We need to look at music as a part of everyday life, as it is a need and a right of every individual. Music has a special meaning in the child's development. During this period, children are most receptive to educational influences, so it is crucial what kind of music education and training the child receives during this period. Music pedagogical research emphasizes that music is a characteristic component of children's and adolescents' authentic lives and one of the most natural and closest forms of expressing creativity. Music has an important influence on the formation of aesthetic criteria and values, emotions, and at the same time it also influences the development of intellectual abilities and one's own mentality. Listening to popular songs is one of the most common situations in which students encounter English, in addition to the English lessons at school. Popular songs give students not only exposure to the language itself, but also to the culture and values of English-speaking countries. For the most part, the contents of these songs are close to the students, as they often deal with current topics in the world. The aim of the research was to find out the attitudes of fifth grade students towards the use of popular songs in English lessons with the help of a questionnaire; explore how the use of popular songs in English lessons is linked to motivation to learn English; investigate the extent to which popular songs actually appear in class; explore the connection between students' attitudes towards popular music at home and at school; to investigate whether the music that students listen to at home also occurs in English lesson instruction, and if listening to English popular music in their free time affects the student's success in English lessons. We included 206 fifth grade elementary school students in the research.. Our research has shown that fifth grade students relatively often listen to songs in class, but not so much to pop songs that students listen to in their free time. Only a few students don't listen to pop songs at all, that is why those should be included in EFL lessons. Students partially like the songs in their coursebooks, but rarely listen to them in their free time. We have also discovered that girls tend to listen to pop songs more often than boys. Perhaps the most interesting disovery of our research is the positive correlation between listening to pop songs in student's free time and their final grades in English. We believe this is the main reason that teachers should include pop songs in their lessons- they positively influence the student's grades, most of the students like them, furthermore they believe teachers should consider their wishes in pop songs selection more in the lessons. We expect that the results of our research will encourage teachers to involve more popular songs in English lessons and at the same time involve the students more in the selection of songs that appear in English lessons
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