The Effect of Listening to Music on Iranian Children ’ s Segmental and Suprasegmental Pronunciation

The purpose of this study is to find out whether children learning English by music can improve their ability in segmental and suprasegmental pronunciation or not. In this regard, three hypotheses were proposed. A total of 30 female elementary students with the age between 9 to 12 years old were chosen. They were learning English in a private English school in Isfahan. According to the placement test of the institute, all of them were in the beginner level of pronunciation. They were assigned to two groups, that is, control group and experimental group. The selected material for both groups was Song Time book. The book was taught to the experimental group with music. The students listened to songs with music, repeated, and finally memorized them. Regarding the control group, the teacher read the songs and the students repeated after her and tried to memorize them. The results of comparing the pretest and the posttest showed that music had a better effect on pronunciation and intonation and stress pattern recognition; that is, the students in the experimental group had a better performance in these areas than the control group. Therefore, the three proposed hypotheses were safely rejected, and it was concluded that using music can push students to learn suprasegmentals better. The study has implication for teachers as well as material developers to include music in the teaching process.


Introduction
) maintains that, "Language is an arbitrary system of speech sounds which are used or can be used in interpersonal communication by aggregation of human beings and which are rather exhaustively catalogue things, process and events in human environments".English has been chosen as an international language and people from different countries use English to understand each other (Ratnasari, 2007).In Iran, English is not the mother tongue and learners should make a lot of efforts to learn it as a foreign language.Therefore, English is taught in language schools or academic institutes in different levels through various books.Institutes teach four skills of English (listening, speaking, reading and writing) cohesively.Pronunciation is also taught but not in a separate course.There are many differences between sounds in English and Iranian students' native language.Moreover, place of articulation, manner of articulation and intensity of articulation of English sounds are different from Farsi.Therefore, Iranian students often have problems with pronunciation when they speak or read.
Pronunciation is one of the most important parts of English.When we communicate with other people, we should not only have a good vocabulary or grammar but also have good pronunciation.Therefore, it is important to teach pronunciation."For all people, being made aware of pronunciation issues will be of immense benefit not only to their own production but also to their own understanding of spoken English" (Harmer, 2000(Harmer, , p. 183). 2002)); therefore, in the age of globalization, communication is more important than before.Being able to communicate correctly and effectively is the goal of all foreign language learners.Without correct pronunciation, however, effective communication does not occur.Pronunciation is the way a person utters a word in a language.Morley (1999) states that severe pronunciation problems put English learners at considerable educational, occupational, professional and social risk.
If one looks at English textbooks in Iran, one can find out that less importance is given to teaching pronunciation in comparison to other skills.Similarly, in educational curriculum of Iranian institutes there is not significant focus on pronunciation instruction.Pronunciation should be taught to English learners from the beginning.Children can learn and imitate correct pronunciation and stress pattern better than adults and also in a shorter period of time.Therefore, teachers should be able to find an interesting way of teaching pronunciation to children.
Accordingly, the main concern of this study is to explore the use of song as an interesting teaching instrument in order to improve students' segmental articulation (including the pronunciation of vowels, consonants, diphthongs, and tripthongs) and suprasegmental articulation (including stress pattern and intonation).Up to now so many methods have been used for teaching pronunciation, but they were not conclusive and completely successful.This study, it is hoped, to bridge the gap in this area to some extent.

The Scope and Objective of the Study
The scope of the study is, therefore, pronunciation.As it was mentioned in part 1.2, mispronunciation leads to failure in communication; also it should be noted that teaching and learning pronunciation is usually boring for teacher and students alike.In order to solve this problem, music was chosen as an interesting instrument.The purpose of current study is to examine to what extent music affects children's pronunciation including vowels, consonants, diphthongs, triphthongs, intonation, and stress patterns.

Research Questions
Based on the purpose of this study the following research questions were raised: 1) Does the use of song improve Iranian children's vowel, consonant, diphthongs and triphtoungs articulation?
2) Does the use of song improve Iranian children's intonation?
3) Does the use of song improve Iranian children's stress patterns?

Research Hypotheses
According to the aforementioned research question, the following null hypotheses were addressed.
H1) The use of song improves children's articulation of vowels, consonants, diphthongs and triphthongs articulation.
H2) The use of song improves children's intonation.
H3) The use of song improves children's stress patterns.

