1. Faculty of Arts, Dhurakij Pundit University,
Let’s Rap and Learn English: Promoting English Language Learning through the Rap Music Activity
Janpha Thadphoothon
Faculty of Arts, Dhurakij Pundit University,
Bangkok, Thailand
Paper presented at the 6th National Conference on Applied Liberal Arts: NCAA 2017, May 19, 2017, the Faculty of Liberal Arts. King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Lat Krabang, Bangkok, Thailand

2. Outline Introduction Literature Review Method Results and Discussions
Conclusions and Summary
Qs and As

3. Introduction Benefits of using music (songs) to teach / learn English
Benefits include listening skills, prosodic awareness, and vocabulary acquisition
(Brand, 2007)
Brand, M. (2007). Music, Asia, and English: Use of pop-songs in ESL instruction Asia-Pacific Journal for Arts Education, 5(2),

4. Music in Suggestopedia (Education)
 Georgi Lozanov --- a relaxed but focused state is the optimum state for learning
Music helps students to relax. – Good for their learning  

5. The Affective Filter hypothesis by Krashen (1987)
Affective variables (anxiety, motivation, self-confidence)
Rap music has the potential to lower the affective filter, hence, facilitates language acquisition.
Krashen, Stephen D. Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Prentice-Hall International, 1987.

6. Benefits of Creative Writing
There is a very good reason for teaching creative writing, and the main reason is that it can increase the students’ self-confidence and self-esteem, which leads to increase in motivation (Dornyei, 2001).
Dornyei, Z. (2001) Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

7. AIM
To investigate the implementation of an instructional activity, ‘the rapping activity’.
The activity was part of a course on creative writing
(Introduction to Creative Writing EN 379).
The activity involves the use of rap music to promote the students’ language learning.

8. Literature Review
The place of literature (creative writing ) in ELT --- ‘Literature is all round us' (Maley, 2006) Maley, A. (2006). English Through Literature. Beijing: Central Radio and TV University Press.

9. Literature Review
CW  helps Ss (as well as Ts) to break away from old habits (cognitive fixation) lack of desire to explore complex language. 
CW or some key features of creative tasks help learners to use language to construct “unknown meaning and the use of constraints to facilitate the creative language use”.
Tan Bee (2012)
Tan Bee Tin. 2012. Freedom, constraints and creativity in language learning tasks: new task features. Journal of Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 6(2), p

10. Literature Review
Schön et al. (2008) conducted research showing that students who learned a new language with musical accompaniment could recognize words better than students who listened to sentences without the music.
Schön, D., Boyer, M., Moreno, S., Besson, M., Peretz, I., & Kolinsky, R. (2008). Songs as an aid for language acquisition. Cognition 106(2),
Retrieved from

11. Literature Review
Segal (2014) has experimented using rapping activity to help develop the students’ grammatical awareness. The results were promising. The students enjoyed the activity and produced high-quality texts.
As a unique musical genre, Segal (2014) has argued for the use of rap music as learning activity among ESL/EFL teachers.
Segal, Beth, "Teaching English as a Second Language through Rap Music: A Curriculum for Secondary School Students" (2014). Master's Theses. Paper 104.

12. Method
The subjects were twenty-five English majors taking a course on creative writing at a large private university located on the outskirts of Bangkok.
The 15-week long course titled Creative Writing was offered as an elective during the second semester of the academic year 2016.
Twenty-five students who have enrolled in the course were given the instruction on how to compose poems and short stories.
One of the poetic forms was a quatrain of different rhyming schemes. Later they were asked to compose a stanza of rap lyrics on their own names. By the end of week 3, the students were asked to put the music into their rap verse and sing the song themselves.
Their rap songs were posted on the Facebook group of the class. After the activity (end of week 5), the students were asked to reflect on the learning experience. All of them answered the questionnaire and open-ended questions.
Upon returning the questionnaires, the students were asked to voluntarily provide their most-updated GPA. The students with the GPA of 3.0 or higher were considered the high achievers. Those with the GPA of 2.5 or lower were classified as the low achievers. There were ten low achievers and seven high achievers.

13. Example 1

14. Example 2

15. Findings The majority of the respondents were female students.
Only six of them (24.0%) were male.
In addition to asking the students about their genders, the researcher also asked them to provide their grade point average (GPA).

