since if there is no previous individual work, the discussion teams will lose time and will not reach their objective. To order these tasks or activities outside the classroom, the teacher can follow some criteria. Let's look at those that most certify the four basic conditions of meaningful learning.
a) They must stimulate the motivation of the student, for which they must be related to significant aspects of their life.
b) They must go beyond the information presented by the teacher. Certainly to perform the task entrusted to him, the student will have to review what was said by the teacher; but it will have to go beyond the simple review, and deepen in some way in the information.
c) They must encourage the active participation of the student. The student should look for more information, read, think, solve, consult, synthesize, etc.
d) They should try to integrate theory with practice, that is, be oriented to the application of theoretical aspects to practical situations, to real problems. Although this is not always possible, it should be kept in mind as an ideal.
e) They must prepare the group work that will be done in the class session. For this the teacher must have clear, before commissioning the tasks, the type of group work that will be done.
THE WORK IN EQUIPMENT. The general objectives of the activities that are performed in teams or small groups within the class are the following, as Hussain (2016) considers:
“-Continue working the information about the topic that is being viewed. This information is exposed, first, by the teacher; the students expand in the individual work outside the class, and they consolidate, strengthen and / or deepen in this moment.
-To promote a certain degree of homogeneity in the progress of the group, in relation to learning. Through group work, knowledge is collectivized and a group referential scheme is constructed. In this respect, the risk of a part of the group remaining in the program decreases.
-To promote the achievement of those training objectives that refer to the development of skills for cooperative work and for the communication and discussion of own ideas. Undoubtedly, this is the most enriching and productive moment of the teaching-learning process within the group didactics, as long as it is properly prepared and developed and there is a real commitment to group learning in the participants. In the work teams, being integrated only by four, five or six people, all have time to participate, to share their ideas; they feel more in trust, in private, without fear of making a fool of themselves. If someone makes a mistake and they make it clear, they accept it more easily. The discussion is more fluid and facilitates the deepening of the topic. It also encourages everyone to talk about their personal experiences, thereby achieving greater integration between theory and practice. In addition, being few in the group, it is easier to organize and coordinate according to the task.” (Hussain, 2016: 60)
For all this, one should consider that teamwork is the most productive time of the group learning process. To put it into practice, the teacher must have cleared the following aspects:
1. The task you will ask the teams.
2. The product they must present at the end of their work.
3. The time that will be assigned to do it.
4. The number of participants of each team.
5. The way you will integrate the teams.
WORK IN PLENARY. There are different types of plenary, each one aimed at achieving different objectives. However, the objectives common to all of them are the following:
1. Deepen and learn more about the tona.
2. Construct a group referential scheme, a common language and code.
The different uses that can be given to plenary in the teaching-learning process are the following:
– Full of information, so that each team can inform the rest of the group about the results of their work. This type of plenary is essential when each team can reach different conclusions about the same topic.
– Discussion period, to discuss and analyze the same topic that was worked on the teams or to start discussing a new topic.
-Completion of complementation, so that the teacher clarifies doubts, answers questions or complements what was said by the teams. It is about avoiding errors in the concepts and clarifying any doubts that may have arisen.
-Exhibition time, to receive new information on the subject, either by the teacher or the students themselves. We refer here to the use of the expository technique as part of the strategy for group learning, and not so much to the exhibition as a single teaching system.
-Brand of agreements, to make decisions and reach agreements that concern all participants. In the plenary, the main function of the teacher is to moderate the session.
As for the moderator, his obligations are as follows:
-Indicate the task to be performed, the procedure to be followed and the time it takes for it.
– Ask the group the right questions to stimulate the participation of all.
-Give the word to those who request it. Here it is important that the moderator be guided more by the sense of the discussion than by the strict order in which the word was asked. So that the discussion has continuity, sometimes it is necessary to give the word to those who have just requested it in relation to what a partner said, instead of granting it to those who had raised their hands before, since they will probably treat a different aspect about the topic. The sensitivity of the moderator is required to detect who will give continuity to the discussion and who will guide it through another path. Sometimes it is also convenient to give the floor to the shy person who asks for it for the first time, even before the very communicative ones who have already participated several times even though they have raised their hands beforehand.
-To write on the blackboard the essence of the interventions, in order to build a scheme with what the students say. If the groups have worked well, they alone will reach more than 80% of what the professor would have said in his presentation, although in a less systematic way. It is the teacher's function to systematize what is said and then to complement it.
-Provide that the group, before the end of the session, reach conclusions or agreements, or the same make a kind of final synthesis.
-Make a brief evaluation of the session: what was achieved, what was left to discuss, what was left unclear, what was left to work or deepen more, etc.
In situations of play, competences are stimulated and practiced continuously at different levels, this happens because the game completely involves the person and adapts to him and his linguistic and communicative needs. As we have already seen, through the game we can start the use of strategies. “Game is a very useful resource because it allows the student to develop their own strategies and activate the learning mechanisms of the language.” (Deesri, 2002: 1-5)
Let's see what games favour the development of some of them: Strategies of communication: they consist of all those mechanisms that students use to communicate effectively, overcoming the difficulties derived from their insufficient command of the target language. These strategies allow the student to maintain communication instead of abandoning it in the face of unforeseen difficulties. The games give the possibility of practicing the language in a real situation, naturally and spontaneously, which will lead to the activation and development of communication strategies.
In information vacuum games in which the student must ask his classmates to complete information or solve a problem or in role plays, interaction is essential.
Affective strategies: consist in those decisions that students take and those forms of behaviour they adopt in order to reinforce the influence of personal factors on learning. They develop, above all, in games in pairs or in small groups because they favour the active participation of all students, even the most timid or those who fear taking risks, because they do not focus on them. It is also favoured by laughter and humour, so it is advisable to bring activities in the classroom with humour. When activating this type of strategies increases the confidence in oneself, decreases the craving and the inhibitions disappear.
Social strategies: consist in those decisions that students take and those forms of behaviour they adopt in order to reinforce the influence of social factors on learning. Any type of game develops social strategies since students collaborate with each other, clarify doubts and understand each other when they participate in a game are developing them. Cooperation, empathy with colleagues, asking for help and clarification represent social strategies.
Cognitive strategies: consist in activities and mental processes that students perform consciously or unconsciously; with them they improve the understanding of language, its assimilation, its storage in memory, its recovery and its subsequent use. They are developed by formulating hypotheses, inferring or inferring rules, in games in which they must discover, guess, guess, solve a problem, decipher a riddle or find a hidden word. Some games also allow you to infer grammatical rules in a natural way, without needing to receive an explicit explanation. The student listens to and understands a structure and activates it to achieve specific goals. Games in which the same contextualized grammatical structure is repeated will help to deduce the use of it.
Meta-cognitive strategies: consist of the various resources that the student uses to plan, control and evaluate the development of their learning. It is developed in games that allow the student to check the knowledge reached and to reflect on its limitations or errors in order to self-correct and know which represent the weak points in which it should improve. This happens easily in role plays, simulations or representations. Memorization strategies: consist of the diverse resources that the student uses, consciously or unconsciously, to memorize. There are many games that help us: "Memory", "Pictionary", games in which the same grammatical structures are repeated, games where we use vocabulary to create a story, etc.
Play and culture are closely linked and their role has been repeatedly pointed out. Many psychologists and anthropologists have devoted studies and research to the game. Schiller (1928) with his famous phrase "man is not complete but when he plays we call attention to the game" (Schiller, 1928: 12) while Huizinga (1968) delves into the study of the same in his classic work Homo ludens (reference forced for the game) in which he makes the following statements: "the game existed before all culture and culture arises in the form of a game. If the game and the culture are united, it is logical that it is a fundamental factor in the teaching of foreign languages because it is part of their cultural heritage, not only in the linguistic but in the anthropological because customs, rituals, festivals, beliefs … permeate the speaks of the peoples. Practicing and knowing games is an essential element in the teaching-learning process of a language since it introduces us, from the didactic point of view, into skills needed in today's society such as cooperative work, negotiation, organization, overcoming of difficulties and so on. " (Huizinga, 1968: 37-65)
Jean Chateau (1973) indicates: "The game helps to develop the constructive spirit; imagination, the ability to systematize, also leads to work, without which there would be neither science nor art". (Chateau, 1973: 147) The social value of the game in general is assumed by almost all thinkers, such as Fingerman (1970) who emphasizes: "The game is a factor of social development in the individual. Through the game, not only social tendencies are exercised, but the cohesion and solidarity of the group with meetings, parties and many other acts of popular character are maintained". (Fingerman, 1970: 38)
Psychologists, especially cognitive ones, draw attention to the game by highlighting their psychomotor, affective, social, cognitive and linguistic values. The game establishes a relational, emotional and emotional climate based on trust, security and acceptance in which there is room for curiosity, the capacity for surprise, interest in knowledge and interaction with others. Playing with language implies an activity of a playful nature. Sometimes it is about enjoying the double meaning of words, testing ingenuity as in riddles; other times, it is about reciting something quickly without making mistakes as in the tongue twisters or simply take advantage of any reason to remember or learn rehearsals, sayings, with which to express a memory superiority to others or the mere enjoyment of the word.
