Use of online English songs in fostering morphological awareness: A small-scale experimental study

Abstract

This paper reports on a case study describing the development of students’ morphological awareness over one academic semester using online English songs. It outlines the use of two tests to measure the receptive and productive knowledge of three types of morphology: inflection, derivation, and compounds. The participants were 80 Chinese EFL students divided into a control group and an experimental group. The former received typical explicit instructions on morphology only while the latter received the same instructions accompanied by online English songs. Results reveal that both groups demonstrated an improvement in learning morphological knowledge. However, the group using online English songs tended to achieve higher scores than the group without access to the songs. This distinction was also consistent in the retention post-test of morphology knowledge. Data collected from interviews further confirmed these findings. Although results showed an overall increase in scores at the end of the course with the gap between receptive and productive knowledge of morphology bridged, the receptive and productive knowledge of compound words actually widened.