Music plays a very important role in education as, apart from the positive effect on a child's personality development, it enables numerous links with other subject areas. One of the areas of links with music is English as a foreign language classroom, an important part of which are songs. For the realisation of high quality cross-curricular integration, it is essential to provide song material that is adequate both linguistically and from the point of view of the didactics of music, which is why the aim of the master thesis is to highlight the importance of the music content of the songs integrated in the foreign language classroom. In the theoretical part of the thesis we first focused on music and its comprehensiveness, where the effect of music on child overall development was defined and by that we emphasized the importance of the subject of music in the educational process. Next we presented the planning of music lessons and the role of music in cross-curricular integration. Among cross-curricular integration we defined the links between music and English as a foreign language. We presented the learning and teaching of English and emphasized the importance of choosing adequate course material. Further on, the importance of songs in foreign language teaching was stressed out, describing the activity of song singing in detail and the role of the teacher in this activity. We presented numerous benefits of the use of songs in teaching English and set guidelines for effective presentation of songs to students. In the end we focused on the choice of song material with regards to didactic principles for music.
The empirical part of the thesis is divided in two parts. In the first part, we presented the analysis of song structure of a selection of songs from three most often used course materials for fourth and fifth grade of Slovenian schools (My Sails, Happy Street and Reach for the Stars). In the second part, English teachers’ opinions about the selection of songs in each course were presented. The aim of the survey was to examine whether the songs in the above mentioned courses for teaching English were adequate regarding the didactics of music. In the survey we first relied on the existing professional music literature and music notations, which helped us to analyse song structure (tonality, ambitus, metre, tune, rhythm) and define the type (folk/art) of the songs. As two courses didn't contain notations, we provided notations for the choice of songs on the basis of sound records. For three most commonly used courses for EFL in fourth and fifth grade of Slovenian schools, we analysed notations of a selection of songs. We acknowledged the didactic principles for music as defined in professional literature in this field to define the criteria for the adequacy of song structure in regards to development specifics of children at a certain age. We interpreted the analysis of the song structure and its adequacy regarding the didactic principles for music separately for individual courses for fourth and fifth grade. An interview was carried out with nine teachers of English in fourth and fifth grade about the usefulness of the course song material. The teachers specified opinions about the advantages and weaknesses of the course song content and their own experience. The results of the survey defined the adequacy of songs from the point of view of song structure and didactic principles for music in relation to the realisation of goals of teaching English, which will enable teachers of fourth and fifth grade a higher quality choice of course material.
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