Use of songs in English language teaching preparation: A linguisticcomputational approach
Abstract
Linguistic competence stands as a relevant item concerning English language teaching preparation. As another strand for learning/practice that might have an impact over such competence, songs might be used as a pedagogical input. Thus, this paper aims at demonstrating a sorting system for English lyrics designed to pre-service English language teachers. Our specific goals rely on assessing the lexical profile of the lyrics and also the presence/absence of 20 grammatical structures. The theoretical framework is based on Lexicology and Corpus Linguistics. Regarding methodology, a corpus was compiled with 3,000 songs, the most played between 1980 and 2010. The lyrics were processed by three kinds of software, namely Vocabprofile, CLAWS, and WordSmith Tools. Six lyrics were selected to illustrate our proposal. The findings concerning lexical profile and grammatical structures show that numerical information might serve as a parameter for the teacher to evaluate a song as suitable for the class.
Keywords: lyrics, lexical profile, grammatical structure.
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