During the long history of mankind, a song was always a kind of technique, which helped people to pass on knowledge, wisdom and information from one generation to another. For the peoples, who had no written language, their songs constituted a valuable part of the oral tradition. The messages of the oral tradition can take different forms. For example, they can be folk tales, sayings, ballads, songs or chants. Even today, a song helps preserve the national identity of numerically small peoples, who do not have national writing systems.

Often a song can convey the precise information of human activities. The known example of this fact is a work song. There are many types of work songs: farm work songs, industrial folk songs, sea shacks, cowboy songs, African-American work songs, and others. Work songs often convey information about skills that anyone can learn through singing. The songs took their rhythms from the work done and helped people to work together.

Why did people use songs to transmit information from generation to generation?

The answer is obvious: people had no alternative technique to convey verbal information without altering their text. Only songs can save the integrity of verbal information as it passes from generation to generation. The chance of a song being changed randomly is very low, because any unintentional alteration to the lyric text violates the rules, according to which a particular song has been written.

What can be considered as the purpose of a song nowadays?

There are different views on the purpose of a song. My point of view is that a song provides the best way to memorize oral information, and a song is a means of encoding information for humans. A song can help us

  • memorize oral information,
  • keep information for a long time,
  • pass the information on to another person.

How can songs help us in learning a foreign language?

Most of the self-learners face the problem: how to memorize and always keep in their memory the active vocabulary of a foreign language, while being in an English-speaking environment. In these harsh conditions, only songs can help the student. Only songs can be memorized by people and stored in their minds for years, or even for their entire lives.

What are the main problems in learning foreign songs?

Well, there are a number of problems that students may encounter. For example, a singer’s voice may be difficult to recognize. Poor phonetics in students can result in difficulties with correct singing. But perhaps the most serious problem is that the lyrics cannot have a definitive translation. In fact, the translation of letters is almost useless for learning purposes. The learner of a foreign language needs to know the message of the letters and the linguistic means with which the letters were written. In addition, the student needs to know the images, which often form the basis of the letters.

Is there any method of linguistic analysis of foreign poetry or lyrics?

Until recently, there was no such technique, but today you can enjoy the newly developed technique – the Language Teaching Decomposition (LD) method. The method is the multilevel analysis of foreign lyrics or poetry. The LD method is aimed at training for the direct perception of foreign letters (without any auxiliary language). For the first time, the application of this method to the Russian language has been presented in the Via Songs to Russian (VStoR) software. The application presents you with the complete information about the message of the Russian letters and the linguistic means with which the letters were written, as well as other useful information.