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TITLE:
Songs/Poems as a tool to teach English Pronunciation to Spanish/Catalan Preschoolers - TFM:1717
Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TFM1717

Student:Chapman Puig, Maria
Language:en
Title in original language:Songs/Poems as a tool to teach English Pronunciation to Spanish/Catalan Preschoolers
Title in different languages:Songs/Poems as a tool to teach English Pronunciation to Spanish/Catalan Preschoolers
Keywords:Pronunciation, Enjoyment, Songs
Subject:Ensenyament
Abstract:Abstract. In response to the notion that learning foreign languages, particularly English, is of the utmost importance (The European Education Area: A Shared Holistic Approach, 2021), learning English as a foreign language (EFL) has become a priority in schools. Many Spanish/Catalan preschools in Catalonia (Spain) include EFL as part of their curriculum starting at the age of three. However, English is not compulsory until Primary school, resulting in no official guidelines for teaching foreign languages at a preschool level. This challenges English language instructors, both native and non-native (Couper, 2017), to meet learner needs in all language skills, including pronunciation. In fact, pronunciation teaching has often been neglected by EFL teachers for several reasons, such as motivation, resources, and facilities (Gilakjani & Sabouri, 2016) or lack of training in pronunciation instruction (Tran & Nguyen, 2020). In light of these issues and following current pronunciation teaching trends, this thesis aimed to study and compare teacher-made songs and poems as tools for teaching specific English vowel sounds (/ɪ/- /i:/ and /æ/ - /ʌ/) to Spanish/Catalan preschoolers aged 5-6. Each Song/Poem targeted a set of minimal pair words, which only differed in one sound or phoneme. This approach enabled students to focus on and discriminate the target vowel sounds. Following Pennington’s (2021) recommendations, pronunciation sessions began with instruction through Phonological Awareness (PA) activities to practice the foreign language’s sounds explicitly before introducing the songs or poems as a communicative task. The study divided Spanish/Catalan preschoolers (N=41) into two experimental groups, a Song Group (N=21), and a Poem Group (N=20), to measure native speaker perceived pronunciation accuracy and student and teacher perception of enjoyment in two pronunciation-focused sessions. Results showed that native speaker raters perceived improvement in pronunciation accuracy when children were exposed to target vowel sounds through Songs. A major finding in this study was that using Poems also increased perceived accuracy. However, participants in the Song Group outperformed the Poem Group. As for student perception of pronunciation session enjoyment, using Songs in pronunciation teaching contributed to learner enjoyment, but there was no significant difference between groups. Nevertheless, teacher perception of enjoyment indicated higher “engagement” levels in the Song Group than in the Poem Group, indicating that students in the Song Group blocked out most other distractions and focused attention on the activities.
Project director:Espada Sánchez, Ana Isabel
Department:Estudis Anglesos i Alemanys
Education area(s):Ensenyament i Adquisició de l'Anglès com a Llengua Estrangera - Segona Llengua
Entity:Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV)
TFM credits:11
Work's public defense date:2024-06-20
Academic year:2023-2024
Confidenciality:No
Subject areas:Philology
Creation date in repository:2024-07-05
Access Rights:info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
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