The Effect of Using Songs on The Listening Comprehension Achievement of The Seventh Grade Students

Abstract

Learners usually study a foreign language –especially English– by doing something enjoyable such as reading English magazines and newspaper, watching English program in television, listening to English program on radio, and listening to English popular songs. This statement is supported by Nababan and Utami (1992) who stated, “The use of media such as tape recorder, English laboratory, film, video and radio including songs could help the students in learning English to reach the intended purpose”. Those media can be used in collaboration with the regular instructional materials. One kind of the media that can be used in improving learners’ English proficiency is song. It occupies a main part as expression of thought and feeling and it is predominantly image driven, especially through the subject matter of the lyrics, live performances, music, videos and other forms of exposure which makes it favorable and unfavorable to whomever the listener is (Kerrie, 2006). According to the result of a research conducted by Haghverdi (2014), the implementation of song and movie in junior high school used in the study has a significant effect on student's language achievement in their listening, reading, vocabulary and grammar. A research done by Shahsavari and Nastaran (2014) showed that teaching grammar or vocabulary through songs brought about considerable improvement in the oral fluency. So, using song can improve the leaners’ language achievement especially in English as a foreign language.