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Music in the Foreign Language Classroom: How
and Why?
Pauline Degrave
UCLouvain, Belgium
Abstract—Despite a positive attitude towards the use of music in the foreign language classroom, teachers
rarely integrate music into their lessons. Studies suggest two main explanations for this discrepancy: a limited
knowledge of adapted material and a lack of theoretical grounding to support the use of music in the foreign
language classroom. This article aims at examining how and why music can be used in the foreign language
classroom. The first section describes some musical methodologies frequently used for language acquisition
over time and provides references to resources containing music-based exercises for foreign language learning.
The second part reviews research studies about the potential benefits of music-related methodologies for
language acquisition and for specific linguistic skills.
Index Terms—music, songs, foreign language teaching, methodology
I. INTRODUCTION: TEACHERS’ ATTITUDE AND PRACTICE
Teachers are mostly positive about the incorporation of music in foreign language (FL) classes. In different surveys
(Engh, 2013a; Jamoulle, 2017; Tse, 2015), teachers mentioned that they believe music can be beneficial for foreign
language acquisition, for language skills as for motivational or cultural aspects. They also indicate that it creates a good,
enjoyable, relaxing atmosphere and that it lowers stress levels or affective filters. Despite this positive attitude, the use
of music in the language-learning classroom appears to be rather occasional. Through an online questionnaire about the
practices of foreign language teachers in 2005-2006 compared to 2013-2014, Ludke & Morgan (forthcoming) examined
if the increased scientific interest in research about music and FL learning has been reflected in the extent and the ways
teachers from different countries use music in the classroom. They reported that the actual use of music has not notably
changed between the two periods and that songs were mainly used with young beginners. This was also stated by
Jamoulle (2017) who examined the incorporation of music in English classrooms in Brussels Secondary French-
speaking schools. From a sample of 54 teachers, she found that music was not often incorporated in the English
classroom and that, if it was, music was mostly used as a fun activity.
Two main reasons could explain ‘the lack of crossover between stated teacher attitudes and stated teacher present
classroom practice’ (Engh, 2013a). First, adequate material is not always easy to find. In his paper, Tse (2015, p. 88)
mentions that more than 60% of the surveyed teachers (N=60) claim that they ‘do not have enough resources’, that
‘there are inadequate song materials’, and that they ‘find it arduous to find suitable songs for classroom use’ (Tse, 2015,
p.88). Creating new musical material can however be very challenging for teachers (Engh, 2013): lyrics of existing
songs are not always appropriate, developing materials requires additional preparation time and leading singing,
creating music or encouraging students to sing are for some teachers not so comfortable. Secondly, teachers sometimes
lack theoretical grounding that could help guide the decision to use music in the classroom. In this regard, Engh (2013b)
states that:
[…] while many teachers intuitively felt music was beneficial in teaching English language, there was also the
perception that there was a lack of understanding of the theoretical underpinnings that supported such a choice.
Therefore, some educators felt unable to defend the decision to champion use of music in the classroom to
administrators, business English students or those in a predominantly exam focused environment (p.113).
All in all, teachers seem to be positive about the use of music in the FL classroom, but the incorporation appears
rather occasional. A lack of resources and a lack of theoretical grounding could explain this discrepancy. In order to
remedy this scarcity of information, this paper aims to state how music can be used in the FL classroom by describing
some methods and by giving some resources, and why music can benefit foreign language learning by reviewing
research about the impact of music-related methods on FL acquisition
II. HOW CAN MUSIC BE USED IN THE FL CLASSROOM? SOME METHODS AND RESOURCES
When we review the literature about the use of music in the FL classroom, it appears that music-related teaching
methods can be classified in three main categories: the use of music without lyrics (sounds or background music), the
use of songs and the use of rhythmical activities. The following section gives a short description of these different
approaches, and provides references to resources containing exercises to use these music-related methods in the FL
classroom.
ISSN 1798-4769
Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 412-420, May 2019
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/jltr.1003.02
© 2019 ACADEMY PUBLICATION
A. Sounds and Background Music
Different linguists and researchers have advocated that listening to non-linguistic sounds or having background
music during a task could enhance performance, among others at the linguistic level.
