BENEFICIAL EFFECTS OF MUSIC ON EFL LEARNING

Abstract

This paper explores the attitudes of Serbian tertiary-level EFL students towards doing a particular type of language exercise, a cloze test, and their attitudes towards music-based cloze tests in particular, as well as their general attitudes towards the inclusion of music into EFL classes at university level of study. It is comprised of two parts. The theoretical part reviews reference materials related to significant effects of music on FL learning in general and EFL learning in particular. The empirical part presents the results of the empirical research conducted with fourth-year students of the English Department, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš. The method used was descriptive together with the scaling technique and the five-level Likert scale consisting of 5 items. The first two items tested the students’ attitudes towards conventional cloze tests, the third item examined their attitude towards music-based cloze tests, and the remaining two items tested the students’ attitudes towards the integration of music-based exercises into EFL classes and the beneficial effects of music on EFL learning. The results of the empirical research confirmed the starting premise, i.e. that tertiary-level EFL students consider cloze tests important for the improvement of their proficiency in English and that they agree with the statement that the use of music in their classes is beneficial for improving their skills.