Review of Literature
This part is organized into two main parts: theoretical background and empirical background.

Theoretical Background
In this paper music has been chosen as a teaching media to teach pronunciation to children.The researchers chose children instead of adults and teenagers for their study because children have special characteristics.According to Scott and Ytlberg (1990), the nature of children loves to play.Scott identifies some general characteristics of children: 1) they ask questions all the time, 2) they make decisions about their learning, 3) they know what they like and don't like doing things, and 4) they work with other children and learn very much.Wonderful capability of children in imitation of pronunciation can not be ignored as one important reason in choosing children.
Music changes brain waves and makes the brain more active and receptive for leaning.Functions of the right and left hemispheres of the brain are connected together by music; because right and left hemispheres are influenced at the same time learning is maximized.The information activates the left brain and the music activates the right brain.Therefore, activities such as playing an instrument or singing activate both right and left hemispheres simultaneously and make the brain more capable of processing information (Salsedo, 2010).
Music also has great effect on memory."Melody provides sequential information, line and syllable length information, chunk linking, and rhythmical information that have the potential for making accurate reconstruction of the text" (Salcedo, 2012, p. 21).Wallace (1994) found that spoken text was the least frequently recalled, followed by rhyming text, and melodic text being the easiest to remember.
Language researchers (Fiske, 1993;Heller & Campbell, 1981;Sloboda, 1985;Swain, 1986) believe that there is a relationship between mental processing of language and music at the Meta level.Infants learn their native language by principles that make sense of aural information; therefore, it seems reasonable to approach second language acquisition in a similar way (Jackendoff, 1994).
After dealing with characteristic of children and the wonderful power of music, the goals of pronunciation are discussed.Kusrini (2011, p. 3) maintains that: The goals of teaching pronunciation are: 1) to pronounce correctly all the speech sounds of the language and all the combinations in their proper order, not only in isolated words, but also in sentences; 2) to pronounce sentences fluently at the speed required by the situation with correct stresses, linking of sounds, rhythm, pauses and intonation.

Empirical Background
Teaching pronunciation has been the point of attention among many researchers since 80 or 90 years ago.Some of researchers' investigation on teaching pronunciation by music and songs are explained blow.
Kahyany (2011) worked on 35 students in Pendidikan University of Indonesia to find out whether using English children songs can improve students' ability in English pronunciation.He used the famous songs such as "Old MacDonald had a farm" and "the mulberry bush" to perform his project and finally he found out music has great effect on Indonesian students' pronunciation.Lestari (2011) performed his activity on two groups of Indonesian students.He taught pronunciation to first group with music and to second group without music and he reported the improvement of students' pronunciation through music and songs.Fischler (2009) investigated the effect of rap on stress patterns.His four-week research was done on six English learners between 9-12 who were unaware of specific issues relating to their misplacement of primary and secondary stress.During his 30-day project students learnt pronunciation through rap music and the final result of the project was the improvement of students pronunciation by rap music.
Ulate in (2007) investigated the importance of using songs in the English classroom in Costa Rica and how it can be implemented to teach pronunciation.According to her idea, music is a source that should be taken into account because students of all ages have a strong interest in it.In her research she used music to improve students' production of varied sounds and suprasegmental features for Spanish speakers in Costa Rica.Ratnasari (2006) worked on the effect of songs to improve students' achievement in pronouncing English words for her final thesis.She asked two groups of Indonesian students to read through a list of 75 words and sentences including in the songs she was going to teach.Then she taught songs "Mother How Are You Today?" and "Old Mc Donald and My Garden".After administrating her posttest included the same list of pretest she realized music has great effect on Indonesian students' pronunciation.
According to Graham's (1978) "jazz chant", students learn and repeat chorally in order to master stress and intonation patterns of conversations in American English.
All of these researchers' ideas are linked together by choosing an interesting way to motivate children to learn intonation and stress recognition better.This fact was the base of this work.In the present study, the researchers are going to understand the effect of children English songs on children's pronunciation (articulation of vowels, consonants, diphthongs, thriphtoungs, recognition of intonation and stress patterns).The present study intends to investigate how students can benefit from learning a foreign language when music is added to the curriculum.Shifting the focus of teaching method from texts to a musically-based material would provide students with the opportunity to practice second language production through entertaining and culturally rich songs.The introduction of songs in the classroom may aid in the retention of texts, while producing an involuntary internal mental repetition that may stimulate language acquisition.It would be ideal to measure empirically the specific benefits of music to language learning and it may ultimately affect the prevailing attitude in the foreign language community.
Considering the review of the literature, the gap among studies on the effect of music on pronunciation could be found out.Previous Iranian and foreign researchers focused on effect of music on pronunciation in general, but the researchers of this study are going to know the effect of music on recognition of intonation and stress patterns discretely.