In Tomatis’ methods, active listening to sounds is supposed to train the ear to perceive specific frequencies. Alfred
Tomatis, an otolaryngologist, stated that ‘the voice only contains what the ear hears’ (Tomatis, 1991, p. 210), which
implies that one can only vocally reproduce what one can hear. For Tomatis, this is also relevant for the perception of
foreign languages: he claims that languages have different frequency ranges, which makes the perception and
production of a language with a large frequency range impossible for a native speaker of a language with a short
frequency range (Tomatis, 1991, p. 129-137). In order to establish or re-establish the full potential of the human ear, he
developed the ‘Electronic Ear’. With this ear, participants can hear music (often Mozart) or speech, whose sound has
been modified to train the ear to correctly hear sound, in particular high-frequency sounds. Thanks to the listening to
modified sounds and classical music, ‘the adult learner recovers the ear s/he possessed in childhood and is able to hear
correctly the appropriate foreign-language sounds’ (Brancroft, 1999, p. 212). This methodology has also been used in
other fields than foreign language acquisition (e.g. to treat dyslexia, autism, motor or attention disorders), has often
been criticized, and has been subjected to many meta-analyses (Corbett, Shickman, & Ferrer, 2008; Gilmor, 1999).
Besides this active listening to specific sounds, non-lyrical music has been played in the background to improve
language skills. In the late 1960s, Lozanov (1978) developed the Suggestopedia methodology which made use of
classical music in order to relax the student’s state of mind and make the brain more receptive to learning: while the
teacher reads, music – often baroque – was played in the background (Brancroft, 1999; Lozanov, 1978). In the 1990s,
the popular media widely spread the ‘Mozart Effect’: listening to Mozart would make you smarter. This popular belief
derives mainly from a scientific study which tested the effect of listening to music on IQ spatial reasoning tasks
(Rauscher, Shaw, & Ky, 1993). Participants were given three sets of IQ spatial reasoning tasks, each preceded by either
listening to Mozart, or to a relaxation tape or to silence. Results showed that participants ‘performed better on the
abstract/spatial reasoning tests after listening to Mozart than after listening to either the relaxation tape or to nothing’
(Rauscher et al., 1993, p. 611). Journalists reported these results stating that ‘listening to Mozart actually makes you
smarter’ (Ross, 1994). This popular misinterpretation led to many new studies on the impact of Mozart or other
instrumental music on cognitive tasks. Even if there is little evidence left for a specific performance-enhancing Mozart
effect (Pietschnig, Voracek, & Formann (2010), Steele, Bass, & Crook (1999), Thompson, Schellenberg, & Husain
(2001)), background instrumental music, in general, seems to affect learning (e.g. foreign language vocabulary (de
Groot, 2006)). Today, thanks to the new imaging technology, researchers can anatomically analyze whether background
music can improve abilities and which specific process is affected and how. With this objective in mind, Ferreri,
Aucouturier, Muthalib, Bigand, & Bugaiska (2013) examined the neurological process when background music is
played during the encoding of a verbal memory task. Music facilitated the retrieval of the encoded material and results
suggest that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a region known to be usually crucial during memory encoding
processes, was deactivated during word encoding in the musical context, and that music helps verbal encoding by
facilitating associative and organizational processes.
B. Songs
Another and more frequent way of integrating music into the foreign language classroom is the use of songs. This
utilization has evolved over time to become a multi-level and multi-skills methodology. From the 1950s through the
1970s, songs were sometimes used with the Audiolingual Method, which is an ‘approach in the teaching of foreign
languages based on a system of drills in which the student repeats or adapts model sentences delivered orally or played
aloud by the teacher’ (Oxford English Dictionary). In this approach, singing songs made the repetitive drills possible,
since songs contain redundancy, and at the same time reduced the boredom of this drill method (Kanel, 2000). When
some language teaching approaches became more pervasive, such as the communicative language teaching and the
task-based language teaching, ‘there was a sudden demand for pedagogical material for the use of songs in the
language-learning classroom’ (Engh, 2013b, p. 113). Different teachers developed their own FL teaching approaches
including songs, such as the Contemporary Music Approach of Anton (1990), which uses songs to train grammar skills
or the Melodic Approach of Mora (2000), which uses songs and melodic emphasis on language. Except for these
specific methodologies, songs can be used in many different ways in the FL classroom, whether using the song as such,
the context, the singer, etc.
