EFL learners who listened to humorous songs gained significantly on a listening comprehension test while a control group taught without the songs did not, though the groups were not compared directly¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r1 · q2
Currency · newest study 2010 · checked against its sources 2026-11-02 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Fifteen intermediate EFL learners who heard a humorous song after each listening lesson improved significantly from pretest to posttest (mean 41.3 to 54.0, paired t = −4.219, p = .001), while the 15-learner control group's gain (40.7 to 46.7) was not significant (t = −1.21, p = .246); no test comparing the two groups' gains is reported. → Rafiee et al. 2010

Evidence¶

Rafiee et al. 2010¶

Marzieh Rafiee, Zohre Kassaian, Hossein Vahid Dastjerdi. (2010). The Application of Humorous Song in EFL Classrooms and Its Effects on Listening Comprehension. English Language Teaching, 3(4). http://www.ccsenet.org/elt

q2 · i? · causal · r1

Thirty female intermediate EFL learners (aged 15–25) at Iranian English institutes were numbered 1 to 30 and assigned by odd and even number to a control group, whose instruction the article does not describe beyond the absence of songs, and an experimental group that listened to a Shel Silverstein humorous song immediately after the Interchange course material in each of seventeen 90-minute sessions; the authors call this an experimental design and the numbering a way "to simply randomize the participants". The listening-comprehension results rest only on within-group paired-samples t-tests (the article's other test, a Wilcoxon signed-rank test, compares the experimental group's immediate and delayed recall): the experimental group's gain was significant (Table 2: t = −4.219, df 14, p = .001; the text prints t(29)), the control group's was not (t = −1.21, df 14, p = .246). The two groups' gains are never tested against each other, so the article's conclusion that the experimental group "outperformed" the control rests on the posttest means (54.0 vs 46.7) alone. The reported "eta scored" value of 0.07 is called a moderate effect size.

"There was a statistically significant increase in listening comprehension test from the second test part A (M=41.33, SD=10.60) to part B (M =54.00, SD=10.55), t(29)= -4.219, p ≤ 0.05. The eta scored statistics (0.07) indicated a moderate effect size (according to Cohen, 1988)."

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Oral Language — outcome: instruction changes it

Related Claims¶

• Humorous-song treatment shows no significant difference between EFL learners' immediate and delayed listening recall — related
• Both instructed and regular listening classes produce significant within-group gains in general listening comprehension over a 10-week course — related
• Both the experimental and control classes improved significantly from pre-test to post-test in listening — related