Marina Yagüello (1983) emphasizes the importance of language games when affirming: “Every speaker has an unconscious meta-linguistic activity where this activity is revealed at all is particularly in the game. Game of words, game with words, verbal game in all its forms: puns, hieroglyphs, charades, burlesque lapses of contraposition of letters, children's songs to indicate who has to do something, riddles, compound words, etc.” (Yagüello, 1983: 12) In this respect, all those expressions of the word that testify among speakers an innate, intuitive linguistics, because playing means that you know the rules and the means of interpreting them taking advantage of the ambiguity that characterizes natural languages, as well as the creativity they allow. All this leads us to consider the game as a teaching strategy for EFL teaching because it serves as a basis to encourage creativity and highlight the need for the playful followed by the pleasure that the game produces and, as Fingerman (1970) makes the game stand up, defying fatigue with a "renewed enjoyment that is represented by triumph and success". (Fingerman,1970: 69). Many and varied have been the definitions that have been proposed to conceptualize “learning strategies” (Monereo,1990). Nevertheless, in general terms, a large part of them coincide in the following points:
“• They are procedures.
• They can include several specific techniques or activities.
• They pursue a purpose.
• They are flexible.
• They can be open and covert (private or group information in personal games).
• They are socio-cultural activities learned in family, school and extracurricular contexts.
• They can be defined as flexible procedures or resources used by the teacher to promote learning such as the following:
• Strategies to activate (or generate) prior knowledge and to establish adequate expectations in students. From the games that the foreign student knows, he can try to explain it orally, by images or in writing and put them into practice in the classroom, promoting peer interaction to facilitate the attention of the apprentices in the game sessions.
• Strategies to promote the link between previous knowledge and new information to be learned.” (Nisbet and Schucksmith, 1987: 15-18) These are strategies designed to create or enhance adequate links between the knowledge that the student already has and new information to be learned, thus ensuring a greater significance of the learning achieved, (example: parties for cultural objectives).
According to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, "strategies are a means used by the user of the language to mobilize and balance their resources, put into practice skills and procedures in order to meet communication demands in the context and successfully complete the task in question as completely or as economically as possible, depending on its specific purpose". (CEFR, 2017: 60)
Gaudart (1999) defines learning strategies as "decision-making processes (conscious and intentional) in which the student chooses and recovers, in a coordinated manner, the knowledge he needs to complete a certain demand or objective, depending on the characteristics of the educational situation in which the action takes place". (Gaudart,1999: 285) Student's learning strategies are defined by Oxford as "concrete decisions that the student adopts in order to make their learning faster, easier, fun, autonomous, and more susceptible in order to be transferred to new situations, it refers to strategies as the student performs consciously regarding grammar, vocabulary, consultations with other classmates, mental translation, etc".(Oxford,1990: 22) There are many classifications of types of student strategies that have been given:
• “Behavioural type strategies (voluntary leave).
• Mental type strategies (memorize).” (Skehan, 1989: 25)
“• Linguistic strategies related to learning (translate).
• Strategies related to learning in general (analyze).” (O'Malley, Chamot, 1990: 68):
The study of the topology of strategies that are used in the classroom should be the subject of observation and subsequent analysis by the teacher in order to systematize them and turn them into a teaching and learning tool of a language.
2.4 Methods using games in ELT classroom
In school careers, as students and as teachers, individuals have encountered different types of assessment. Even if there are endless variations, all types of assessment people have experienced fall today into one of the following basic methods:
Selected response and short answer
Extended written response
Performance assessment
Personal communication
All the methods mentioned above are legitimate options when their use correlates highly with the learning target and the intended use of the information.
Selected Response and Short Answer
This method highlights the fact that students are able to select the correct or best response from a provided list. Formats comprise “multiple choice, matching, true or false, fill-in questions or short answer.” (Chappuis et al., 2011: 122)
For all selected response assessments, the scores of learners are represented by a number or sometimes, by a proportion of questions that are correctly answered.
Extended Written Response
This method requires students to write an answer as a response to a question or even a task. The answer is not selected from a list. An extended written response has several sentences. At this level, one can talk about:
Comparisons between pieces of literature, solutions to environmental issues or economic events.
Analysis of forms of government, artwork or solutions to different issues.
Various interpretations of scientific information, music.
Answers to problems and explanations of all students’ work.
Description of a scientific process or principle, for example the way of working in the case of demand and supply.
Teachers will correctly appreciate and judge the extended written responses by applying different types of scoring criteria. One type of scoring criteria reflects “the specific of information, while the other can be represented by a rubric” (for instance, a general rubric used in making comparisons; it can be applied to all types of exercises requiring for comparison). (Sadler, 2009: 73)
Performance Assessment
This method represents an observation and judgment- based on assessment. The teacher will expect “a performance or product, judging according to its quality” (Sadler, 2009: 78). For instance, one can consider:
Complex performances – they may be represented by carrying out the stages in the case of a scientific experiment, playing an instrument, being able to speak a foreign language, being able to read aloud and fluent, and even being capable to repair a vehicle, an engine, or to work in group. In these cases, the emphasize will be on the action of doing, so the process is important.
Creating complex products – they may be represented by works of art, lab reports, term papers. At this level, the process of creation does not count so much (but it may be evaluated), but the quality level of the product itself.
Personal Communication
This method implies the process of gathering information about students. Teachers can find out what students have learned after the interaction among them in the classroom. For instance, they can:
“Listen to students’ opinions and respond to their comments
Ask various questions during the teaching period
Interview students when participating to conferences
Listen to students as they participate in class
Give oral examinations” (Sadler, 1998: 82)
Student responses will be evaluated in one way of two possible. There are times when the questions a teacher asks require students to provide different types of answers, such as simple or short ones. This is the moment when the teacher will appreciate whether the answer is correct or not. This method is parallel to scoring. But there are also times when oral responses are longer and more complex. In this regard, “teachers evaluate and appreciate the quality of oral responses using as method a rubric or a scoring guide”. (Bloxham, West, 2004: 712)
Other methods
There are many other methods of grading. It is important for teachers to appreciate by means of grading philosophy, considering purposes first and then deciding on a grading scheme. Before selecting a method, teachers are advised to check relevant course. “Numeric methods or holistic approaches can be used”. (Walvoord, Anderson, 1998: 23)
Letter Grading
This method is familiar to those who have attended a traditional institution. Defining what it represents, “each level of performance is the responsibility of the teacher.” (Walvoord, Anderson, 1998: 10)
Among the advantages of this method we could mention the following:
The method is convenient in order to determine the levels of competence for advanced education and future employment.
Letter grades provide good feedback.
Among the disadvantages of this method we could specify:
Letter grades can be accorded by mixing factors that have various weightings.
Letter grades can split students (learners) into competitive and even discriminatory groups.
Letter grades can foster students' confirming, unimaginative, dependent behaviour.
Letter grades can emphasize hierarchy among students with an adverse effect on learning.
Satisfactory-Unsatisfactory Systems
These systems are grounded on a single cut-off point which determines if the student has passed or failed the exam (test). There are some advantages that could be considered when applying satisfactory-unsatisfactory systems:
This method is less competitive and more relaxed.
It provides a better atmosphere.
Cheating may be reduced.
Some students work more in comparison to others.
Teachers are encouraged to schedule classes outside of students major fields of study.
After the end of the satisfactory/unsatisfactory grade request period, a class cannot be changed to the traditional grading system.
There are some disadvantages that could be considered when applying satisfactory-unsatisfactory systems:
While applying satisfactory-unsatisfactory systems a passing mark does not make any difference regarding the levels of competence.
While applying satisfactory-unsatisfactory systems a part of students works less.
While applying satisfactory-unsatisfactory systems it can be difficult to state a level of mastery leading to a passing mark.
While applying satisfactory-unsatisfactory systems a failing student is under pressure.
Mastery Approach
This method assigns a basic satisfactory or unsatisfactory grade to students based on their achievement of aims that have been specified by the teacher. For instance, in a mastery system, it is allowed for students to dispose of different amounts of time in order to accomplish an aim; they can also repeat their “assignments without penalty until they obtain the most desired outcome, respectively a great mark.” (Rafiee, 2014: 344)
The advantages of this method could be:
The grade is full of meaning since it is connected to the students' performance level.
When students know their goals, they may achieve them faster.
In mastery approach, the focus is on success, rather than on failure.
Among teachers and students can be established cooperative relationships
The disadvantages of this method could be:
It is more time-consuming;
The teachers’ freedom is limited;
Some teachers might be too exacting in their desires and requirements.
Contract System
This system of grading implies the development of a written contract between teacher and student. For instance, “the syllabus lesson is a good moment to use this option”. (Rafiee, 2014: 346) Some advantages of this method could be considered:
It can contribute to reducing anxieties since students know what the teacher expects.
It reduces the role of personal judgment when according grades.
It encourages self-set goals.
Some disadvantages of this method could be considered:
There is a possibility of overemphasis on quantity.
Difficulties can be found in measuring the quality of students' activity.
Self-Evaluation and self- assessment
In self-evaluation a variety of formats can be used. In this regard, students represent the source of the evaluation. Teachers can use self-evaluation in order to determine the course grade.
The advantages of this method could be:
Students can have their own learning experience.
Students are more objective, fair and demanding of themselves.
It encourages students to be responsible.
The disadvantages of this method could be:
Self-evaluation can be treated less seriously as the novelty disappears.
Self-evaluation can be overrated when learners are not introspective.
Self-evaluation can be abused under extreme pressure for specific marks.