C. Rhythmical Activities
Teachers sometimes intuitively use music-teaching methods to train oral FL production. For example, they clap their
hands to emphasize the rhythm of the speech, they make gestures that illustrate the speech intonation, they annotate
written sentences to indicate the position of the stress as in a music score, etc. Some of these intuitive rhythmical
activities have been formalized. For example, Graham (1993), an English teacher, linked the rhythms of spoken
American English to the rhythms of traditional American jazz, creating the Jazz Chants. These chants are rhythmic
presentations of natural American English that emphasize natural stress and intonation. The same kind of rhythmic
presentation exists for Dutch, with the Taalriedels (Deen, Van Veen, & Schutte, 2014) or Taalraps (Verboog & Ader,
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2016), short rap-songs with useful everyday language. In French, Llorca (2008) developed a similar method in her
Ritmimot, which emphasizes French rhythm and prosody.
D. Useful References with Music-based Exercises for FL Classes
Table 1 lists references to different resources that contain exercises using music or rhythm for foreign language
teaching. The table mentions the kind of resources (e.g. book, article, website…), gives a short description of the
resource, and details the target language, the skills and the level of the resource.
TABLE I
REFERENCES TO RESOURCES CONTAINING EXERCISES USING MUSIC FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING
Reference
Kind of
resource
Short description
Target
language
Skills
Level
Background music
or songs
Griffee
(1992)
Book
Description of activities using
songs or instrumental music to
learn a foreign language
English
Vocabulary,
listening, writing
Varia
Murphey
(1992)
Book
Description of 85 activities about
songs. Section ‘Just music’
describes activities with
background music
English, but can
be used for
other languages
Varia
Low to
advanced
Songs
Arnold &
Herrick
(2016)
Book
Collection of 101 adaptable
activities
English
Reading, writing,
listening, speaking,
grammar,
vocabulary, cultural
exploration
Varia
British Council
– Songs for kids
https://learneng
lishkids.britishc
ouncil.org/en/so
ngs
Website
Animated and subtitled songs
with activities
English
Varia
Children
de Vries & van
Loo
(2004)
Book
Songs written for FL learners,
with typical structures,
collocations, intonation patterns.
The book contains different
exercises using the songs
Dutch
Varia
Mainly
beginners
Génération
française
https://www.lepl
aisirdapprendre
.com/portfolio/c
hansons-
generation-
francaise
Website
17 pedagogical forms, each based
on a popular French song
French
Varia
A2-C1
Lennaert & de
Bonski’s
http://www.bons
ki.be/
Book &
CD
Songs written for FL learners.
Each song is accompanied by
specific pronunciation exercises
Dutch
Pronunciation/
prosody
A1/B1
Lorenzutti
(2014)
Journal
article
Description of 7 activities using
authentic songs
Varia
Varia
Varia
Ludke
(2009)
Workboo
k, online
available
10 lessons using authentic songs,
each focusing on one specific
skill
French, but can
be used for
other languages
Reading, writing,
listening; speaking;
vocabulary;
pronunciation;
grammar; culture
Varia
Lyrics Training
lyricstraining.c
om
Website/
App
Fill-in exercises with songs
Varia
Varia
Low to
advanced
Mishan
(2005)
Book
Book about the use of authentic
material in the FL classroom. One
chapter is about music and
contains theory, followed by
some exercises (pp. 207-2013)
English, but can
be used for
other languages
Varia
Varia
Tefl Tunes
https://tefltunes.
com
Website
Ready made ESL song lessons
(! some are not free)
English
Varia
Low to
advanced
Rhythmical
activities
Briet, Collige,
& Rassart
(2014)
Book
Theory about pronunciation,
followed by pedagogical forms
using rhythmic and music-related
activities
French
Speaking (prosody/
consonants/ vowels)
A1-B2
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Deen, Van
Veen, &
Schutte (2014)
Book &
CD
Rap songs with typical sentences
about many topics
Dutch
Pronunciation &
vocabulary (phrases)
Low to
advanced
Graham
(1993)
Book
Rhythmic presentation of
American English
English
Pronunciation
Varia
Lorca, R.
https://www.you
tube.com/user/rl
lorca100
Online
video’s
with
games
Video’s explaining short games
using gestures and voice about
the rhythm of French
French
Pronunciation,
intonation
Beginners
Verboog &
Ader
(2016)
Book &
CD
60 rap songs about specific topics
Each song is accompanied by an
activity (speaking, writing,
grammar…)
Dutch
Mainly
pronunciation
(phonemes/intonatio
n), but also grammar
Low to
advanced
III. WHY SHOULD MUSIC BE USED IN THE FL CLASSROOM? BENEFITS OF MUSIC USE ON FOREIGN LANGUAGE
ACQUISITION
Besides a lack of resources, teachers seem also to need some theoretical grounding about the effect of musical
methodology on FL acquisition. Research reveals that music can be beneficial for foreign language acquisition, both for
specific linguistic skills (e.g. vocabulary, listening skills or pronunciation) as for more general aspects, such as
motivation or attention.
