Does foreign language acquisition improve with the use of music and tech tools?
In today’s world of teaching, many students are present in our classrooms because it is a requirement or because they need to study a particular course to go on to college. Engagement and motivation does not always seem so evident any more. When embarking on this project I wanted to reignite a love of learning in my classroom and try and make a difference to the standard of education that my students were receiving. I hoped that many of them would discover the true benefits of learning a foreign language.
Natasha Engering-Ward Home Learn More Standards Inspiration About the Author
How did my project unfold?
My capstone is essentially divided into two parts; technology and music with technology. When my interest was first sparked in this project, I investigated the effects of Quizlet on learning a foreign language to see if it would engage and motivate students more. At this time I did also incorporate a number of different language apps in my classroom as I became more familiar with what was available for students to use. I discovered that just researching Quizlet was quite a narrow field of study and so I decided to broaden it and include music too. This was brought about by the fact that as a child I remember how mnemonics and songs had helped me to remember significant pieces of information, and it was a much more fun way to learn.
Previously, most of my classes had always been attentive when I played music in the target language, and some were already familiar with the songs. I decided that if I could bottle some of this enthusiasm and use it to help students learn that this could be of huge benefit both to them and to me. I decided to carry out my research project on my French 1 students since they had no prior knowledge of the language and so I thought the results would be the most significant.
This is a picture of a group of students working together on their music presentation. This was for the 3rd part of my action research.
1st round of research:
Students were taught new vocabulary words using traditional methods of teaching and were then tested on those words. Following this students were introduced to more new vocabulary, but this time they used the Quizlet app to help them learn the words. They reviewed the vocabulary using the online flashcards, they played matching games and we played Quizlet Live in class. Students also used used Quizlet to help them review for the vocabulary test which they were given. The results showed that middle to lower ability students scored much better when tech tools were used in class.
2nd round of research:
Students were taught another set of vocabulary words and again they used Quizlet to help them learn the vocabulary. The students were also introduced to other apps such as Quizizz and Flipgrid which were used to enhance their learning experience. Students were again tested on the vocabulary words and they also completed a survey giving their opinions about using tech tools in the classroom. Students were very much in favor of using tech tools in the classroom and felt that it enhanced their learning and made them more engaged in the classroom.
3rd round of research:
In this round of research, students learned new vocabulary words through music. The class formed groups of 3-4 people, chose a song and evaluated it for 15 key words of vocabulary. They then used tech tools to present their results. Students put together an Adobe Spark presentation depicting these 15 words to show fellow students, they made a karaoke video of their song, and finally put together a poster board showing their words together with QR codes that linked to both the video and presentation. Once this was complete, students were again tested on the new vocabulary. They also completed another survey giving their opinions about using music and tech tools to learn a foreign language. The findings of this survey was consistent with the previous survey in that students felt that using music and tech tools helped them learn new vocabulary better. Students also found that their pronunciation of words improved through the use of song.
Please click the link below and watch my 90 second video outlining my capstone project: