Using Songs to Increase Speaking Skill: A Course Plan for Students of International Relations

 

 

Ani Windarti

 

Teaching a foreign language is an art in terms that the teacher has to transfer knowledge in such an interesting way. Various methods have been created to make the teaching process alive. However, some serious problems are still often faced by the teacher. One of them is dealing with the student’s cultural background- shyness. They are shy to express their ideas or thoughts in English, something that should be avoided in learning a foreign language. In fact, in the era of globalization, the ability to speak English is a must for all university students especially those of international relations who badly need this skill for their future career. This paper, then, tries to offer a course plan to increase the speaking skill of students of international relations.

 Santos believes that pop have been a great motivational factor for many of those who have engaged in ELT studies (1995, p. 29). There are several songs which reflect important events or phenomena such as slavery, Vietnam War, equality, AIDS, and the like. The Beatles’s Let it Be will be chosen as a material in this course plan. This choice is based on the consideration that it depicts Vietnam War, the topic which suits their field of study. Here the song will be used as a worm – up activity to lead a discussion on the related topic. Listening to a song in the beginning of the learning process will motivate them to participate in the discussion.

This is an integrated method which involves speaking and listening skills in teaching English for non-English department students. The atmosphere created by this method will hopefully decrease boredom which is often experienced by the non-English department students who learn English.

 

 

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Windarti, A. (2002, March). Using songs to increase speaking skill: A course plan for students of international relations. Paper presented at the national conference on Autonomy, Bandung, Indonesia.

 
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