The effects of songs in the foreign language classroom on text recall and involuntary mental rehearsal

This study investigated the effect of music on text recall and involuntary mental rehearsal (din) with students from four college-level Beginning Spanish classes. Two groups heard texts as songs, one group heard the same texts as speech, and one group was the control group. For the text recall variable, a cloze test was administered at the end of each song treatment to determine total words recalled. Students from one of the music groups heard the melody of the song while testing. For the din variable, students were asked to report on the amount of this phenomenon experienced. Data was collected to answer the following questions: (1) Is there a significant increase in text recall when that text is learned through the use of songs?, (2) Is there a significant difference in delayed text recall for students who learned the text with song, as compared to those who learned the text with spoken recordings?, (3) Is there a significant difference in the recall results when one group of students from the song groups hears the melody of the song during the recall test?, and (4) Is there a significant difference in the occurrence of involuntary mental rehearsal after listening to song rather than text? Immediate recall of text showed higher scores for the music class in all three songs. This difference reached significance in Songs 1 and 3. Delayed text recall showed no significant difference between the classes. There was no advantage observed for the group that heard the background melody during testing. Overall results for the din occurrence showed a significant difference between the classes. Students in the classes that heard music reported a higher occurrence of this phenomenon than did those who heard only spoken text. Students of the melody group reported a significantly higher frequency than did students from the text group. These findings suggest that the use of songs in the foreign language classroom may aid memory of text. The results evidenced that the occurrence of the din is increased with music, and therefore may be a more efficient way to stimulate language acquisition