Teachers love using songs with foreign language learners. But do songs help with learning a new language? We explore the evidence.
Singing songs with young learners is a classroom technique beloved by many teachers, especially languages teachers. Many teachers say that songs offer something special to the job of learning a new language, and that singing songs can improve foreign language learning outcomes. In this podcast Dr Cate Hamilton talks about her research exploring these assumptions. She describes her journey through the literature, which revealed poor theorising and a lack of well conducted studies that would help us to interpret claims about the educational effects of singing songs. Then, she tells us about her own primary research, which she hopes will add more robust evidence to the to the body of literature to help teachers make informed choices about their practice. Cate conducted her research while a Master’s and Doctoral researcher at Oxford, and has just been awarded the prestigious Doctoral Thesis Award 2025 by the British Educational Research Association (BERA) for her thesis “Investigating the effects of whole-class singing activities on linguistic outcomes of young foreign language learners in English primary schools.”
Read Cate’s Deanery Digests about her research here https://www.education.ox.ac.uk/oxford-education-deanery/deanery-digests/?keywords=Hamilton&digest_phase=&digest_subject=&digest_theme=
Read Cate’s journal papers for more detailed information about her research:
Hamilton, C., Schulz, J., Chalmers, H., & Murphy, V.A. (2024). Investigating the substantive linguistic effects of using songs for teaching second or foreign languages to preschool, primary and secondary school learners: a systematic review of intervention research. System, 124(103350). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2024.103350
Hamilton, C. & Murphy, V.A. (2023) Folk pedagogy? Investigating how and why UK early years and primary teachers use songs with young learners, Education 3-13. DOI: 10.1080/03004279.2023.2168132
Learn more about the Oxford Education Deanery: https://www.education.ox.ac.uk/about-us/oxford-education-deanery/
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