Participants
The participants were selected from among language learners at Sadra language Institute in Isfahan in the summer of 2013.Based on the institute's placement test, the children who were enrolled at beginner level of children classes were selected as participants of this study.There were two reasons for choosing this group of learners: 1) the students do not have a good command at this level yet, but this has not led to fossilization, and 2) children are interested in singing than speaking (Morphy, 1998).
Thirty female students between the ages of 9 to 12 were divided into two groups: 15 of them were placed in one class as the control group and the other 15 were in placed another class as the experimental group.

Instruments
In this study, the researchers used several instruments including the placement test, the pretest, the posttest, voice recorded, and the book Song Time 3.

Placement Test
All the 30 students who enrolled in Backpack 2 had already passed Backpack Starter and Backpack 1 in Sadra Institute.The researchers decided to administer the general placement test by Exam View Assessment Suite published in Pearson Longman Institute in order to ascertain that the students are homogeneous regarding their English general proficiency.This test includes a combination of three related placement tests in the book Assessment Package of Backpack Starter through Three.It was designed to evaluate general proficiency of children.The results of the test confirmed that their pronunciation homogeneity.(See Appendix A)

Pretest
The pretest included a list of words and a list of sentences to find out children's pronunciation (articulation of vowels, consonants, diphthongs, triphthongs, recognition of intonation and stress pattern).All the words and sentences were included in the songs.This test was run before starting the experiment.The children were asked to read through the lists and the researchers recorded their voices (see Appendix B).Using Cronbach's alpha, the research measured the reliability of the pretest and it turned out to be .791.

Posttest
Like the pretest, the posttest comprised a list of words and a list of sentences to find out the effect of music on children's pronunciation (articulation of vowels, consonants, diphthongs, triphthongs, recognition of intonation and stress pattern).All the words and sentences of the posttest, as in the pretest, were included in the songs.This test was a parallel test to the pretest and it was held after conducting the experiment.The children were asked to read through the lists of words and sentences and the researchers recorded their voices (see Appendix C).The reliability of the posttest was measured by Cronbach's alpha and it was .814.

Song Time 3
This book includes 13 exciting songs.Not all songs were practiced in class, just seven of them were thought during the process (see Appendix D).

