STEM Journal 5(2), 2004 The Effectiveness of Song-Based EFL Instruction at the Tertiary Level David E. Shaffer Chosun University Shaffer, David E. (2004). The effectiveness of song-based EFL instruction at the tertiary level. STEM Journal, 5(2), 83-100. The aim of this study is to quantitatively examine whether the use of song through a cloze- type activity is as effective as or more effective than non-musical methods in the learning of lexical items and syntactic structures. To this end, one experimental group was exposed to a song and later was asked to discuss it, while a second group was exposed to only the lyrics before discussing them. A control group receiving no instruction was also included. Through a Korean-to-English translation pretest and two posttests, the effectiveness of the musical and non-musical teaching methods were compared. In overall test scores, the song group performed better than the lyrics group, showing that the use of a song in a lesson is more effective than the introduction of the lyrics in the absence of the song. The test scores also indicated that the song group outperformed the lyrics group on both the lexical item questions and the syntactic questions, indicating that the use of song is more effective especially in teaching syntactical structures and lexical items. I. INTRODUCTION Songs have been used in the EFL classroom has been mainly for the variety they bring to the lesson and the enjoyment and motivation they bring to the student. Language instructors have in general rated their use of song in the classroom as successful because of the student participation they so easily produce. Because the main use of song has been for entertainment, there are those look upon the use of songs in the EFL classroom as being of dubious instructional value. Among those who question the use of songs as an EFL teaching tool are academic administrators not trained in TESOL methodology, parents of EFL/ESL students, and students themselves. Little research has been done to determine how effective, if at all, the use of song is in teaching different aspects of English. This paper presents the results of experiments designed to determine the effectiveness of song in the learning of both lexical items and syntactic structures. These two items have been selected because it is often suggested that song-based learning activities are