A. Non-linguistic Aspects
Several factors have been stated to influence (language) learning, such as motivation (R. C. Gardner & Lambert,
1972), anxiety (Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope, 1986), personality (Gardner, 1983), etc. The use of music can have an
impact on many of these factors, which will in turn affect foreign language acquisition.
According to Mora (2000), one non-linguistic benefit of using music in the classroom concerns the learning styles.
As Gardner (1983) pointed out, there exist multiple intelligences: people have different types of intelligences and learn
in different ways. In this context, the teacher should vary activities to develop the different intelligences. Using songs
makes it possible to address the musical intelligence. Second, using music can reduce foreign language anxiety. It is a
proven fact that a feeling of nervousness or apprehension in learning a foreign language is linked with poor foreign
language performance (MacIntyre & Gardner, 1991). Dolean & Dolean (2014) and Dolean (2016) analyzed the impact
of using songs on foreign language anxiety. They concluded that teaching with songs decreased foreign language
anxiety, especially for students with rather high anxiety. As Engh (2013) mentions, ‘music lowers affective barriers and
assists in making students more relaxed, thereby more receptive to language learning’ (p. 117). Third, music in the
classroom can increase motivation. Since ‘authentic materials are a motivating force for learners’ (Gilmore, 2007),
music, which is an authentic activity, and songs, which use authentic texts and language of native speakers, can support
the motivating factor (Mishan, 2005). Fourth, the use of music can sustain attention: Wolfe & Noguchi (2009) observed
that the participants in their study were more attentive, focused and engaged when listening to a musical story compared
to a spoken story. Finally, the use of music and songs in the FL teaching methods provides cultural knowledge of the
target language: the context, the singer, the musical style, etc. are culturally rich resources for language lessons.
B. Linguistic Aspects
Many studies examined the potential benefit of music-based FL materials on different language skills, such as
vocabulary acquisition, listening comprehension, writing skills or phonetic acquisition. The following section reviews
the main results.
1. Vocabulary
The potential effect of musical FL teaching methodology on vocabulary recall has been analyzed in several studies.
Results are given for the three main approaches, namely music in the background, songs and rhythmical activities.
De Groot (2006) analyzed the effect of background music on vocabulary recall. 36 university students were
presented several times L1 – FL pairs of words, followed by different vocabulary recall tests. Half of the students
learned the pairs in silence and the other half learned while a Bach’s concerto played in the background. Recall scores
were higher for the musical condition compared to the silent condition.
Concerning the use of songs in the FL classroom, Murphey (1990) argues that songs could help to easily remember
vocabulary or phrases: this author stated that the ‘involuntary mental rehearsal’ (i.e. a ‘phenomenon occurring after a
period of contact with a foreign language in which the new information repeats without the speaker’s intentional effort’
(Salcedo, 2010, p. 22) exists - and is even stronger - with songs. He argues that the rehearsal of language from music,
the Song Stuck in My Head Phenomenon, may be triggered with a much smaller amount of input time. Different class
intervention experiments confirm this phenomenon. In Medina (1990), participants having heard a sung story obtain
higher scores on a multiple choice vocabulary test than participants who heard a spoken story. Similar results were
found by Salcedo (2010) who observed that text recall was better when students heard a recorded song, than when
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students heard a recorded spoken version of the song. Legg (2009) tested the impact of the song on text recall through
an active production of the students: participants had either to rehearse and perform a musical version of a poem or
either to answer questions and play memory games. Results show that the students in the musical condition obtain
higher results on a translation task than the students in the non-musical situation. However, contradictory evidence was
found in other studies. In order to examine word recall in the mother tongue, Racette & Peretz (2007) tested university
students in three conditions: either they heard the song and they repeated singing, either they heard the song and they
repeated speaking, either they heard the spoken lyrics and they repeated speaking. Unexpectedly, participants recalled
fewer words when singing than when speaking, whereas the presentation mode (song or spoken lyrics) had no influence
on lyric recall. The authors concluded that ‘the best strategy for learning song lyrics is to ignore the melody. The
melody seems to interfere rather than facilitate word recall in songs […]’(Racette & Peretz, 2007, p. 250). As Ludke,
Ferreira, & Overy (2014) write ‘one possible explanation for this unexpected result is that the folk songs used by
Racette and Peretz had complex, nonrepetitive melodic lines’ (p.43). Furthermore, a non-beneficial effect of songs was
also found by Kilgour et al. (2000). They tested lyrics recall with sung lyrics and spoken lyrics. They first observed
better recall with the sung than with the spoken version. In a second experiment, they manipulated the presentation rate,
so that the duration of the sung and the spoken versions were identical. They found that with an equal presentation rate,
there was no advantage for sung over spoken lyrics and suggested that ‘[P]previous findings of melody's aiding text
recall may be attributed to presentation rate’ (Kilgour et al., 2000, p. 700).