Procedures
Thirty students who enrolled in Backpack 2 at Sadra Institute were selected, and their proficiency level was determined through the general placement test published by Pearson Longman Institute in order to make.Their age ranged between 9 and 12. Then they were divided into two groups, 15 each.One group was assigned as the control group and the other as the experimental group, two separate classes.
The data collection was done by giving a pretest to the students in both groups.It was done through sound production test; that is, the researchers asked the students to read through the list of words and sentences taken from the songs used in the experiment.She also recorded the students' voices to get the empirical data.The objective of this test was to know the students' level in pronouncing English words before they took the program.
The teaching/learning activities were carried out in 25 sessions because in Sadra Institute every semester lasts 27 sessions leaving two sessions for midterm and final exams.The students attended classes 5 days a week.Every session lasted for 90 minutes, but only 20 minutes of the class time was devoted to the experiment.Both groups started the project at the same day.The control group's class was at 9-10:30 and that of the experimental at 10:45-12:15.
The teaching procedure with song in the experimental group's class was as the following: a) The researchers distributed the lyrics of the song to the students.Before the students listened to the song, the researchers asked them to read the lyrics and ask about any new word if they wanted.
b) The researchers played the song and the students listened to the song.
c) The researchers played the song once again while the students listened attentively to the song and to the pronunciation of the words in the lyric.
d) The researchers stopped the song part by part and asked the students to repeat carefully.
e) The students sang the song together with the music accompaniment several times.
f) The students worked in groups and then tried to memorize the song.
Actually the teacher did not have any role in singing and the music, and the students listened to the songs and tried to recognize and copy the intonation and stress in the words and sentences.
The activities carried out during the teaching/learning process in the control group's class included: a) The researchers distributed the lyrics of the songs to the students and asked the students to read the lyrics and ask about any new word if they have.
b) The researchers read through the song and the students listened to her carefully.
c) The researchers read through the song part by part and asked the students to repeat.
d) The students sang the song together with the teacher accompaniment several times.
e) The students worked in groups and then tried to memorize the song.
In this class the researchers' role was really important and she was very careful about her pronunciation.She checked the pronunciation of every word through the dictionary several times before coming to class.
In order to check the effect of the treatment, the researchers gave a posttest.The researchers conducted the posttest in one separate session after finishing the project.The objective of the posttest was to know whether the students made improvement on their intonation and stress recognition or not after listening to the songs.After conducting the posttest, the researchers did the analysis.
In the next stage, the researchers made the analysis on important pronunciation features such as: vowels, consonants, diphthongs and triphthongs articulation, the recognition of intonation and stress patterns.The data analysis of this study included the following steps: 1) Transcribing the students' pronunciation: In this step, the researchers made the transcription of the students' sound by listening to their voices several times to make it clear.To get the empirical data, the researchers played the recording several times to make the transcription of students' pronunciation and then transcribed the recording sounds.
2) Comparing the transcription: After transcribing the students' voices, the researchers compared them with the original pronunciation of the songs.
3) Marking the students' pronunciation: In order to mark the students' pronunciation a standard scale was used as in Table 3.1 below.

Falling rising intonation Triphthongs
As it can be seen in the table, this pronunciation scale is consisted of three categories (intonation, stress recognition and pronunciation).Ten items are seen in this scale.Four of them are about intonation, two items about stress recognition and four about articulation of vowels, consonants, diphthongs and triphthongs.The researchers allocated a mark out of ten for each category.In other words, every student was given three marks out of ten; one mark (out of ten) for her intonation, one mark (out of ten) for her stress recognition and one mark (out of ten) for her pronunciation.Actually the total possible marks for each student were three categories as ten.
(4) Interpreting the data findings: The researchers interpreted the results of the data obtained by comparing the students' pronunciation achievement on pretest and posttest.The interpretation was used to describe the improvement of the students' achievement in pronouncing English words.

The Results of the Pretest
Before conducting the experiment, in order to make sure that the two groups were homogeneous with regard to their diphthongs, intonation, and stress, the researchers pretested all the students and compared the results of the two groups.Table 2 indicates the descriptive statistics for the pretest, and Figure 1 illustrates the means graphically.As it can be seen in the above table and figure, there seem to be small differences between the two groups; however, in order to make sure that these differences are significant or not, three separate independent-sample t-tests were run.Table 3 depicts the results of these t-tests.By investigating Table 3, one can understand that the amount of t-observed is not significant for none of the tests (pronunciation: t 28 = -.415,p = .681;intonation: t 28 = .782,p = .441;stress: t 28 = -.280,p = .782).Therefore, it can be claimed that at the beginning of the experiment the two groups were homogeneous regarding the three tests.

Investigating the First Null Hypothesis
Through the first hypothesis the researchers tried to find out if music produces any positive effect on children's pronunciation.For this purpose, the pronunciations of the two groups were compared.Table 4 presents the descriptive statistics for this comparison, and Figure 2 shows the means graphically.The above table and figure, that is, Table 4 and Figure 2, confirm that there is a difference between the means of the two groups regarding test of pronunciation.In order to find out if this difference is significant or not an independent sample t-test was employed.Table 5 indicates the results of this t-test.It can clearly be seen in Table 5 that the amount of t-observed (t 28 = 3.536) is significant at the probability level of p= .001,which denotes a statistically significant amount.Therefore, the first null hypothesis, which states that "music does not have any effect on children's pronunciation," can be safely rejected, and it can be claimed that music positively affects the pronunciation of children.

