Abstract:
Song and music are highly evocative. In the language classroom, they provide variety, fun, elegance, warmth and serenity. Creating a joyful and relaxing setting, they entertain the learner , speak to his emotions, sensations, dreams, childhood remembrances, capture his imagination as Piaf captured her elegant and handsome ”Milord” , the “Jolie” fruit salad charmed Bourville or the lovely Helene hypnotized Aznavour who, to warm her, burnt home furniture except the bed !.
Fascinated and spellbound by the beauty and strength of this thrilling, tasty and amusing musical discourse, terribly inspiring, always changing and colorful, the learner feels an irresistible desire to whisper his emotions, to communicate, to interact with his classmates.
Precisely, this research attempts to explore these astonishing potentialities of song and music, and their role in stimulating verbal interaction in the beginning foreign Arabic classroom where, surprisingly, these two wonderful pedagogical tools remain until now ignored.
Our hypothesis suggests that if song and music are used creatively, they would stimulate classroom interaction. To test this hypothesis, we exploited a variety of Algerian, Maghrebin and oriental songs and pieces of music with two Tanzanian learner groups, through twenty two sessions.
The analysis of the recorded learners interactions, the two interviews conducted with the first group and the questionnaire handed to the second one, attested the powerful evocative and stimulating role of song and music.
The communication, learning and discourse strategies used by our learners showed their deep involvement during classroom interactions.
In the light of these findings showing the successful interactional role of song and music ,we can say that our hypothesis is confirmed.