Self-assessment
The CEFR supports the idea that “there are three manners in which self-assessment can be used” (CEFR, 2017: 30):
1. The CEFR can be used in case of content specification of examinations.
2. The CEFR can be used in case of stating the criteria in order to attain a learning goal, connected to the assessment of a certain performance (it may be spoken or written), as well as in relation to continuous peer-assessment, teacher-assessment or self-assessment.
3. The CEFR can be used in case of describing proficiency levels in different examinations thereby making comparisons across various systems of qualifications.
In self-assessment the descriptors for communicative activities can be used in many ways, such as:
Checklist
The checklist is used for continuous assessment or for summative assessment in a final course. The teacher can list the descriptors. Alternatively, their content can be “developed”
Grid
For the assessment of continuous or summative type, one could establish a profile of well-established categories of grids such as conversation, exchanging information, discussion, but with the condition to be defined at different levels.
Self-assessment implies judgements about student’s proficiency and teachers can use many types of assessment techniques. This research reflects the fact that “high stakes” that were provided are not involved, thereby the process of self-assessment can be additional to test assessment. During self-assessment, the accuracy increases:
at the moment assessment is connected to well-defined descriptors of standards in proficiency
at the moment assessment is about a certain experience.
Self-assessment is an experience that may itself be seen as an examination activity. It is probably made more accurately when pupils participate during the session. “Structured self-assessment is related to evaluations and tests identical with levels of concurrent validation between teachers, between teacher assessment and tests, between tests”. (Alderson, Charles, 2000: 77)
The primary potential of self-assessment is represented by its role as an instrument for motivation and awareness. It helps students to appreciate their strengths, to recognise their errors, as well as their weaknesses and to “direct students’ learning in a more efficient manner.” (Rafiee, 2014: 350)
The appropriate combination of teaching methods with learning activities we consider can be the formula that promotes a better and faster learning of English content. In this combination, there should be present those methods and activities that help achieve our pretensions to the contents, whether familiarization, reproduction, production or creation with them. So, for example, if one wants to achieve the level of production, he can choose the partial search method and the work in plenary discussion. Specifically, one may consider that the assimilation of the contents of English Grammar, for example, can be achieved in any of its levels if individuals manage to create didactic games that contain the elements of the content that we are interested in that are developed through work in teams or in plenary sessions from previous individual work (tasks to be done in the classroom or at home).
The level of assimilation to achieve will be related to the game that is designed. Working in teams, apart from all its benefits, makes the game more rewarding. This type of activity in the educational teaching process, besides being fundamental, can become a determining factor to change the idea of English as a theoretical entity, monotonous and boring for an active and fun. In addition, the implementation of didactic games with group techniques can promote, apart from the aforementioned, a more active class, greater appreciation of English (thus minimizing the predisposition of students towards it), and specifically, with regard to Literature and Grammar, will contribute to subtract abstraction, giving it both logical and practical sense. The characteristics and conditions under which it is proposed that the games are applied are the following:
• Regardless of the level of assimilation of the content that is intended with the game, it should never cease to be pleasant and relaxing for the student, so, in its design, care will be taken to avoid the anxiety and pressure that may arise from the demands raised from the cognitive point of view.
• The game must be preceded by the explanation of the teacher and, in addition, by an individual task, because we will demand that they be done in teams.
• They must be carried out in small groups, with a minimum of two students and a maximum of five. The game will never be developed individually, because if some students did not grasp the theme or topics with which they are going to play, they will not participate; on the other hand, if the game is with more people, they can help him and if he does not achieve the same level of knowledge as his teammates, (which is one of the objectives of teamwork) at least he will improve the level he had before the game.
• It is recommended that the formation of the teams be done at random given that currently the class groups are very little united and with this election procedure the integration of these can be achieved. There will be at least one person (leader) in each team to encourage them to work; if not, we advise finding the way for each team to present this characteristic.
The process of teaching is a complex one, requiring proper methodologies, in order to inculcate useful information in students’ minds to transfer knowledge to other generations. Therefore, secondary education represents a turning state and in this respect, teachers should adopt effective teaching methodology in accordance with students needs so that they can receive proper guidance.
In Vijayalakshmi’s opinion (2004) “teaching has the meaning of both art and a science”. (Vijayalakshmi, 2004:1). Able teachers will always find means and ways in improving their techniques in teaching. In time, change appears and teachers are asked to adopt newer methods for a more efficient teaching so that they must be able to involve innovation.
“Teacher” is a notion being used for that person who teaches students, guides learners and enables them the manner of reading and writing. In its third edition, the International Encyclopedia of Education defines teacher education as “education and preparation of individuals enabling them in order to become professional teachers.” (International Encyclopedia of Education, 2010). On the other hand, Frank and Wagrall emphasized “the accentuate need for dynamism” (Frank, Wagrall, 1987: 11) in teacher education. They considered that “for maintaining the pace with all of these technology changes in the modern society, one must plan teacher education programs in such a way that teachers, in this respect, become broadly educated, scientific minded, uncompromising on quality innovative, but sympathetic towards students” (Frank, Wagrall, 1987: 11). Also Aggarwal concluded that “teacher education represents the essence of knowledge, as well as relevant skills and abilities to teachers’ professional life”. (Aggarwal, 1990: 26) By far, it is very important for teachers to be provided with continuous training in order to adopt the proper methods of teaching. This way, teacher education is that initiative of keeping alive, of saving time, energy, money and of protecting from trouble.
There can be used several teaching methods in order to teach English at secondary level. Nowadays, most of the teachers use the lecture method and in most of the cases, the excuse of not using new techniques is that the curriculum is so lengthy and the working environment is missing in public sector. Anyway, one of the most important teaching methods used by English teachers are represented by the inquiry based learning, direct instructions (direct lecturing), cooperative learning and group discussion.
Inquiry-based learning represents a teaching method that gains popularity day by day. In case of English language, students develop their critical thinking skills in order to arrive to different conclusions. This method takes plenty of time and energy, by planning, but in most cases, it was very effective, mainly because it student-centred and directed, giving the opportunity to reach students in accordance with the level they are.
Direct instruction represents one of the most common types of instruction on the basis of the lecturing method. This is the lecturing method of teaching. Many teachers make use of this method almost exclusively because it is considered the simplest of all, and they are able to cover large amounts of material in a short period of time. However, this method is not the most effective of all in order to teach all students, especially younger ones. This last category of students should to be more engaged, to be given a hands-on strategy in order to learn effectively. In addition, it is hard for teachers to give instruction to students at different levels.
Cooperative learning, another highly effective teaching method when done correctly lends itself well to differentiation when “teachers can assign specific tasks to students at different ability levels”. (http://www.wisegeek.com). With cooperative learning, children are put in small groups for working together, but they are not grouped by ability, but on various levels. Then, they are given tasks to accomplish together while teachers monitor these groups in order to make sure that pupils remain on task and all of them are participate.
Group discussions are efficient in classrooms of small or moderate size. Teachers act as moderators for this kind of lesson, so they begin the discussion, but then, it is passed to the students. This teaching method is very effective for children who want to be engaged in their own learning.
While the majority of teachers may not consider lecturing to be one of the most efficient method, there is still a group of settings in which lecturing can work proper. In this respect, “presentation of innovative information in a concise manner can be very important during English classes and lecturing can work well in such an instance”. (http://www.wisegeek.com).
In Mursell’s opinion , successful teaching is considered to “reveal a number of certain emphases and aspects in the total pattern of meaningful learning, transforming general orientation in a more definite one” (Mursell, 1954: 269), as following:
“Learning is meaningful in the sense of “mattering” to the learner, but it is essentially purposive.
Exploration and discovery are the most important elements of the basic learning process, and not the routine repetition.
The result achieved by children through means of learning always represents an understanding or intelligible response.
The result may not be connected to the situation in which it was achieved but one can make use of it in other situations.” (Mursell, 1954: 270-272)
Mursell was not the only one who described effective teaching, but also Ibrahim did it. The most important objective of teacher education program has always been the one of “preparing teachers capable of bringing desired changes in students’ behaviour to an optimal level in terms of expended human energy and material resources during the process”. (Ibrahim, 1990: 12) It is obvious that the teacher has always to adopt variety of teaching methods and teaching strategies in teaching his subjects in classroom situation to make teaching more effective and result oriented.
In terms of the effective teaching, a teacher must adopt a good method. He has many options for the style of teaching, he may write lesson plans of his own, borrow plans from others, or even search for lesson plans within books. When deciding about the proper teaching method, a teacher must take into account students’ background and knowledge, as well as their environment, and the most important of all, their learning goals. Teachers know students have different ways of learning, but almost all pupils will respond well to praise; students also have various modalities of absorbing information and demonstrating what they know. Often, a good professor uses techniques catering to multiple learning and his style could help pupils to retain information and strengthen their understanding. There is a variety of teaching methods and strategies in order to ensure that all children have equal opportunities to learn and in this respect, a lesson plan should be carried out as following:
Questioning
The teaching method based on questioning is similar to the one of testing. A teacher can put some questions with the aim of collecting information of the information students have learned and what needs to be taught.
Explaining
Explanation is another efficient teaching method with a form similar to lecturing. Lecturing is based on teaching, the professor giving a speech, by means of a discourse on a specific subject in the classroom. This method is often associated with modelling and demonstrating.
Demonstrating
Demonstrations’ role is the one of providing opportunities in learning by means of new exploration and visual learning tasks from a different point of view. This method can be practiced in several ways.