Regarding the impact of rhythmic activities, the experimental study of Ludke, Ferreira, & Overy (2014) gives
interesting results. They analyzed vocabulary learning in three listen-and-repeat conditions: participants heard either
sung phrases, rhythmic spoken phrases or spoken phrases. A significant difference between the sung/rhythmical and
spoken conditions was found for the tests in which the participants had to speak in the foreign language (Hungarian),
although performance was highest in the sung condition for all tests.
2. Writing fluency
Alisaari & Heikkola (2016) analyzed whether writing fluency, viz. the number of words produced in a written text,
can be influenced by musical pedagogical methods. In this classroom intervention study, students heard different sung
or spoken versions of songs seven times during 15 minutes. The first group just listened to the sung songs, the second
listened and sung the song and the third listened to a spoken version of the songs and recited them. At the end of these
seven sessions, as in the pretest, students wrote two stories, based on comic strips. The authors observed that the
number of words produced increased more in the singing group than in the reciting or listening group, but the
differences were not significant.
3. Listening abilities
Kanel (1997) examined whether song based tasks would be as effective at improving listening comprehension in a
standard listening test as conventional listening tasks. During this classroom intervention, one group of 10 classes heard
regularly songs and made gap-fill quizzes while the other group of 10 other classes was taught listening with
nonmusical materials, such as textbooks. The results indicate significant improvement for both groups, but neither
treatment was more effective than the other. Furthermore, the participants answered a follow-up questionnaire about the
learning methods. Even if there was little variation between both groups about the educational benefits of the respective
listening training, it seems that the regular practice, the value in time spent on the quizzes and the interest in English
were higher in the song group.
Another important listening skill in foreign language acquisition is the ability to segment speech into words. Schön et
al. (2008) performed an experiment to determine whether songs can help learners segment foreign language speech.
One group heard a continuous spoken stream of syllables, a second group heard a continuous sung stream of syllables
with an association syllable/pitch (e.g. syllable gi = C), a third group also heard a continuous sung stream of syllables
but without association syllable/pitch. After this training phase, they heard words and had to mention whether these
were present in the stream that they have heard. The percentage correct responses was the highest for the group who
heard the sung stream with an association syllable/pitch and the lowest for the group who heard the spoken stream.
4. Phonetic skills
Different studies examined the impact of musical FL methodologies on phonetic skills, both at the segmental and
suprasegmental level.
At the segmental level, Lakshminarayanan & Tallal (2007) analyzed whether phoneme discrimination can be trained
by listening to stimuli which are non-linguistic but which imitate the acoustic characteristics of linguistic stimuli.
Therefore, they tested 19 students divided in a training and a control group. The pre- and posttests were same/different
tasks for pairs of stimuli (e.g. ba/da). During the training period (30min per day during five days), the training group
heard pairs of frequency modulated sweeps rising or falling in pitch. The participants had to mention the order of the
falling and rising sweeps. Observing a significant improvement in ba/da discrimination for the training group,
Lakshminarayanan & Tallal (2007, p. 270) concluded that ‘non-linguistic acoustic perceptual training can impact
syllable discrimination’.
Moradi & Shahrokhi (2014) examined the impact of using songs on both segmental and suprasegmental production.