16. Table 1: Background of the students
Achievement Level
Frequency
Percent
Low Achievers 10
40.0
High Achievers 7
28.0
Missing 8
32.0
Total 25
100

17. Table 2: The students’ liking of the rap activity
Item
Opinion
Frequency
Percent
I like the rapping activity.
Strongly Disagree -
Disagree 2
8.0
Undecided
Agree 16
64.0
Strongly Agree 5
20.0
Total 25
100

18. Table 3: The rapping activity helps me to learn English.
Item
Opinion
Frequency
Percent
The rapping activity helps me to learn English.
Strongly Disagree -
Disagree 1
4.0
Undecided 2
8.0
Agree 13
52.0
Strongly Agree 9
36.0
Total 25
100

19. Table 4: Developing a sense of English rhythms through the rapping activity
Item
Opinion
Frequency
Percent
I have developed a sense of rhythms through as a result of the rapping activity.
Strongly Disagree -
Disagree
Undecided 3
12.0
Agree 14
56.0
Strongly Agree 8
32.0
Total 25
100

20. Table 5: Learning a lot of English
Item
Opinion
Frequency
Percent
I have learned a lot of English as a result of the rapping activity.
Strongly Disagree -
Disagree 1
4.0
Undecided 6
24.0
Agree 13
52.0
Strongly Agree 5
20.0
Total 25
100

21. Table 6: Complexity of the task
Item
Opinion
Frequency
Percent
The rapping activity is too difficult for me.
Strongly Disagree 1
4.0
Disagree
Undecided 9
36.0
Agree 10
40.0
Strongly Agree 4
16.0
Total 25
100

22. Table 7: Low and High Achievers perceptions of the rapping activity
GPA N
Mean SD t
Sig.
Low Achievers 10
4.20
.20
3.78
0.00
High Achievers 7
3.28
.35

23. Results from the open-ended questions
All of the respondents answered four open-ended questions. The questions are:
What have you learned from the rapping activity? Please explain.
Did you feel you have got enough support in completing the rapping task? Explain.
Have you learned from other students’ examples on the FB group? Explain.
What do you think are the benefits of rapping in English?

24. Table 8: What the students have learned
Topic
Frequency
Percentage
Elements of poetry (rhyming, stanzas, etc) 10
26.31
Rap Music 7
18.41
Vocabulary (words, meaning) 6
15.78
Writing skills 3
7.89
New experience 2
5.26
Joy of music and learning
Building up confidence 1
2.63
Creativity
How to make a song
Speaking very fast English
Helping me to learn English
Aesthetics (beauty of language, sounds)
Searching ability (for words)
Total 38
100

25. Table 9: Adequacy of supportNo
Percentage
Yes
Did you feel you have got enough support in completing the rapping task? 3 15 17 85

26. Table 10: Learning from peers on Facebook
Opinion No
Percentage
Yes
Have you learned from other students’ examples on the FB group? 2 8 22 92

27. Table 11: Benefits of rapping in English
Topic
Frequency
Percentage
Vocabulary 10
29.41
Elements of poetry 7
20.58
Creativity 6
17.64
Fun
Adaptable for the development of English skills 2
5.88
Thinking skills
How to compose a song 1
2.94
Total 34
100

28. Discussion Students liked the activity. Support is crucial.
Weak students enjoyed the activity --- Gardner (2006), there are several types of intelligences.

29. Summary and Conclusion
 This paper reports a classroom action study where English major students were encouraged to compose rap lyrics and perform them. As part of the requirements of the course on creative writing, a group of Thai university students composed their own rap lyrics and put the music into their verse. Data obtained from the questionnaires and open-ended questions were analyzed to make a case for the integration of creative writing elements in ELT.
In sum, the majority of the students enjoyed the rapping activity. They perceived the activity to be academically helpful and fun. They said that the task was complex. Low achievers and the high achievers did not have the same attitudes toward the rapping activity.
In conclusion, the results showed that the students had positive attitudes toward the rap activity. The rap activity was challenging for them; however, they said that they had learned several useful language skills from it, including prosodic features.

31. Citation
Thadphoothon, J. (2017). Let’s Rap and Learn English: Promoting English Language Learning through Rap Music Activities [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from (URL Here). Thadphoothon, J. (2017, January). Let’s Rap and Learn English: Promoting English Language Learning through Rap Music Activities. Paper presented at the 6th National Conference on Applied Liberal Arts: NCAA 2017, May 19, 2017, the Faculty of Liberal Arts. King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Lat Krabang, Bangkok, Thailand.

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Let’s Rap and Learn English: Promoting English Language Learning through Rap Music Activities