Increasing fluency in L2 writing with singing

Jenni Alisaari,Leena Maria Heikkola

doi:10.14746/ssllt.2016.6.2.5

Abstract

Fluency is an essential part of a language learner’s skills. Despite various studies on fluency, little is known about the effects of different pedagogical methods on the development of written fluency. In this paper, we examine how different pedagogical methods affect the development of second language learners’ written fluency. Participants in this study were 51 language learners enrolled in two intensive Finnish courses. The pedagogical methods investigated in the study were singing, listening to songs, and reciting lyrics of songs. Written stories based on cartoon strips were used as a pretest and a posttest. The fluency of written stories was analyzed based on the number of words used in the texts. Differences between the groups taught by different pedagogical methods were analyzed. The results seem to indicate that fluency increased the most in the singing groups compared to the other groups. There was also a statistically significant difference between the singing group and the group reciting lyrics, as well as between the group listening to songs and the group reciting lyrics.

Highlights

Fluency plays an important role in language production
The sessions were 15 minutes each, altogether 105 minutes of the total of 80 hours of instruction. They were organized in the following way: Singing groups learned Finnish by singing, listening groups learned Finnish by listening to songs, and reciting groups learned Finnish by reciting the lyrics of the songs
We found statistically significant differences between the singing and reciting groups, as well as between the listening and reciting groups

Summary

Introduction

Fluency plays an important role in language production. According to Chenoweth and Hayes (2001), written fluency is especially important for second language (L2) learners’ success in their studies. Investigating fluency, as well as accuracy and complexity, is a popular topic within second language acquisition studies (see e.g., Housen et al, 2012). A number of studies have reported the benefits of music and singing for learning (see e.g., Legg, 2009; Medina, 2000). Previous studies have found that singing has a positive effect on second language learning, especially on vocabulary (Coyle & Gómez Garcia, 2014; Legg, 2009). Little is known about how singing and music affect written fluency

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Conclusion