During 25 sessions of 20 minutes, the musical group listened to songs with music, repeated and memorized them,
whereas the control group listened to spoken versions of the songs, repeated and memorized them. The results of the
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pre- and posttest – in which participants read aloud words and sentences of the songs in a new context – indicate that
the pronunciation of phonemes, the intonation, and the stress patterns were better for the musical group than for the
control group.
Different researchers tested the efficacy of music use on FL suprasegmental abilities. Degrave (submitted) examined
whether melodies or rhythm can help French-speaking university students to perceive lexical stress in Dutch. 46 French
speakers (25 non-musicians and 21 musicians) performed a discrimination task in which stimuli were either naturally
spoken, either spoken with a beat on the stress, either sung. Scores were higher for the sung stimuli and for the spoken
stimuli with a beat, compared to the spoken stimuli. Heidari-Shahreza & Moinzadeh (2012) focused on the impact of
listening to melodies on stress perception. Participants were divided into two groups and were taught four stress patterns
of two- and three-syllable English words1 . The experimental group heard first musical stimuli that are acoustically
similar to word stress patterns (see Figure 1 for an example).
Figure 1 Musical stimulus acoustically similar to a two-syllable word with the stress on the 2nd syllable
After having heard the musical stimuli, the related target words (e.g. Japan, hotel) were introduced and practiced2.
This procedure was repeated for the four stress patterns. The control group listened first to each group of target words,
then the placement of the primary stress was indicated and finally, the participants repeated the target words. After a
short diversion activity, participants heard sets of four words and mentioned which has a different stress pattern. The
experimental group obtained significantly higher results than the control group. A more detailed description of the
methodology used would be needed to correctly evaluate the findings reported in this paper.
Finally, Fomina (2000) examined how the quality of the songs can impact the acquisition of FL intonation. In her
study, participants heard songs that had either concurrent or non-concurrent melody with natural speech intonation. For
example, in the song ‘Tom’s diner’, some melodic lines have a falling intonation, whereas the spontaneous speech
intonation should rise (e.g. before a subordinate clause). Participants, who had to reproduce lyrics from the songs in
another context, reproduced the phrases with the intonation of the song, even if it was wrong. Fomina (2000) concluded
that ‘there exists a certain influence of song melody on speech intonation memorization’ and that ‘song material for
teaching and developing different language skills should be carefully selected’.
5. Various skills (vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, listening comprehension)
Some researchers measured the impact of their musical classroom interventions on different FL skills.
Ludke (2016) conducted a study in two classrooms of English speakers learning French. One group had French
lessons that integrated different musical activities, such as creating (rap) songs, singing, listening to music, creating and
performing a musical theatre piece. The other group received French lessons that were supplemented with visual art and
drama activities, e.g. exercises with pictures, drawing, reading cartoons, write and record a script for a dramatic play.
The pre- and posttests measured 12 language skills, as described in Figure 2.
Figure 2 Description of tasks on the pre-and posttests (Ludke, 2016, p.7)
Similar results between the two groups were found for productive vocabulary (task 2), receptive vocabulary with a
picture-matching task (task 5) and grammaticality judgments when reading (task 8). The music group obtained lower
scores than the visual art group for their pronunciation when reading aloud a list of words (task 6), a slightly higher
1 The four patterns are: 1. two-syllable words, stress on the 1st ; 2. two-syllable words, stress on the 2nd; 3. three-syllable words, stress on the 1st ; 4.
three-syllable words, stress on the 2nd.
2 The authors do not describe what ‘introduce’ and ‘practice’ exactly imply.
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score for the pronunciation of individual words from photographs (difference of 1.3% - task 3), but got higher scores
than the visual art group for the seven other tasks.
Good, Russo, & Sullivan (2015) investigated the effect of a classroom intervention on the pronunciation of phonemes
and vocabulary recall. Two groups were trained during four sessions of 20 minutes. The singing group heard a song,
repeated the song singing and translated words; the spoken group heard a text, repeated the text and translated words.
After the training sessions, the participants took part in four tests: 1. a pronunciation test in which they reproduced the
lyrics (singing or speaking), 2. a vocabulary recall test in which they mentioned as many words as they could, 3. a
vocabulary translation test which consisted in the translation of given words and 4. a test 6 months after the training in
which students had to recall the lyrics and translate words. Results showed that the singing and spoken group equally
performed for the pronunciation of consonants and for the translation of words after 6 months. The singing group
outperformed the spoken group for the other tasks (pronunciation of vowels, recall, and translation on short term).