Collaborating
Students’ collaborations are based on the group work and it is another manner a professor can enforce a lesson plan. Collaborating allows pupils to talk each other and to listen to all view points of others is discussions or assignments. It also helps children to think in unbiased way.
Teaching Method, Teaching Strategy and Tactic
Teaching methods, teaching strategies and teaching tactics are usually considered to be similar, but one may see a visible difference in their meaning. According to Swaroop, these terminologies may be explained in the following manner:
Teaching Method
“In teaching method’s case, the main aspect is the manner of presentation and the contents.” (Swaroop,1994: 6) It is also determined in accordance with the contents’ nature and there can be three methods of the content and of presentation, such as:
Telling Method: Lecturing, questioning and so on
Doing Method: Project method
Showing Method: Demonstration, observation and so on.
Teaching Strategy
The notion of “strategy” is about a pattern of acts serving to attain certain outcomes, but also “to ground against others” (Swaroop,1999:7). Strategy’s meaning is related to the determination of a certain policy by planning before presenting the contents with the help of which the student’s force is faced and the teaching objectives are achieved. In this situation, pre-planning represents a key of success.
Teaching Tactics
In this case, tactics are similar to the method with which “new knowledge is being permanently marked in the pupils minds.” (Swaroop, 1999:8) Teaching tactics are more comprehensive in comparison with teaching strategies and, with a single teaching strategy, using one of more teaching tactics, the lesson becomes easier, more clear and more understandable.
Teaching tactics and strategies are based on the following elements:
According to Manitoba Education, “assessment is the most efficient when its purpose is clear defined and when it is carefully designed to fit that purpose” (Manitoba Education, 2006: 13). However, Earl claimed that assessment represents a complicated entity that has various purposes, “all of which need to be understood and appreciated for their own merits” (Earl, 2003: 10). In explaining this further, Black claimed that “the main purposes of assessment are those of enhancing learning, reporting on and certifying student achievement, and for public accountability” (Black, 1998:12). In addition to this, Earl emphasized that there are “different assessment purposes, varied approaches for assessment being necessary” (Earl, 2003: 12-13). It is essential teachers know and understand each of these purposes, but also they have “to aware of when and why they are using them” (Manitoba Education, 2006: 14) in order make a valid choice of approaches. Thus, it is obvious that the purpose of assessment should always be the centre of attention and as commented by Black and Wiliam, “assessment in education must, first and foremost, serve the purpose of supporting learning” (Black, Wiliam, 2006a: 9).
In time, there have been used various methods and approaches aiming to assess learning and it is necessary to understand the benefits and possible defects of each as well as making the best choice. In Stiggins’s opinion, “if teachers assess accurately and make an effective use of results, students prosper. If they do it poorly, students’ learning suffers”. (Stiggins, 2004: 15) So, choosing the proper type of assessment has great relevance. Below, there will be discussed in a practical manner the assessment methods such as tests, performance-based assessment, portfolio assessment, self-assessment and peer-assessment.
Tests
Testing has long been one of the most common assessment methods. In this respect, Bachman and Palmer believed that “language testing may be considered a valid manner to interpret individuals’ language abilities” (Bachman, Palmer, 1996: 8), but they also claimed that “professors must to be aware of the importance of tests’ formulation”. (Bachman, Palmer, 1996: 10). This way, they forwarded their language testing philosophy:
A good teacher should relate language testing to both language teaching and use.
A good teacher should design his/her tests in order to encourage and enable learners to perform at their highest ability levels.
A good teacher should make considerations of fairness into test design.
A good teacher should humanize the testing process.
A good teacher should demand accountability for test use; hold himself/herself, as well as any others who make use of his/her test, accountable for the way his/her test is being used.
A good teacher should recognize those decisions that are based on test scores and are fraught with dilemmas
Also, in Earl’s opinion, “a test can only contain a limited amount of what has been taught with the instruction” (Earl, 2003: 22-23), while according to Weeden, Winter and Broadfoot, the results only highlight “what the student can do at the exact time the test is completed”. (Weeden, Winter, Broadfoot, 2002: 29).
Performance-based Assessment
Another common method that is being used in assessment is the performance-based assessment. Linn and Miller considered that “a movement took place towards new approaches while assessment developed in the 1990’s”, (Linn, Miller, 2005: 2) and these ones have been “referred to as alternative, authentic, direct, or performance-based assessment” (Linn, Miller, 2005: 7).
McKay (2006) emphasizes that there is avoided the use of “selected-response items” (McKay, 2006: 98) in the assessment based on performance. The focus must be on tasks, they enabling students to use the language as they would in real life, where both grammar and vocabulary knowledge are assessed as “elements of communicative use of the language” (McKay, 2006: 99). Scoring rubrics are considered to be an appropriate ways to assess performance while the used “tasks are not likely to have only correct or incorrect answers” (McKay, 2006: 266).
Even if assessment based on performance is relatively new, it is something that language assessors are quite familiar with and “has been used in language assessment for more than a century” (Bachman, 2002a: 5).
Portfolio Assessment
Currently, portfolio assessment is one of the most popular alternative methods “where instruction and assessment are integrated” (Hamp-Lyons, 2007: 493). According to McKay, portfolios are still considered very important in assessment in secondary level and they are “widely advocated” (McKay, 2006: 159). In some schools, portfolios are the unique method that is being used for assessment while in others, “they are used in combination with other ones” (Gronlund, 2003:157). Portfolios are advantageous for assessment because there is a variety of evidence they can show in order to judge students’ performance, as following:
“Learning progress in time.
Learners’ current best work.
Comparison between best and past work.
Self-assessment skills development.
Reflective learning development.
Students’ level and pace of work.
Learning’s clear evidence to parents.
Collaboration between teachers and students.” (Gronlund, 2003: 158).
However, in Gronlund’s opinion, applying portfolios represents time consuming and “demands substantial teacher-student conferencing if it is supposed to be a useful tool” (Gronlund, 2003: 159). He emphasized that “portfolio’s structure and students’ overall performance” (Gronlund, 2003: 163) need to be evaluated.
Self-assessment
Self-assessment is the most important strategy which formative assessment is founded on, and in fact, in Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall, and William’s opinion, “it is of esential value for formative assessment development that self-assessment be practiced by learners” (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall, William, 2003: 18). According to McKay (2006), this type of assessment is “a manner to persuade students for focusing on their own learning in order to understand the process in a better way and to accept its’ responsibility” (McKay, 2006: 165-166). In case of any learning, students must understand their learning goals as well as how best to work for reaching them and “self-assessment enhances learning” (Black, Wiliam, 2006a: 15).
Peer-assessment
Peer-assessment is also one of the methods used in formative assessment, and as Black et al. considered, it is “uniquely valuable” (Black et. al, 2003:50) and “may represent a prior requirement for self-assessment” (Black et. al, 2003:50). Many researchers suggested that peer collaboration during classroom activities brings benefits to student learning, and they sustain with evidence from various research. Additionally, evidence highlights peer-assessment’s beneficial effects; however, it also supposes that in order to use peer-assessment, “learners have to know its manner of execution”. (Saito, 2008: 553-554)
2.5 Activities using games
2.5.1 Mime
Let's make words
Objective: To stimulate the imagination and exercise cooperation.
Material: None.
Initial setpoint: None.
Interior or exterior: Both.
Development: The group decides a word to represent using the body of all the people that make it up. Once the word has been chosen, they will think about the best way to place and combine their bodies so that the word to be represented is readable. The facilitator decides when the test has been passed.
Sculptures
Objective: Achieve creative expression. Favor the body's awareness.
Material: Handkerchief to cover eyes.
Initial instruction: The game is played silently.
Interior or exterior: Both.
Development: A person taking the role of sculptor, places the body of a teammate in the position he / she considers appropriate. Another member of the team, with his eyes covered, will touch the sculpture, trying to recognize the position in which he is. Finally, one must "sculpt" a statue identical to the one he touched, placing the body of another person on the team in the same position.
Storm
Objective: To develop the musical and auditory capacity through a simulated storm.
Material: None.
Initial setpoint: None.
Interior or exterior: Both.
Development: The group must simulate through the noise of rain, thunder, lightning…the development of the storm. The facilitator will consider the storm as valid when it deems appropriate. A rhythm should be kept.
Our treasure
Objective: Develop expressiveness and creativity.
Material: In a close environment the objects of the list are necessary.
Initial setpoint: None.
Interior or exterior: Both.
Development: A person in the group mimics the first of the objects in the list that is presented below. The group must guess the object and go to find the number of them that appears indicated. When they achieve the goal, another person in the group will represent the next object. The operation is repeated until the team manages to gather all the objects that appear in the list.
Objects to represent:
• 4 red paintings.
• 3 scissors.
• 2 green chalk.
• 1 basketball.
• 3 slate drafts.
• 4 notebooks with blue covers.
The rumor
Objective: To stimulate the capacity to interpret and represent messages through body and gestural expression.
Material: None.
Initial setpoint: None.
Interior or exterior: Both.
Development: All the members of the team except one leave the classroom or the place where it is played. The facilitator says to the person that the following phrase has not come out: "all the people participating are protagonists". A person from the team is asked to enter the classroom. The first mimics the phrase to the second. When she believes she has understood the message, a third person is called. The second represents what he has understood to the third and so on. Finally, the last person explains the message he has received and contrasts with the initial sentence. The test will be considered valid if the two messages (the initial and the final) have a similar meaning, that is, if they have managed to transmit and maintain the meaning.
Cheer up!
