The new “English Curriculum Standards (experiment draft)” promulgated by the Ministry of Education also made it clear about objectives and requirements of English Songs in EFL Class of Primary School: students should be able to sing 15-20 simple English songs and ballads in the third or forth grade; students should be able to perform 30-40 simple ballads or poems and sing 30-40 English songs in the fifth or sixth grade。

     English songs, as a supplementary means, have injected new vitality in EFL class of primary school since 1970。 Currently, English teaching community has increasingly recognized the great value in using English songs。 As a newly-born language teaching method, English songs can activate students’ interests, enhance their involvement and improve the teaching quality。 Be that as it may, teaching with English songs does not go to extremes。 It is a new mixture of direct method and grammar-translation method。 Thereby, it could be applied in modern English foreign language teaching skillfully as a supplementary tool。

     There are six chapters in this thesis。 Chapter one is the introduction of the research。 Chapter two is the literature review where relative theories of application of English songs are displayed。 Chapter three discusses the advantages of English Songs in class。 Chapter four discusses how to apply English songs in EFL class in detail。 Chapter five analyzes the limitation and implication of the study。 Chapter six is the conclusion of the thesis to summarize major findings。 

2。 Literature Review

     In this part,the author will present the theoretical basis for using songs and research status of such a teaching method at home and abroad。

2。1 The theoretical basis for using songs

2。1。1 The multiple intelligences theory

     Dr。 Howard Earl Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University, articulated eight criteria for a behavior to be considered an intelligence in his 1983 book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences。 (Howard 1983) These intelligences are: “potential for brain isolation by brain damage, place in evolutionary history, presence of core operations, susceptibility to encoding (symbolic expression), a distinct developmental progression, the existence of savants, prodigies and other exceptional people, and support from experimental psychology and psychometric findings”。(Ye 5) His multiple intelligences theory argued that traditional measures of intelligence failed to take cognitive and interpersonal abilities into account, which are equally important in learning and personal development, not to mention professional success。 

     Intelligence, he argued, should be a measure of one’s ability to solve the problem。 In addition, he believed human way of thinking and way of learning about the world is    persified; also, he pointed out that human smart structure was composed of eight kinds of independent elements。文献综述

     According to Howard Gardner’s theory, using English songs in EFL class can activate classroom atmosphere and make learning easy and effective。 

     Tim Murphey also advocated pop music in EFL class to engage in language skills。 By analysing the lyrics of many popular songs, Tim Murphey found most of the lyrics are characterized by: repeating words, basic grammatical structure and communicative language。 All of them were easy to understand (Murphey 1992)。 Therefore, the prospect of music in EFL class is very real。

2。1。2 The physiological theory

     Neurophysiology studies have shown that the right hemisphere of human brain controls the imaginative thinking。 It is the central nerve of processing superficial imagery, specific image thinking, pergent thinking, central intuition thinking。 The right hemisphere is an emotional music brain (xue 57)。 Listening to music can not only cultivate sentiments, cause the happiness to the students, stimulate the right brain, but also activate the left brain which controls the human language to make it exciting, and at the same time, make the right brain exciting。 Consequently, it can make the students’ oral English more smooth and natural。论文网