IV. DISCUSSION
The present article aimed to provide information about how and why music can be used in the FL classroom, since
studies revealed that the discrepancy between the teachers’ positive attitude toward music use in the FL classroom and
its limited actual use could be explained by a lack of resources and a lack of theoretical grounding.
The first section provided a short review of music-related methods used in the FL classroom over time. Three main
approaches have been described, namely listening to non-linguistic sounds or background music, practicing lyrical
songs and using rhythmical activities. Moreover, some references to resources were gathered in order to provide
teachers with adapted material to use music in their FL classes.
The second section examined why music can be beneficial for foreign language acquisition. Studies reveal a positive
effect on general learning aspects, such as increased motivation and attention, reduced anxiety and cultural enrichment
as well as on different linguistic skills. In terms of linguistic improvement, some results state that foreign language
performance was higher when methodologies incorporated music, either in the background, through songs or in musical
and rhythmical activities, than when no music or other artistic intervention was used. These findings are promising for
both teachers and learners: using music for foreign language acquisition would have numerous learning and linguistic
benefits and has not to be simply reduced to a ‘fun activity’.
Despite these positive results, it seems that empirical research about the relation between music-related
methodologies and FL acquisition is still in its recent years. Hence, there is little published data for some skills or there
is contradictory evidence between studies. For example, concerning vocabulary acquisition, Legg (2009), Medina (1990)
and Salcedo (2010) reported higher vocabulary scores in the musical groups compared to the control groups, whereas
Kilgour et al. (2000) and Racette & Peretz (2007) did not observe any advantage in the musical condition or stated a
musical benefit explained by the presentation rate. More research would be needed to enlighten these findings and to
fulfill results about other skills, such as listening comprehension, phonetic proficiency or writing skills. In this respect,
Ludke (2016) points out: ‘To date, relatively few published, empirical studies have investigated the effects of FL
learning through singing and song activities in the classroom, particularly for grammar or pronunciation skills’ (p. 2).
In addition to the need for further research, the present findings must be interpreted with caution. Most studies
reviewed here were comparisons or correlational studies. Inferring causation would thereby be unfounded. Such as
described in the article, many external factors could explain the improvement of foreign language abilities with musical
intervention, e.g. reduced anxiety or the increase of motivation and attention.
Finally, the question arises whether musical methodologies are adapted for every language learner. Personality,
hobbies, and interests can positively or negatively interfere with the use of music for foreign language acquisition. For
example, De Groot, (2006) reports findings of Furnham & Allass (1999) that stated that introvert persons performed
better in observation or recall tasks in silence condition, whereas extraverts ‘generally performed better in the music
condition’ (de Groot, 2006, p. 496). Musical training or aptitude could also be an influential factor. Many studies
revealed a better performance of musicians compared to non-musicians in language tasks (for a review see Chobert &
Besson (2013) and Magne, Schön, & Besson (2003)). In Degrave (submitted), results show that musicians benefit more
from the use of melodies or rhythm for word stress detection, compared to non-musicians.
In summary, even if research about the use of music in the foreign language classroom is still in its recent years, this
paper contributes to our understanding of FL methodology, giving different ways and resources to use music in the
classroom and showing that music can benefit some foreign language skills. Teachers have now to carefully choose,
structure and sequence their musical material and methodology in order to fully take benefit from the music-based
lessons.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author thanks Prof. Dr. Philippe Hiligsmann as well as the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments
about the previous version of this paper.
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Pauline Degrave graduated in Modern Languages and Letters at UCLouvain (Belgium) in 2009 and specialized in university and
higher education pedagogy in 2013 and in secondary school pedagogy in 2017.
She is currently completing her Ph.D. at UCLouvain in Dutch language and linguistics. Her main interests include foreign
language acquisition (especially Dutch) and the relationship between music and language. More particularly, she conducts research
about the influence of musical practice or ability on the acquisition of foreign language prosody and on the use of music in the
foreign language classroom. Next to her research activities, she taught Dutch as a foreign language at Université Saint-Louis and at
UCLouvain (2010-2019). She published several research papers and Dutch handbooks. She is currently also working as project
manager at UCLouvain for a project around language learning.
Pauline Degrave is member of the board of the ANBF (the association of professors of Dutch in French-speaking Belgium and in
France) and she received the ACCO Prize 2009 for Best Innovative Research in Applied Linguistics.
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