Pangasinan Song Songs

This section presents the probable advantages or strengths of using songs, particularly, Pangasinan Novelty Songs as learning aides. All of these enumerated advantages are based from recent studies and findings in the fields of child language development, language teaching and educational researches. These advantages or strengths of using Pangasinan Novelty songs in the development and production of instructional materials for the teaching of the Mother Tongue are enumerated below.

1. Songs possess the inherent phonological characteristics of language. With the use of songs as learning aides, the authentic sounds or pronunciation of the language is extended or presented as a model to be duplicated by the learners. Under the Behaviorist Theory

Since songs have tremendous ‘recall’ to users or to an individual as a listener/consumer, it will expose the learners in acquiring words or vocabulary. According to Brooks and Kempe (Brooks and Kempe 2012, 65-87), “children also infer word meaning from speech accompanying activities and routines”. Therefore, the singing of the songs engages the learners on acquiring and learning the vast lexicon of Pangasinan language. For instance, when students will sing the songs more frequently, most likely, they could gradually learn the meaning of the words contained in the songs and will result on enriching their vocabulary or language repertoire. The more frequent the learner’s are exposed to these songs; they eventually acquire and learn words and their

The use of songs in language learning and instruction has been employed in Suggestopedia- a theory of language learning that asserts the importance of achieving deeply relaxed state of learners prior to engaging in strategies of language learning. In this approach, baroque music is used to induce this state (Brown 1982, 36). Likely, the use of song in teaching Mother Tongue offers a diversified use of language teaching pedagogy.

5. Aside of that, the entire lyrics or selected stanza from the songs can be chosen to be written on the board or charts to function as a drill or route exercises for reading. In this manner, listening and reading in the Mother Tongue is reinforced further. In Teaching Reading in the Elementary Grades, Tejero (2004, 25-28) mentioned the skills of an emergent reader which include sound and letter names recognition. At this stage, Tejero specified the importance of developing ‘phoneme-grapheme’ (sound-letter) relationships. Hence, as the learners advances on their ability to read, the lyrics of the songs can be used to enhance their reading ability as well as developing their speech or command in the use of the Mother