Objective: Develops interpretive skills.
Material: None.
Initial setpoint: None.
Interior or exterior: Both.
Development: Each person in the group mimics a different mood. The rest of the group is in charge of guessing what is involved in each case.
What the bag hides?
Objective: Develops representative skills and deductive capacity.
Material: A bag with three objects.
Initial setpoint: None.
Interior or exterior: Both.
Development: Three objects are hidden in a bag. A person in the group puts one hand in the bag, palpates one of the objects and when he recognizes it uses mimicry so that his classmates can guess what it is about. When they get it, they continue with the remaining objects. To pass the test, they have 1 minute.
Dancing
Objective: Develop creativity through dance and achieve collaboration and complementation of the group.
Material: Music player, song.
Initial instruction: Communication and group complementation is very important.
Interior or exterior: Interior.
Development: In two minutes the group invents and learns a choreography for the refrain of a song previously chosen
What number is it?
Objective: Develop motor skills in representation.
Material: None.
Initial setpoint: None.
Interior or exterior: Both.
Development: A person in the group is responsible for drawing different numbers in the air (at the request of the facilitator) using different parts of his body on each occasion (head, back, leg). The group must guess the numbers represented.
Machine
Objective: Achieve group cohesion.
Material: None.
Initial slogan: It can be used in addition to mimicking various sounds.
Interior or exterior: Both.
Development: The facilitator tells one of the members of the team in a low voice the name of a machine that he will have to represent. Using the mimicry, interpretation begins. The facilitator will indicate that the rest of the people in the group will be incorporated into the representation progressively until they can build a great machine among all the people.
2.5.2 Card game
Dices
Beyond the always interesting dice of Story Cubes Actions, we propose some dice of verbs that can be adapted very well to different contexts. For example, beginners can play with the pronouns dice and the regular verbs to review the indicative present, first with the notes and then without them. As the level increases, the teacher can incorporate the irregular verb dice and other verb tenses. The teacher has also incorporated, a die of temporary markers, to work the contrast of pasts if it makes sense in the variant of the English that is being taught.
Preparation tips: It is recommended to use cardboard and a good glue for the assembly of the dice.
Boards
Craps can be a very versatile resource. Proof of this is that one can give it another use with a board that is recommended to be printed in A3 so that the dice fit well inside a box. One can also use this board with different levels. For example, with A1 it may be a good way to start working on the present indicative. It would be enough to play with the dice pronoun. We throw it on the board and conjugate the verb on what marks the top face of the die. From A2, we can enter the die of the temporary connectors, and B1 the one of all the verb tenses. If one wants to play differently, the boxes are numbered to play the oca style, with a traditional die and conjugating the verb of the box in which one has fallen. In addition, one has a second more playful version available, with cheat boxes. Remember that the teacher can put the rules and scoring systems that he considers appropriate (1 point per regular verb, 2 per irregular verb, etc.).
Trivial
Simplicity is not incompatible with a varied and complete game. With this proposal we can play from an A1 to a B1 in three different ways (or all that the insightful teacher is able to find).
WITH ONE DATA
A simple die of colors that will determine the card to take. There are six categories that aim to work on verbs from different competences (oral and written expression and comprehension, but also general culture and revision exercises).
WITH A BOARD
Especially suitable for small groups to play individually. With a normal die we move from square to square, each one related to the color of a card. Be careful because here we can fall into special boxes such as «A turn without playing», «Return to the exit» or the favorite of the students: «Choose the color».
WITH CARAMELS
The colours are not a coincidence. The greedy reader will have already fallen in that they are the same colours of M & M’s. If the teacher wants an extra touch of motivation with his students (especially if the class is just before lunchtime), he should try playing with coloured candies as elements of chance. The student, without looking, should take one of the bag and depending on its colour, take a letter or another. If he answers correctly, he can eat it and if not, leave it on the table until someone on hid team hits again.
More tips: The scoring system, the rules, rules and ways of organizing the teams, will suit each teacher. If there are different levels or groups with a high level of knowledge, one can play with all the cards and provide 1 point with the easiest ones (A1), with 2 for A2 and three for B1. One can bounce with another participant, read the cards or be another student.
Sink the float
A game to practice the conjugations of verbs in English. It is played as the classic game "Battleship". Instead of the coordinates of letters and numbers, here we have coordinates of subject pronouns (I, you, him …) and infinitive verbs. When you want to shoot you have to conjugate the verb, for example, if we want to know if there is a ship in you – to sing, the player has to say "You sing" and the other player will have to say ("water" if he has not touched no ship, "touched" if it has touched a part of the ship, "sunk" if it has destroyed the whole ship). To this game one can play with all possible tenses and verbs.
2.5.3 Who am I?
Who am I? It is a highly entertaining activity that you sure tired of playing with your friends when they were children. It was one of those hobbies that not only gave one the opportunity to share a long time with his companions, but it was fun to see how the one next to he was squeezing your brain trying to guess the name of the character that he had thought to put.
How to remember is to live again and surely your child will love learning a traditional game that mom and dad played in their childhood, we put the time back and ask children: Who am I?
The materials
Before starting the game of Who am I? the teacher must collect pencils and papers; as many, as people are going to participate. If competitors do not want to have their hands up to their forehead for a long time, one can look for a few pieces of tape to hold the papers.
These are the only materials the teacher needs.
How to play Who am I?
To perform the game of Who am I? ask all participants to form a circle. Then, write on a paper the name of a character who comes up with the same fiction as real life: cartoons, movie stars, heroines and heroes of history … anyone will serve.
Whenever the names are written, each of the members of the circumference will place the paper on the forehead of the partner who has to the right and in view of others.
To start the activity and choose the first competitor, a small draw can be made.
From here, whoever has to start will have to ask as many questions as he needs to try to guess the name he has on his forehead. All the answers can be given by any of the members of the circle but will always revolve around "Yes and No".
While the answers are positive, the player may continue to ask questions, but when he receives a blunt No! he must yield the turn to the competitor on his right.
When a participant discovers the character that was given to him, he will leave the circle, because, unlike other games, the last child that remains in competition will be the loser.
For its fun and simplicity, this is a good idea to put the same thing into practice on a birthday as in a family and friends meeting.
Block of Experiences "WHO AM I?"
Aspects of development and learning that favours this block
Personal knowledge
Identity
Self esteem
Relationship with one's history
Body awareness
Emotion / body relationship
Identification of feelings
Expression of feelings
Belonging
Relationship with peers
Development of one's own judgment
Identification with one's sex
Communication
Knowledge of reality
2.5.4 Matching pairs
Memory Games for children
The working memory is the executive function responsible for maintaining and temporarily using certain information that is required to be used in different tasks. Working memory can manipulate auditory or visual stimuli.
Specifically, within a portal, the user can find free memory games that stimulate memory through different dynamics that use visual and spatial stimuli, but also auditory through the use of music. In this way, the combined realization of these children's memory games is more than adequate to encourage the development of memory in its entirety by covering a large part of the sensory spectrum.
The executive functions are the mental abilities responsible for solving in a conscious, voluntary and efficient way most of the problems that are presented to an individual. Therefore, executive functions are planning, anticipation, flexibility, monitoring and control, working memory and decision making mainly.
Children's memory games for children in Early Childhood Education
The executive functions are the mental abilities responsible for solving in a conscious, voluntary and efficient way most of the problems that are presented to an individual. Therefore, executive functions are planning, anticipation, flexibility, monitoring and control, working memory and decision making mainly.
The age at which Primary Memory games are directed is one of the ranges in which there is a peak in the development of these functions, hence the importance of stimulating them early. In this way, these memory games are dedicated to children of children with the aim of participating in the correct development of this capacity.
Specifically, these memory games for children try to stimulate and / or rehabilitate working memory, among other executive functions. Obtaining a base with these contents, in the future the memory games for adults will also be much simpler.
Additionally, other executive functions, such as inhibition, flexibility or monitoring and control, are implicitly present in the resolution of most of the program's tasks, although they are not specifically designed to stimulate these functions.
The set of these functions is related to verbal comprehension, reading, calculation, among others. For this reason, training the memory from a young age is essential to acquire skills when performing more complicated tasks.
CHAPTER III. PRACTICAL AND METHODICAL RESEARCH
3.1 Why use songs and games in ELT classroom- pros and contras
In order to explore the use of games in the classroom, we will consider possible benefits and possible disadvantages for learning the English language. The benefits of playful English learning are the following:
They keep the class alive and interested.
Students keep their motivation high during the learning.
Help the teacher to be closer to his students in a pleasant way. As a result, they facilitate the teaching-learning process.
And, finally, I think it is important to emphasize that if both the student and the teacher have a good time, it is a sign that the teacher is also looking for his own motivation and, getting it, it will be much easier to transmit any knowledge to the students.
Benefits of the use of songs in the english classroom:
The songs can be both relaxing and stimulating, so they encompass a variety of purposes in the classroom according to the objective we intend to achieve (relax or stimulate the students).
The songs promote significant and functional learning, since they use real and contextualized language (according to the meaning of the song).
The use of music in the classroom increases the concentration, motivation and attention of the students.
The songs help to change the rhythm of the class when the teacher needs it (change of task, change of topic)
The atmosphere that is created in the classroom when the music is used is of cooperation and closure between the students among themselves and between them with the teacher.
Work with music fosters creativity and imagination of students.
The songs serve both to work with the vocabulary, sounds, syntactic functions, rhythm, entonation, grammatical structures and other aspects of learning the foreign language.
