DEVIATING FROM LINGUISTIC CORRECTNESS IN THE AUTHENTIC INPUT OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM

Maja Žarković Mccray,Maja Kujundžić,Žana Gavrilović

doi:10.46827/ejlll.v5i3.292

Maja Žarković Mccray, Maja Kujundžić + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.46827/ejlll.v5i3.292

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Abstract

Students often lack the desired authentic input in the classrooms and that is why they so often expose themselves to it by watching films, TV series or listening to popular music. This inspired our research and we decided to analyze the errors that can be found in the authentic input, which is a frequent occurrence in songs. The aim of this paper is to analyze the most popular songs at the moment, precisely those with more than one billion views on YouTube, and to answer the question if the most popular music in the world is in some way a reliable authentic input tool. We were primarily focused in our analysis on basic rules of syntax in lyrics. In the end, we analyzed 164 songs where 91 songs were linguistically correct and 73 songs linguistically incorrect. It means that more than 55 percent is correct and 44 percent incorrect. After analytic, descriptive and statistical analysis of incorrect songs, we came to a total of 230 errors divided into three categories: sentence structure (97 errors), subject-verb agreement (80 errors) and multiple negations (53 errors). We conclude that the most popular music is definitely the valuable and interesting tool, but linguistically not the reliable authentic input tool without incorporating it into classroom teaching and learning which can together with grammars, course books, dictionaries and other more reliable means for studying English influence a positive learning environment, students’ motivation and correct linguistic ‘feel’.  Article visualizations:<img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0843/a.php" alt="Hit counter" />

Highlights

Intercultural speakers are persons who have managed to settle for the in-between and who know and can participate in both their native culture and in foreign one (House 2007: 19)
The learners, usually in a foreign language context, lack the opportunities to face authentic input and chances for interaction outside the classroom (Martinez–Flor 2007: 245). It is very difficult for those learners who try to acquire English and at the same time live in countries where English is not officially spoken to be more exposed to the language they are trying to acquire (Bley–Vroman 1999: 25). That is why they turn to alternative means of broadening their knowledge or just exposing themselves to it.ii They can face authentic input by watching films, TV series or listening to music and in the process some advanced adult learners develop a “feel” for the language, which means that they feel that some expressions are right or wrong, linguistically speaking, even though they cannot state rules or, if they can, they state incorrect ones for using those expressions (Bley– Vroman 1999: 31)
We start our analysis with different sentence structure errors

Summary

Introduction

Intercultural speakers are persons who have managed to settle for the in-between and who know and can participate in both their native culture and in foreign one (House 2007: 19). The learners, usually in a foreign language context, lack the opportunities to face authentic input and chances for interaction outside the classroom (Martinez–Flor 2007: 245) It is very difficult for those learners who try to acquire English and at the same time live in countries where English is not officially spoken to be more exposed to the language they are trying to acquire (Bley–Vroman 1999: 25). That is why they turn to alternative means of broadening their knowledge or just exposing themselves to it.ii They can face authentic input by watching films, TV series or listening to music and in the process some advanced adult learners develop a “feel” for the language, which means that they feel that some expressions are right or wrong, linguistically speaking, even though they cannot state rules or, if they can, they state incorrect ones for using those expressions (Bley– Vroman 1999: 31)

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