English Song Lyrics in EFL Underachievers’ Phoneme Categorization

This study examined the effectiveness of teaching phoneme categorization and segmentation to EFL underachievers using songs and rhymes as instructional materials. Two distinct groups of 11th-grade EFL underachievers from Taiwan participated in this quasi-experimental study. The instructional materials consisted of lyrics sourced from online resources of the British Council. The quantitative tool employed in this study was a questionnaire based on National Reading Panel’s Assessment of Phonemic Awareness tool, and qualitative data were analyzed. In terms of results, there was a small positive effect when using song-lyrics instruction to help EFL underachievers understand phoneme categorization, song-lyrics instruction did not significantly improve EFL underachievers’ understanding of phoneme segmentation, and EFL underachievers provided positive feedback on song-lyrics instruction during interviews. This study is likely to encourage educators and researchers to explore the potential advantages of using song-lyrics instruction to enhance learners’ English listening skills.