The work with songs in class activates the repetition mechanisms of the acquisition of the foreign language, eliminating the possibility that the students get bored.
The songs facilitate the understanding and expression of the language both oral and written, in addition to the complementary work between the verbal language (lyrics of the song) and not verbal (movements or dances).
Music, by encompassing so many topics, allows to connect with any interdisciplinary content.
The use of songs in the classroom allows to connect linguistic topics with cultural and / or social themes about the same songs.
The current songs (current pop songs, for example) make students see the direct relationship between the work in the classroom and their reality outside of it (authentic material for daily use).
Learning through music and song lyrics activate both cerebral hemispheres, so learning is much more effective.
Through the songs one can work all the skills that the teacher needs to work with the students: reading, listening, speaking, writing and interaction.
The possible disadvantages that we should take into account when teaching this type of classes could be the following:
We will be presented with situations in which the students will want to measure up and play well, but they will find themselves with the possibility of failing. It is normal and the fault or error is respected.
In the game, if the student is showing interest and it still costs him, we will have to encourage him and help him to reach that goal which is learning.
There are important values also to instill in our students, such as respect for others.
The teachers know that each student has a different capacity and therefore they will not learn all at the same time, and this must be very clear to them.
3.2 Research Methodology
In accordance with the aforementioned theoretical framework and the characteristics of the different areas in relation to the different types of existing children's songs, this second section presents an educational project that can be performed in the classrooms. With this proposal, it is intended that teachers, from their capacities as professionals in education acquire new and renewed resources in their own educational approach.
This project aims to achieve and get to work each of the areas of the curriculum of Childhood Education, from the use of songs as a tool for communication of such knowledge. It is considered the teaching work of vital importance, since the promotion of a responsible, critical and professional attitude is essential. Being people in charge of filling the backpacks of those children exposed to the world, creating true citizens, in a playful and educational way. Awareness of the teaching world, that their actions have a social impact, and that in their hands they are positive or negative.
Phases of the work:
With response to the structure of the project, there will be performed four different phases:
"Election or Purpose", in this phase we consider the reason for the election of this project that has been developed previously in the justification of it. As it has been said, the project is born of a common interest of the students of a classroom, to give answer to all the restlessness that the small ones possess. Thanks to this starting point, based on an interest of their own, we can know, although not with absolute certainty, that it is going to be an issue that will interest them and from which they will obtain a multitude of positive benefits and learning.
"Preparation or Planning", in it we consider what we need and how we can solve this project. For this, once the objectives we want to achieve have been set, both for the students and for the teachers, as well as the contents in which these achievements are reflected, we develop both the resources (personal, material, temporary, etc …), as well as the the most appropriate methodology that we are going to use in order to achieve the correct development of the project. It is important that the methodology is adequate so that it can work in a correct way and the achievement of the objectives does not pose difficulties in the course of the project.
"Execution": once the necessary requirements have been established to be able to perform the project, we put it into action, with work on the part of the students through the realization of the designed activities. These activities will work different dimensions of the students' development, although they will be based on a common aspect, all of which will be adapted to the theme that is being worked on in the project.
"Evaluation", in this phase we consider the utility that the project has had, as well as its suitability to the group of students in which it has been developed. In order to evaluate the project, not only must students be taken into account, but it must be evaluated with a triple look, that is, an evaluation of the students, of the teachers, as well as of the project itself must be carried out. To perform this evaluation, we will have a series of criteria, moments and instruments that will give us the necessary information to analyze the results of this evaluation.
Objectives:
Objectives related to the student:
1. Know the main characteristics of the chosen topic.
2. Know and discriminate the different types of knowledge existing in the project.
3. Acquire specific vocabulary about the chosen topic.
4. Perform research work both inside and outside the classroom, increasing their creativity and autonomous thinking.
5. Increase their knowledge through children's songs, as a teaching medium.
General objective related to the teachers:
To promote the integral development of the child using the children's songs as a teaching tool for the acquisition of contents in a transversal way.
Specific objectives related to the teachers:
Achieve the participation of students.
Motivate students in the learning of different skills.
Promote a critical attitude in the students regarding the different areas they refer.
Encourage students to use music as an educational tool.
Methodology:
The main idea of this project is to give the students some useful tools with the possibility of using them in the day to day of their lives. For this reason, different methodological strategies have been used:
Meaningful learning: part of the previous experiences and knowledge of the subject that children already have. The importance is important that in any teaching-learning process, these students are in direct contact with the environment that surrounds them. Therefore, activities that induce reasoning will be carried out, which will entail a series of investigations and actions that will affect their own experiences.
Individual work: the student is able to develop the activity independently, being the teacher in charge of taking into account those characteristics and personal and individual needs of each of them. Therefore, it is necessary to start from the previous knowledge about the level of maturation that it presents.
Group work: this way of working promotes interaction with their peers, attending to diversity. With this, the participation, personal autonomy, and collaboration of the students themselves in the classroom are encouraged. Being themselves, architects of their own conclusions through the trial-erros between equals.
Game: it is the main axis during the E-A process. The game grants infinite possibilities with respect to the child and the environment itself, as well as an influence on both personal and social relationships.
Our project aims to transfer a series of knowledge to students, so that they acquire some didactic contents and develop activities in an integrated manner. Thus, the integral development of the child, both its capabilities and its needs, is strengthened, being it the main centre of attention. In addition, with the development of this type of projects, learning is sought, so that they are able to develop and solve problems from previous knowledge. This project involves the student in an active initiative, contributing cooperative situations, promoting physical and corporal activities, as well as acquiring innumerable types of personal and social values. These activities lead to determine the production of something concrete, enjoying them, solving problems or concerns and creating an effective acquisition of constructive techniques. In conclusion, this project will be based on encouraging student motivation, being an active subject in its process an experimental and cooperative work. The use of an abundant, individualized and socializing methodology allows pushing the participation of the students. With this methodology a meaningful, flexible and interdisciplinary education is achieved.
Statement of the Problem
The present research is designed to investigate the effective use of songs and games teaching methods at lower secondary level.
Study’s significance
In general, this study is very important for teachers, but in particular, for secondary level teachers as it has collected plenty of information concerning teaching methods, their effectiveness and appropriateness in secondary level English. Furthermore, it will guide teachers in exploring adequate methodologies for teaching, while its significance may also be for planners and education managers in policy formulation of teacher education programs at secondary level.
Problem’s statement
The present research is designed to investigate the effective use of teaching methods based on songs and games, at lower secondary level.
In order to perform the study, there was adopted the following method:
Population
The examined group consisted of a total of 31 pupils, boys and girls, all studying at secondary level at the School…… in ……., the VIIIth grade.
Sample
100% boys and girls, students at the School…… in ……. served as sample for the study. Subjects have normal intellectual development and different academic results. Questionnaire was attended by 31 students.
The sample is contained therein the school age whereas in terms of psychosocial development, “the growing independence leads first thoughts on identity” (Cosmovici 1999: 46), and in terms of cognitive development view, at this age "increases children’s mental ability to analyze and to test deductive assumptions”. (Cosmovici, 1999: 46).
Besides these purely psychological reasons, there was taken into account the fact that students’ classes in discussion are studying English since the IInd grade, having, at the moment, a total of four hours a week.
Instrument
Questionnaire with opened, closed and mixed questions represented the main instrument of the present research, being used for collecting the data. The questionnaire was validated by specialists and it was developed for students of School…… in ……..
The questionnaire is characterized by anonymity and it was applied to the whole group at once, not individually, to give subjects a setting where they feel protected at this age – own entourage.
Data Collection
The questionnaire was personally administered to secondary students of School……….. in. Data were collected back after respondents’ completion.
Data Analysis
Collected data were tabulated, analyzed, interpreted and presented at the end of the present research.
3.3 Teaching through songs and games- activities used in the classroom
Proposals for didactic exploitation
As we have already mentioned, the preaudition / hearing / postaudition criterion that articulates the exploitation in three phases and distinguishes between previous, simultaneous or post-audition activities is the one that we have decided to adopt for our classification. Then we go on to detail the possibilities that each phase offers, detailing models of activities for each of them.
First phase: Pre-assignment
In real life there are very few occasions when we listen without a context that allows us to have an idea of what we expect to hear. Therefore, it is very important to provide the student with an important pre-audit support so that he / she can successfully achieve the central audition activity. We must therefore provide our students with a context that provides them with a relevant and sufficient knowledge to focus their attention and that allows them to know the subject on which they are going to listen, thus activating their previous knowledge and comprehension strategies. The objective of this first phase is to awaken expectation and curiosity towards the topic, promote understanding, make predictions and prepare the vocabulary of the song. We estimate that this first phase should have introductory activities focused on the musical vocabulary (verse, chorus, rhyme, genres and musical styles, etc.), at least in the first session we propose a song with a new group, so they can continue the instructions without problems and can participate in the development of the rest of activities. On how to carry out this purpose we refer to the didactic unit of the musical unit of Integrated Skills (1998: 52-55) that we think may be very appropriate.
Proposal of preaudition activities: The activities of this phase focus mainly on written comprehension and conversations involving listening comprehension and oral expression. We have found it useful to make a subclassification following the skills practiced so that the reader can more easily find the activities that are most suited to their objectives.
Written comprehension
• Some music magazines are taken to class and students are asked to compare the success lists of these magazines with those of their country: difference of formats, difference in musical styles, etc.