Investigating the Second Null Hypothesis
By proposing the second null hypothesis, the researchers intended to understand if the intonation pattern of children could be improved through songs.To do so, the intonation parts of the test for the two groups were compared with each other.Table 6 reveals the descriptive statistics for this comparison, and Figure 3 shows the graphical representation of the means.Through checking the data in Table 6, one can find out that there is a big difference between the means of the control group and the experimental group.To decide whether or not this difference is significant, another independent-sample t-test was run.Table 7 reports the results of this t-test.According to the figures in Table 7, the amount of t-observed (t 28 = 9.856) is significant at the probability level of p= .000,which shows a statistically significant amount.Therefore, the second null hypothesis, stating that "music does not have any effect on children's intonation," can also be safely rejected, and it can be maintained that music positively affects the intonation of children, too.

Investigating the Third Null Hypothesis
The third null hypothesis was about the stress pattern of the children under study; in other words, the researchers tried to understand weather the stress pattern of children could be improved through songs.To this end, the stress parts of the test for the two groups were compared with each other.Table 8 depicts the descriptive statistics for this comparison, and Figure 4 illustrates the graphical representation of the means.According to the data in Figure 4 and Table 8, it can be understood that there is a difference between the means of the control group and the experimental group.To find out if this difference is significant or not, a last independent-sample t-test was implemented.Table 9 indicates the results of this t-test.One can easily understand from Table 9 that the amount of t-observed (t 28 = 7.164) is significant at the probability level of p = .000,which is a statistically significant amount.Therefore, the third null hypothesis, which states that "music does not have any effect on children's stress pattern," can also be safely rejected, and it can be said that music positively affects also the stress pattern of children.

Discussion
This section provides a specific discussion for each research question and makes attempt to link each finding to the existing literature.
The first finding of this study showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in segmental articulation, including the pronunciation of vowels, consonants, diphthongs, and triphthongs.Lots of other studies have confirmed this result of our study.As mentioned in literature Kusrini (2011) investigated improving English pronunciation of children through children songs in Central Java of Indonesia.She reported all students, especially children, were satisfied and they enjoyed listening to music, and they were able to memorize the words and their pronunciation easily.Lestari (2011) performed similar activity on two groups of Indonesian students.He concluded songs help children to learn pronunciation like native speakers; students' pronunciation skill was improved after teaching and learning activity by using songs, the songs were good tools to teach pronunciation as a part of language.
Cakir (2010) also performed a similar project on Turkish students of Ankara.He concluded teaching activity should have been designed in such a way that they provided the child with enjoyable and easy understanding of input.He mentioned that through this way, not only pronunciation but also other skills would be improved.Rengifo (2009) investigated how students could improve their pronunciation through the use of karaoke in English classes.He concluded karaoke provided a lot of motivation for students to imitate the sounds exactly similar to native speakers in a relaxed atmosphere where they could learn to use English without fear of being criticized.Ulate (2007) also investigated the importance of using songs in the English classroom in Costa Rica and how it could be implemented to teach pronunciation.According to her conclusion music helped students to distinguish difficult sounds and improve their production.Ratnasari (2006) worked on the effect of songs to improve students' achievement in pronouncing English words.
In his conclusion he stated listening to English songs was effective to improve the students' pronunciation achievement.Murphy (2004) tried a lot to find interesting ways to teach pronunciation.According to his research, he concluded music and songs were interesting ways to improve children's pronunciation.
The second result of our study showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in suprasegmental articulation, including stress pattern and intonation.
Similarly, Fischler (2009) concluded that students acquired sense of autonomy through learning metacognitive skills, regarding word and sentence stress production.He also mentioned that teaching stress patterns to English language learners through Rap music was so beneficial and fruitful.
Music, it seems, has a wonderful and significant effect on Iranian children's segmental and suprasegmental pronunciation.By listening to music, students try to imitate the pronunciation of words and after listening several times they pronounce the words and sentences exactly like the one mentioned in the song; this could be due to the elasticity of their articulation organs and the readiness that human brain has to adapt to a new language phonology system before puberty.Music can be used as a way to relax the atmosphere which leads to better learning because music can decrease the stress of children and increase their motivation.The music makes the whole class friendlier and it develops a closer relation between the students and the teacher; this would result in greater motivation among students and consequently facilitates the learning of a new language in general and the learning of pronunciation in particular.

