La chanson au service de l’apprentissage des langues étrangères : Le cas du FLE au sein de l’école algérienne

Abstract

The song at the service of learning foreign languages: The case of FFL in the Algerian school

It is no secret that Algerians are not champions in foreign languages. To overcome these shortcomings, a new learning method could make our work easier: singing. A scientific study published in the journal Memory & Cognition reveals that learning foreign words by singing them makes it easier to remember them. But also to acquire long-term language and cultural competence. Our research tested participants on French as a foreign language. Particularly difficult to master, the language has a very different structure from ours, which is the Arabic dialect. French is a very difficult language to master and it seems to us that fun activities such as songs could facilitate learning the target language and make it effective. Our participants listened to a series of songs, then sang and repeated them during a three-month training. They were then given a test to note which words were retained. Learners who chose to sing retained twice as many words as their classmates. A result that also applies in the long term. When they were subjected to the same tests many months later, they still had them in their memory. The researcher believes that these results should open the door to a new form of foreign language learning. “Most people regularly remember the words they heard in songs. The whole question is whether the melody provides an additional marker in the learners’ memory”, while specifying that this type of method is already in use among the youngest. The use of singing is already obvious in primary and middle school. For the learner, melodies are a speech facilitator. “The practice of language through songs promotes the acquisition of the musicality of the language. It also makes it possible to identify the sound components of language. The syllabization and the rhymes indicate the internal rhythm of the sentence and help the child to restore the melodic curve of a sentence”, underlined the Ministry of National Education, in a report in 2008.