• Students are given texts with information about the performer, the musical genre, etc.
• Students are given the lyrics of the song in which some words have been replaced by their drawing. Students must complete the letter by replacing the drawings with the words.
• The letter is delivered. Some words are deleted at the end of the verses. The student has to guess which word is missing following the rhyme of the verse.
• The lyrics are delivered in which we have eliminated some verb tenses. Students must complete the text. To facilitate the task we can supply cards with hidden verb tenses.
• We divide each verse of the song in half. The fragments belonging to the first part are placed in a column in a random way. We do the same in a second column with the fragments of the end. The students must join with arrows each initial fragment with its corresponding final fragment.
• Students can be asked to look up information about the singer on the Internet. Then an oral sharing can be done or students can write their proposals on the board.
• The complete letter is delivered to the students. In small groups they prepare the vocabulary of the song with the ideas of each one and dictionary help.
• A crossword with definitions of the vocabulary of the song is created. A variant is to select a keyword that summarizes the theme of the song, but does not appear in the text. Use the letters of this word arranged vertically, to cross-link horizontally other words that do appear in the song.
• Deliver a false version of the song with phrases other than the song interspersed. The students have to detect them and propose the real version.
• From a list of words provided by the teacher, students should guess the theme of the song.
• The lyrics of the song are delivered. Two more or less synonymous terms are proposed for a word. The student must choose, taking into account the context and rhyme the correct term.
• To prepare the lexicon, you can distribute cards with the words of the song. In pairs or in small groups students should explain their words with mime. The teacher picks up the words on the board.
Listening, comprehension and oral production.
Guided conversation about the musical habits and tastes of the group: Does anyone play an instrument? Who sings often? Where and when do you sing? Do you buy a lot of musical material? What are your favourite artists? Do you often go to concerts? This activity can be done as a survey.
Conversation about the relationship between music and songs with moments of our life.
Guided conversation on the theme of the song, the performer, the era, the style, etc.
Perform activity in pairs with information vacuum to select data from the singer or author.
There is a brainstorming session on the theme of the song.
The teacher presents the vocabulary and content of the song through drawings or photos and asks the students to formulate hypotheses about the theme of the song.
The video clip of the song that is going to work but without sound is projected. Students should formulate hypotheses about the type of music and the content of the song and together reach consensus.
After listening to the initial chords, students must make hypotheses about the theme of the song, etc.
You can play the hangman to guess the title of the song.
It is proposed to students to draw up the list of successes of the class
Second phase: Hearing
It corresponds to the proper moment of listening. The activities encompassed in this section are those in which the student is asked to listen to the audition with a specific purpose or purpose. It is intended that the student focus their attention on one or several points of interest; You must select previously agreed information. These activities should be interesting and motivating enough to create enough expectation for the student to perform them. It should also be borne in mind that sometimes listening and writing can be extremely difficult, so the tasks should be simple and not too long. All these activities work exclusively on listening comprehension and that is why we have not considered any type of subclassification opportune.
Proposal of listening activities:
The teacher creates a list of words in which some appear in the song and others do not. The student when listening to the song has to mark the words that belong to it.
The student must detect repetitions, or distinguish the refrain and write it down.
When listening to a specific sound effect, grammatical form or vocabulary word previously agreed upon, students must physically react with a gesture also agreed upon previously (give a pat, jump, crouch) Gestures can be agreed with student suggestions.
Musical Dictation: To each verse stops the audition and students must copy what they have heard. Instead of dictating the teacher, dictates the singer.
Reading comprehension and listening exercises while listening to the song: multiple choice exercises, true / false exercises, order previously separated phrases or stanzas, etc.
The text of the song is separated into different parts. The parts are placed on disordered cards. Students must reconstruct the letter by ordering the cards.
For each stanza, a photo or drawing that summarizes the idea or action is chosen. These misplaced drawings are presented below and the student must order them while listening to the song. As an alternative to the drawings you can use phrases that summarize the idea.
When listening to the song the student aims to understand the main topic and look for a title. ¾ A table or grill with different sections is prepared. Each section corresponds to a lexical field different from the words that appear in the song. Students must complete the table while listening to the song
The students have the lyrics at their disposal while they listen to the song. But for some words of the letter, two synonymous terms are proposed. Listening to the song the student must determine which of the two terms is the true one.
Students are asked to take the notes they deem appropriate during the audition to then ask their classmates questions about the content of the song.
Students are presented with a list of several word definitions. When listening to the song, they must relate these definitions to the words that they define in the song.
On several cards words are written that appear in the song and the cards are placed on a table. When listening to the song, students should take the cards as the words they contain appear in the song. The student who gets the most cards is the winner.
Third phase: Post-Audit
The post-audit activities include all that work after listening to the song related to the subject of the same. For a long time the only exercise that was done of this type were multiple-choice listening comprehension questions. However, the possibilities go much further and include activities focused on the use of grammar or vocabulary extension, comprehension and written expression skills, as well as oral production. And in this order we have made some sub-classifications.
Proposal of post-audit activities:
Grammar activities
Classify sentences according to their verbal aspect.
Separate the similar elements (lexical or grammatical) that make up different categories into lists, boxes or coloured cards.
Alter the text without changing its meaning: changes of verb tenses, of person, of places, complete dialogues, indirect style
Lexicon
Preparation of glossaries. They can be configured by encompassing the terms of the song that belong to the same lexical field and can be extended with proposals from the students. It is also very useful to make small sentences with each word.
Propose synonyms for certain words in the song.
Written expression.
Continue the story; What happens next? How does the story continue? Write reply letter, biography of protagonists
Invent new stanzas.
Create dialogues between characters in the song.
Write a review for a music magazine.
Create the biographies of the characters in the song, their résumés, etc.
Prepare an interview to the character of the song.
Prepare surveys and opinion polls on the subject of the song, the musical style, etc.
Rewrite the song with a different format.
Write a description of the sensations produced by the selected song.
Listening comprehension and oral production.
Edit a cassette with the songs selected by the class. It implies the negotiation for the order of the songs, the design of the covers, the composition of complementary texts, the design of an advertising campaign …
Design of a video-clip.
Comments or debates on the subject of the song.
Simulation games according to the theme or the characters of the song.
Conversation about what it is that makes this song seem English.
Make a fotonovela. Bring photo cameras to the class and ask them to make photos that illustrate the story of the song.
A final proposal that we would like to comment on as an activity of the post-assuming phase is the use of Karaoke. The karaoke consists in that on a monitor the lyrics of a song appear as a subtitle, synchronized with the melody of the song, highlighting each word of the text at the exact moment that it should be sung. This implies that there is no need to know the letter of memory since it can be read. As the artist's voice is absent, it motivates the student to sing. You can buy karaoke video tapes that are already prepared for that purpose. If we can not make our own versions of karaoke, we should use the Internet.
A priori may seem a contraption very far from the didactics of languages, but following we will talk about the benefits that can result in the learning of our students. Music with subtitles and lacking the voice of the artist fuses reading comprehension, listening comprehension and oral production. Following the song with the lyrics in a separate text hinders the reading and only when it is known from memory can the letter be followed without difficulty. The synchronized subtitle system allows the student to correctly associate sound / spelling. Karaoke saves even the obstacle of the native intonation in that the melody of the tongue is replaced by the musical melody. The modality without voice establishes a connection between reading comprehension and oral production: a text is reproduced, imitated, fixed, and the student's foreign accent is avoided. The pronunciation is captured in voice mode and is played in the voiceless mode.
It is an activity that motivates the student, because despite being an exercise based on repetition he feels a very pleasant sensation of creativity. And, in addition, it enjoys mnemonic qualities, since when chanting chains of correct words are memorized almost without effort. It also presents several alternatives for exploitation: it can be used with versions of the students by changing a word that the students suggest, provided that the rhythm of the song is respected; each group sings a verse; A small choreography can be included, etc. We must keep in mind that a song is really meant to be sung, not to perform exercises with it. Therefore, the ultimate goal is to sing. And karaoke gives us this possibility. But for success to be total, the teacher should get involved and sing with the students because if the student does not see the motivated teacher it will hardly motivate him. Some resources to encourage them to sing can be to download and upload the music to see if they sing; sing "a capella"; change and even exaggerate the tone of voice; create a small pseudo-choreography, etc. The result is a particularly enriching activity from the human and linguistic point of view since it offers the student the possibility of overturning all his sensitivity, his creative capacity and the fact of working in a harmonic way the verbal and non-verbal modes of communication.
3.5 Feedback and evaluation using songs and games
The evaluation that will be used in the present paper will be the same as that proposed by the law: global, continuous and formative. It will be global since all the learning of the students as a whole will be evaluated, in relation to each other. It will also be formative since, thanks to this process, the quality of the educational process and the role of the different components of this process will be known and valued. The nature of the evaluation will be procedural, since it will be carried out throughout the entire process. In this evaluation, in addition to the learning of the students, the process of E-A (materials, activities, etc …), the work of the teacher (to intervene, improve or change the educational practice) and the educational centre will also be evaluated.
Evaluation of teaching.
