MUSIC AS A TOOL FOR EFL LEARNING

Ana Maria SOUZA (professora supervisora EEEM Escritor José Lins do Rego)

Janaíne dos Santos ROLIM (bolsista PIBID-CAPES/UFPB/Letras-Inglês)

Janine dos Santos ROLIM (bolsista PIBID-CAPES/UFPB/Letras-Inglês)

Juliana de Souza Cavalcanti da SILVEIRA (bolsista PIBID-CAPES/UFPB/Letras-Inglês)

Mariane Bezerra MAIA (bolsista PIBID-CAPES/UFPB/Letras-Inglês)

Francisca Raquel Alves MOREIRA (bolsista PIBID-CAPES/UFPB/Letras-Inglês)

Maura Regina da Silva DOURADO (orientadora PIBID-CAPES/UFPB/Letras-Inglês)

Contributions provided by music oriented activities in the EFL classroom have long been raised in the EFL teaching literature. It is known that such contributions extend beyond the development of the four skills and, therefore, challenge beliefs such as “English is difficult”, “I cannot speak in English”, “Why is English important for?” and “I can barely speak Portuguese, let alone English”. Realized within the context of The Scholarship Program Initiation in English Teaching (PIBID/CAPES) and driven by the school supervisor’s own project entitled Importância da música no Ensino da Língua Inglesa como Segunda Língua (SOUZA, 2015), the teachers to be started bringing songs to their classes to enhance student’s critical literacy, language skills and motivation. The aim of this study is then to report the authors’ teaching experience in the regular education classroom and shed the light on the contributions of music in the target context. To this end, it will be presented  a snippet of three song activities. According to Vicentini and Basso (2008), when song is associated to EFL learning, teachers provide situations and experiences that guarantee the expressiveness and learning of students. The results show that when songs related to main social EFL themes were brought to class and used as tools to enhance student’s critical literacy, develop their language skills, the target students seemed to care and get engaged with the issues being discussed and motivated to take part in the ongoing discussion.