What Is a Song and How Can it Help You in Learning a Foreign Language?
During the long history of mankind, a song was always a kind of technique, which helped people to transmit knowledge, wisdom and information from one generation to another. For the peoples, who had no written language, their songs constituted a valuable part of the oral tradition. The messages of the oral tradition may take different forms. For example, it may be folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants. Even nowadays, a song helps to preserve the national identity of numerically small peoples, who have no national writing systems. Often a song may transmit the precise information of human activities. The well-known example of this fact is a work song. There are many types of work songs: agricultural work songs, industrial folk songs, sea shanties, cowboy songs, African American work songs and others. Often work songs conveyed the information about skills that can be learned by anyone through singing. The songs took their rhythms from the work being done and helped people working together.
Why did people employ songs for transmitting the information through generations?
The answer is obvious – people had no alternative technique for transmitting verbal information without altering its text. Only songs can save the integrity of verbal information while passing from generation to generation. The opportunity that a song can be changed haphazardly is very low, because any unintentional alteration in the text of Lyrics violates the rules, in accordance with which any particular song has been written.
What can be considered as the purpose of a song nowadays?
There are different points of view about the purpose of a song. My point of view is that a song provides the best way for the memorization of oral information, and a song is a means of coding the information for humans. A song can help us in
- memorizing oral information,
- keeping the information for a long time,
- passing the information to another person.
But why can songs help us to do the above listed things?
As it’s been already mentioned, the song is a means of coding. Let’s look closely to the definition of coding.
The coding is the arrangement of loosely connected (or not connected) elements of information into a complete system. All elements are collected together into some system and become organized by the rules of this system.
Why do people code any information?
Because they need
- easily analyze the information;
- easily retrieve any piece of the information;
- safely store the information;
- safely move or transfer the information;
- recover the information in the case of its distortion.
Think about this! This is exactly what we need in learning a foreign language! More over, a song, which is means of coding, can help us to verify the text (lyrics).
Now, let us look through the properties of the conception of a song.
- A song has the visual structure of a text (the structure of lyrics). The text of lyrics has several stanzas and a repeated refrain. The number of stanzas usually varies from 2 to 5. Each stanza has definite number of lines and the lengths of lines being in correspondent positions are equal.
Thus I can conclude that a song has repeated cyclic structure. This is very important! Since the compact structure of a song can be observed, recognized and memorized visually. - The conception of a song includes rhyme, rhythm and a melody. In fact, these three features produce a song and constitute the rules of coding of the information in any particular song.
- Another very important component is a song’s plot, which is often written in a figurative language, combining images, similes and words that denote mood, psychological atmosphere and colors to reflect the changes in the Singer‘s interpretation. The changes are mostly psychological and emotional and often characterize the national way of behavior and thinking. The plot is inseparably connected to the structure of a song text. Usually, when I try to recall some episode of any particular song, I’m scrolling the imaginative scenes succeeding one another in my mind.
Now you can clearly see that the conception of a song complies with the definition of the coding. All elements of a song — rhyme, rhythm, a melody, the structure of lyrics, the plot are collected together and constitute a song, which anyone can easily perceive.
Is a song the best way of memorization for humans?
This is a well-known fact that the best memorization of any object happens when
- the perception of the object for memorization activates all possible parts of a human nervous system and
- this object is the object with distinct structure.
As it is pointed out above, a song has the structure in accordance with the rules of the coding. A person can perceive a song through hearing and vision (scrutinizing the text, the structure of the lyrics, analyzing the song’s plot). The process of listening to a song unites the functioning of both hemispheres of a human brain, and sooner or later a person begins to empathize with a song. This emotional process helps to retain in a person’s memory an indelible trace. If you compare the memorization via songs with other techniques of memorization, you can conclude that a song uses more parts of human nervous system than any other technique of memorization. The memorization of a text via songs is faster, easier and, as a result, a song makes a long-lasting memory. The more effective way of memorization is currently not known.
How songs can help us in learning a foreign language?
Most self-learners face the problem — how to memorize and always keep in their memory the active vocabulary of a foreign language, while they are in the English-speaking environment. Under these heavy conditions only songs can come to learner’s help. Only songs can be memorized by people and kept in their minds for years, or even through their lives.
What are the major problems in learning foreign songs?
Well, there are a number of problems, which the learners may encounter with. For example, the voice of a singer might be recognized with difficulties. Poor phonetics of the learners can result in difficulties with correct singing. But, perhaps, the most severe problem is that lyrics can have no definite translation. As a matter of fact, the translation of lyrics is almost useless for learning purposes. The learner of a foreign language needs to know about the message of lyrics and the language means with which the lyrics were written. Also, the learner needs to know about imageries, which often constitute the basis of lyrics.
Is there any method of linguistic analysis of foreign poetry, or lyrics?
Until recently, there was no such a technique, but nowadays you can enjoy the newly developed technique — the Linguistic Teaching Decomposition (LD) method. The method is the multilevel analysis of foreign lyrics, or poetry. The purpose of the LD method is in training for the direct perception of foreign lyrics (without any assistant language). For the first time, the application of this method to the Russian language has been presented in the Via Songs to Russian (VStoR) software. The application presents you with the complete information about the message of Russian lyrics and linguistic means, with which the lyrics were written, as well as other useful information.
You can find the full description of the LD method at
http://www.imtextbook.com/getting_started/introduction/linguistic-teaching-decomposition
and learn more about the VStoR software at
http://www.imtextbook.com/getting_started/introduction/vstor-main-opportunities
About the Author
Gennady Alipatov is a research worker. He works on the development of language learning software. How to create the most effective way of learning Russian is his priority in scientific investigations.
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