In this evaluation of the teaching, the programming of the teaching process and the intervention of the teacher will be evaluated. The evaluation of the teaching practice itself will be carried out through a self-assessment sheet, in which the teacher will reflect if he has achieved that the students overcome the different objectives, as well as the achievement of the objectives directed to the own teacher, the learning that has been done throughout the month, the difficulties arising in the development of the project to solve them in future situations, as well as possible ideas for improvement or modifications for the development of future projects
Learning Assessment
In the evaluation of the learning an initial evaluation will be carried out (before) to adapt the objectives and activities to the needs and previous knowledge of the students. A continuous and formative evaluation (during) to adjust the educational practice to the difficulties that arise, and, correct them, when necessary. And, finally, a summative evaluation (final) in which it will be observed if the student has achieved the proposed objectives, and, if not, to intervene, in an appropriate manner, for this to occur.
Evaluation criteria.
As evaluation criteria, the objectives set for the Project will be taken, to verify if the students and the teacher, or the teacher, have achieved those objectives, or, it is necessary to continue working in the classroom those aspects to reach their achievement.
Moments for the evaluation.
It will be evaluated before starting the project, during the start-up of the project, as well as at the end of it. All the moments in which the students are participating in the activities designed for the project will be taken advantage of, since they will be privileged moments to verify the achievement of the different objectives.
Evaluation instruments
. The main instrument of evaluation will be direct and systematic observation, you should be attentive at all times, not only to the learning that the student is acquiring or in what they have a greater difficulty, but also to the behaviours or feelings that occur throughout the EA process. Thanks to this continuous observation will be perceived the difficulties and progress of each of the students. Some of these instruments are:
A useful instrument to verify this observation will be the observation scale, mostly descriptive, in which we will capture the presence of the behaviours that we want to observe. or the anecdotal record in which the behaviours that are considered important will be described. This anecdotal record will establish a typical behaviour based on anecdotes that have been repeated over time, each anecdote or incident will be limited to a specific fact, and the necessary circumstances will be indicated for the information to be useful, then it will be recorded.
The class diary in which all the activities that the students will perform in the classroom will be recorded, as well as the characteristics that the students will present in their performance. Thanks to this diary the difficulties of the students will be known and a greater work of these aspects will be done, in this way it will try to achieve equal opportunities among the students, always taking into account their possibilities and limitations.
Finally, point out the importance of the evaluation activities that children will perform, to verify the achievement of compliance with the proposed objectives. The activities will gather the most important aspects of the Project, and they will reflect if they have really exceeded the proposed objectives, or, it is necessary a broader work of the aspects in which greater difficulties are appreciated, both individually and as a group.
The teacher will have an individual tracking record of each student, which will record everything that has relevance in their E / A process and possible consequences in their overall development, one of the main objectives pursued in early childhood education.
When using the different instruments and performing the evaluation, it will be necessary to go through the three levels: the descriptive level, the interpretative-reflective level (theory-practice), and, intervention for the new action plans (aspects that will require of an analysis and intervention).
3.6 Results of the research activity
Analyzing the results of the present research, starting with the first question, one could observe that 80% of the respondents gave a positive answer, while 20% of them said that they do not like how the English class unfolds.
Talking about the possession of an English textbook, of the 31 respondents, only 5% gave negative answers. In this respect, one may consider that five respondents either do not have financial possibilities or they are not interested in English class. In order to improve this aspect, the English teacher will make five photocopies to her textbook from her own funds and she will give them to those children.
Being interviewed about the most enjoyed activity during the English class, most of students preferred to listen to music, while respondents in the second place said that they would like to complete worksheets related to games. A third category of respondents enjoy listening to audio tales. Of all respondents, only 5 enjoyed to correct the homework.
Regarding the collaboration between students and their English teacher, 66% of the respondents agreed its level is a good one. At the opposite pole, 2% of them considered that they have an unsatisfactory collaboration.
Being interviewed about what they would like to improve, 52% of students considered that school’s material basis needs amelioration, while only 6% agreed that their English teacher’s behaviour towards them should be improved. In this regard, both school and teacher will make efforts in order to offer students a more effective pedagogical framework.
At activity level, in students’ opinion, there are many types of activities that the English teacher should organize. This way, children would prefer more songs and games activities (36%), thematic days (28%), smartboard activities (15%), training for different English contests (12%) and bingo games (9%). In children’s opinion, is essential the English teacher to be very creative and close to their needs.
When the English teacher evaluates the secondary school students, the most important element is their creativity (from the point of view of 35% students) . Creativity is followed by student’s logic (20%), their ability to communicate (15%), the initiative (13%), the accuracy of information (9%) and their thorough learning (8%).
On a scale from 1 to 10, most of respondents evaluated at the maximum values (9 and 10) their English teacher’s efficiency in teaching, while other students evaluated at medium values (7 and 8). In this respect, one may observe that the English teacher is effective, but sometimes, he/ she may need to improve his/ her way of teaching.
When secondary school students were asked about the songs and games used during classes, 14 of them considered they are appropriate for children age, while 9 of them said that they are very useful. From all 31 respondents,2 of them considered the songs and games to be hard to sing or play.
In secondary school students’ opinion, the best aspect about English songs and games classes is that the English songs and games stimulate their creative potential (55%). Also, 23% of the students agreed that they can learn English.
The majority of interviewed secondary school students (13) considered that nothing is worst about English classes. Different from them, 10 students agreed that time is too short and 6 complained about the multitude of grammar expressions and about the existence of noise in the classroom.
Analyzing if students consider that their communicative abilities were improved on the strength of English songs and games activities, 13 of them agreed that they improved to a very great extent, 9 – to a great extent, 5- to a satisfactory extent, 3- to a small extent and 1- not at all. In this context, the English teacher will try to integrate that 1 child in other groups where he can achieve important information as others can do, while for the others, the teacher will improve their abilities by means of different class and extracurricular activities.
For a percentage of 52% of students, listening and conversation during songs and games classes seem to be the most interesting parts of an English class. Also, grammar an vocabulary are preferred by 44% of secondary school students, while 4% do not know what answer to give about the most interesting part of an English class.
60% of the interviewed respondents are 14 years old, 25% of them are 13 years old and 15 of them are 15 years old. In this respect, one may observe that they study in the VIIIth grade.
Talking about interviewed student’s gender, 54% of them were girls, while 46% were boys.
CONCLUSIONS
After completing this work I have come to the conclusion about those basic aspects of education that still have little use in the classroom. First, I would like to mention the great difficulties that exist due to the lack of bibliography regarding music and games as a educational tools. Therefore, I think it is convenient to reflect on the part of the teachers themselves, who should performed it. This makes me think that this proposal is little known in the educational field being a backwardness in the process of English Learning itself, since when observing the existence of few experiences in educational centres, besides being the majority of foreigners, it makes you question the need of a washing of the image of the educational process itself. In spite of this, if it is true of the existence of centres, which have initiated this proposal with positive results in the teaching process. The fact that educational centres pay attention to innovative projects with this, makes one visualize a positive connection of education itself with today's society. Secondly, I would like to ponder the innumerable advantages of the use of children's songs in the educational process. The songs provide fundamental work methods for children's own evolutionary development. Its use as a tool makes working with basic aspects such as eating habits in a rich and positive way, the conflict appears when a teacher does not implement this proposal, stops perceiving these attitudes. Initially the project can be crazy, but little by little when it is taking shape the teacher is realizing the implementation of all the fundamental aspects of a child's education (habits, language, social, playful one).
Of course, this type of proposal involves more work to the teacher, in relation to regular work. Organizing and creating a new didactic proposal, intertwining the educational values with the children's own songs is not something that is done quickly, which is why many teachers find it hard to give the push in their involvement, but the result in the students themselves is worth it. As a final reflection, mention that this work gives me great educational values at the same time of the need to be constantly innovating for the educational benefit of the students themselves, as teachers we must give the best of ourselves proposing aspects as beneficiary as this project or even improve existing ones that are becoming obsolete due to the time that has elapsed. A teacher has to be motivated and willing to do everything, leaving aside the traditional idea of school betting on a more equitable and true school.
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ANNEXES
QUESTIONNAIRE
Choose one response or complete the empty spaces with an appropriate one. The questionnaire has anonymous and the data below are necessary to a study. Thank you for your cooperation!
Do you like how the English class unfolds?
Yes
No
Do you have an English textbook?
Yes
No
What activity do you enjoy most during the English lessons?
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
How do you appreciate the collaboration between you and your English teacher?
Very good
Good
Satisfactory
Unsatisfactory
You are allowed to choose one or more answers. You would like to improve:
Your English teacher’s behaviour towards you
School’s material basis
The collaboration between you and the English teacher
Other……………….
What other activities would you like to be organized by your English teacher?
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
What do you think it is important for the English teacher when he/she evaluates the students?
the initiative
the creativity
the logic
the accuracy of information
the ability to communicate
thorough learning
something else
On a scale from 1 to 10, how do you appreciate how effective your English teacher is?
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
What do you think about the English songs and games during classes?
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Which is the best aspect about English songs and games classes?
The English teacher uses innovative methods
I can learn English
I can learn about new cultures
English songs and games stimulates my creative potential
Other………………………………………….
Which is the worst aspect about English songs and games classes?
There are a lot of grammar expressions
Time is too short
There is noise in the classroom
The teacher is not effective
Nothing
Other…………………………………………………
Do you consider that your communicative abilities improved on the strength of English songs and games classes activity?
To a very great extent
To a great extent
To a satisfactory extent
To a small extent
Not at all
Which seems to be the most interesting part of an English class?
Grammar and vocabulary
Listening and conversation during songs and games classes
I don’t know
How old are you?
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Are you a boy or a girl?
Boy
Girl
Thank you!
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