Conclusion
The results of our study led us to conclude that music significantly has a positive effect on children's pronunciation.Comparing to participants of the study in the control group, as the findings indicated, the participants of the experimental group of the study improved as far as segmental articulation (including the pronunciation of vowels, consonants, diphthongs, and triphthongs) was concerned.Moreover, the suprasegmental articulation of (including stress pattern and intonation) participants who had been thought by song had improved significantly compared to participants who had been taught without song.
Generally speaking, although there were few exceptions, almost all pronunciation, intonation and stress problems of the students of experimental group improved in their posttest.

Theoretical Implication
It seems that music can influence EFL learners' overall language abilities especially correct and native like pronunciation.Music and songs have an effective role in the successful and native-like performance of EFL learners.Songs can play important role both on language accuracy and fluency.EFL teachers in Iran should become aware of the impact of music on foreign language learning in order to be contented to apply it more in their classes.In this study, the idea that music can affect foreign language learning in a positive way was proven.
In this vein, analyzing the effect of music on the pronunciation, stress and intonation pattern of Iranian EFL learners to identify its positive or negative effects would provide the teachers and the learners with tentative models of communication in correct pronunciation, stress and intonation patterns.
Whereas the majority of previous music studies have investigated the effect of music on learning L2 pronunciation the present study has attempted to investigate the effect of music on stress and intonation as well.

Pedagogical Implication
The main implication of this study is that music can be used as a helpful way to draw learners' attention to the correct form of the sounds and pronunciation.This study is probably to draw language teachers' and researchers' attention to the effect of music while the learners are involved in learning a foreign language.In fact, music plays a very critical role in learning and teaching a foreign or second language and more specifically in pronunciation.Music motivates students to try to imitate the sounds in exactly the same way as they are pronounced by the singers.Music provides the learners a relaxed atmosphere where they can speak in English without fear of being criticized.Music can help teachers deal with students' lack of interest in learning pronunciation, intonation and stress recognition.
Pronunciation, stress and intonation pattern as very distinctive features among languages should be highlighted while teaching or learning a target language.Since language learners need to speak in the target language it is a necessity to talk in the target system of pronunciation, stress and intonation pattern.Thus, this study might be found useful for all those interested in teaching foreign languages especially English to children.
Practitioners who work on developing language materials are also welcome to include explicit exercises on songs and language learning.In this way, learners can make way not only in producing more accurate sounds but also in better comprehension of the sounds they encounter.

Suggestion for Further Research
While the findings of the present research suggested that pronunciation of the students could significantly improve by listening to music, replicating the same research with other variables mentioned in the following seems to be beneficial to both teachers and students.
First of all, it can be mentioned that the main focus of the present study was the improvement of phonetic and phonology and therefore a further study can be conducted on the effect of music on other skills such as reading, listening, writing and speaking and even on learning vocabulary, grammar, and idioms.Different kinds of music like jazz, rap, rock and hip hop can affect students' recognition of intonation and stress patterns, and they can be suitable topics for other researchers in the future.Other researchers also can work on the effect of music on adults' pronunciation.Further studies can also evaluate the effect of games on students' pronunciation.The participants were chosen among the pre-intermediate learners of English in an English Institute in Isfahan.Other studies can use other level of learners from more English institutes in different cities in Iran.It took about five weeks to accomplish this study, and this period of time can change in other studies.Only female students took part in this study, and this was due to the limited access of the researchers to both genders (males and females).

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Graphical representation of the means for hypothesis three

Table 1 .
Standard scale for marking students' pronunciations

Table 2 .
Descriptive statistics for the pretest

Table 3 .
The Results of the t-tests for the pretest

Table 4 .
Descriptive statistics for hypothesis one Figure 2. Graphical representation of the means for hypothesis one

Table 5 .
The results of the t-test for hypothesis one

Table 6 .
Descriptive statistics for hypothesis two Figure 3. Graphical representation of the means for hypothesis two

Table 7 .
The Results of the t-test for hypothesis two

Table 8 .
Descriptive statistics for hypothesis three

Table 9 .
The results of the t-test for hypothesis three