EFL learners' narrative skills: the case of contemporary country music

Abstract

Facilitating oral skills through authentic materials such as music has been essential in foreign language teaching (FLT). However, a model whose core element is to develop adolescent EFL learners’ narrative skills through songs with highly emotional lyrics is still non-existent. Furthermore, engaging students in vivid debates about everyday topics with which they can relate is considered a key element to develop their narrative skills. Both, themes and structure of contemporary country music songs have been analysed by means of a corpus. Additionally, a questionnaire has been administered to know adolescent English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ attitude towards the implementation of social issues and music in class. The results show that there exists a narrative structure in contemporary country music songs and a wide range of topics with which students can easily identify. These results suggest that these song lyrics may serve to facilitate EFL students' narrative skills.

Keywords

• contemporary country music
• culture
• emotions
• foreign language teaching
• narrative skills