A Study on the Use of Nursery Rhymes for EFL Speaking Class

• Published in: Journal of English Teaching through Movies and Media 2020, 21(4), , pp.59-81
• Main Author: 김나영
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 영어와문학
• ISSN: 1598-1002; 2765-7078
• DOI: 10.16875/stem.2020.21.4.59

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of the use of nursery rhymes on English speaking skills. 71 university students participated in this study in the 2019 fall academic semester. The whole process lasted for 15 weeks. To find out whether the nursery rhymes have positive effects on EFL speaking, the participants were divided into one experimental group (n = 36) and one control group (n = 35). While the experimental group engaged in class with music-based activities, the control group went through a traditional class. Before and after the treatment, all participants took IELTS-format speaking tests. They were evaluated by two raters based on four speaking assessment criteria: fluency and coherence, lexical resources, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation. The participants’ oral performance was statistically analyzed using t-tests. Findings revealed that the experimental group increased their speaking skills in all four categories. Group comparison results also indicated that nursery rhymes can encourage the students to perform better on the speaking test. This study provides insight on the use of nursery rhymes in the EFL classroom, opening the door for future research in this area. Limitations are mentioned at the end of the study. KCI Citation Count: 0