How to reduce anxiety and encourage motivation in the classroom through songs and music using a task based approach

Abstract

The first thing we would like to mention is that this program has been carried out in a state school in Castellón. This state school was set up in 1980 in “Peri 18” zone. The neighborhood is compounded mainly by young people of middle economic class. It also has a population mostly of people from Castellón and a small group of immigrants, too. Secondly, we would like to mention is that the approach has been designed for students in 5th level of primary education. Those students have been exposed to English language since nursery school, with such a long exposure to the language we expected our students to have a reasonable good level according to their age. However, We have had the chance to observe during the first months of class how this students lacked in some of the most basic skills that were supposed to be mastered at their level. We know that pupils are not all the same, in every class students will have different levels, will have different problems and different motivations and interests. Nevertheless, there are some aspects, some basic contents and basic objectives that regardless their motivations or interests all students should have achieved. Moreover, the class environment was not the best to carry out our teaching practice. This environment will be further analyzed in the following lines.