Using Music Application in Smartphone to Improve

Vocabulary Mastery for EFL Learners

Emyra Moza Isyraqi
emyramoza@student.ub.ac.id
Abstract
A smartphone is one thing that becomes an important
need for teenagers. Many people believe that
smartphone brings more good impact than bad
impact. One of the good impact is that it can help
learners and teachers to make the language learning
process easier. It gives chances for EFL learners to
maximize the use of technologies for learning and
understanding language by installing some
applications that can be helpful in supporting learning
process. This article proposes that the language
teacher can help the students to improve vocabulary
mastery and enhance knowledge through music
application in smartphone.
Keywords: Music, Smartphone, Vocabulary, EFL
learners.

INTRODUCTION
This article reflects the impact in using music application
in smartphones on English language learning. In fact, smarpthones
combined with great teaching strategies make learners be able to
learn everything, everytime, and everywhere they want. Because
of its practicity, a smartphone can do almost everything a
computer can do. Smartphone can be said as a complete media
that consist of video, image, text, and sound. (Chun & Plass, 1996,
1997; Lomicka, 1998) stated that mixing many forms of media
such as video, image, animation, text, and sound can improve
vocabulary mastery. By providing many ways to deliver and
manage online English learning materials, knowledge of students
to accept and exploit educational technology is important to make
sure the strategies that be used by teachers can give many
advantages to students, and support the language learning
process. The aim of this research is optimizing the use of a
smartphone application to improve vocabulary mastery in the
process of English language learning for EFL learners.
DISCUSSION
The teaching media that be used to teach vocabulary is
through Music application. The lyrics from songs can be used as a
media to improve vocabulary mastery, from the lyrics students
can know the right pronounciation of a word, and we can choose
songs which has good requirement as a materials that be taught to
students. (Asnawir and Usman, 2002:11) stated that media is a
thing that can support human activities to make it easier, even in
teaching learning activity, and it affects on the effectiveness of any
programs. Media in teaching learning activity is really important
in helping students to be more active and interested in learning
process. Learn English with songs is one of the most enjoyable and
easiest way to learn the language. Learn English with Music is an
application to listen the music and also shows the lyrics. From this
application the students can enjoy their favorite music and learn
English at the same time. Take songs from musical library, follow
the lyrics and find the translation. This application will help
students to learn English much more quickly by using songs. The
application makes students be able to practice their
pronounciation and sing a song in English with lyrics showed in
screen and it can makes them speak English words without errors.
This application has some benefits, they are:
a. Learn English words
b. Understand the pronunciation
c. Listen to music in English
d. Improve the students’ listening
e. Memorize terms, words and sentences and
f. Improve students’ vocabulary
g. Easy search and find lyrics
h. Learn any other language, not only English.
Many students have difficulties in learning English/foreign
language because they feel that English/foreign language is
difficult to be mastered. Listening is an effective activity to
become familiar with a new language. The melody makes us enjoy
and helps us to memorize words and their pronunciation easily.
Brown (2005:7) stated that teaching is an activity that can help
learners to understand the way to do something, guiding learners
to know/understand something, giving and sharing knowledge,
and make sure they can know or understand about something.
Teaching English vocabulary will be easily understood by using
Music Application as the media. The goal of using media in
teaching process is to make the learners interested and make the
teacher easier in giving/explaining the materials. Through this
application, the students will feel something new and different
things from what they usually did in their class. As explained
before, teaching media is really important in teaching learning
process and song is one of teaching medias that really effective
especially when learners need to memorize some vocabularies.
Through song, the teaching vocabulary will be easily to be
understood by the students.
Before teaching vocabulary to the students, we need to
prepare anything to make us well prepared when we teach them
in the class like designing teaching scenario, preparing the songs,
teaching materials, teaching media, observation checklist, and
table of scoring. The preparation can be listed such as:
(a) The steps in teaching process which including procedure of
activities .
(b) Preparing media that needed to be used in the classroom
(smartphone, the application, and the lyrics of songs),
(c) Prepare the things of observation process for example
observation checklist and scoring rubric.
In the pre-activity, teacher will greet students, introduce
the application, sing a song, and asking students any questions
related to the lesson. In whilst activity, teacher explains the
material, direct the students about what they have to do, and how
should they do the task. In this part, the writer applies group work
to prove students’ vocabulary achievement. The writer explains
any difficulties that might arise in the class.

CONCLUSION
Songs can develop students’ concentration, memory and
communication (Brewster, et al, 2002:163). Repetition is the
action of repeating something that has already been said or
written and it is can be used in music application to repeat the
song. Repetition makes students be able to know what will comes
and remembering the words. According to Milington (2011),
songs can make students understand about the culture of the
target language. Brewsters (2002) states that songs are useful for
young learners. Songs can desribe a culture, so students can know
and understand the culture aspects of the song, they also can learn
and improve new vocabularies and expressions as well as
pronounciation. From that, we can conclude that a smartphone
application (Learn English with Music Songs) is a good way to
develop vocabulary mastery because this application makes
students motivated, understand the material easily and enjoy the
lesson. Also, at the same time, it provides a lot of opportunities for
the students to improve their vocabulary and makes them great in
memorizing vocabulary.

REFERENCES
Brewster, J., Ellis, G & Girard, D. 2002. Primary English Teacher’s
Guide. England: Pearson Education Limited.

Brown, H Douglash, 2005. Teaching by Principle. Printice Hill: New

Jersey

Chun, D.M. & Plass, J.L. (1996). Effects of multimedia annotations

on vocabulary acquisition. The Modern Language Journal, 80, 183-
198.

Chun, D.M. & Plass, J.L. (1997). Research on text comprehension in

multimedia environments. Language Learning & Technology, 1(1),
60-81.

Lomicka, L. (1998). To gloss or not to gloss: An investigation of

reading comprehension online. Language Learning and
Technology, 1 (4), 1-50.

Millington, N,T. 2011. Using songs effectively to teach English to

young learner language education in Asia. Retrieved from
http://dx.doi.org/10.5746/LEiA/11/V2/I1/a11/Millington on 18
june 2012.