"You Give Love a Bad Name". Using Popular Song Titles to Teach Direct and Indirect Objects in English

The use of elements of popular culture for L2 language instruction has long been a topic of interest for instructors of English. This pilot study examines the use of popular song titles to help teach L2 students to distinguish between indirect and direct objects in English. Titles are used instead of lyrics because they cannot be copyrighted. A pre-test and post-test methodology was utilized. Each test contained four popular song titles and four generic sentences, all of which contained both indirect and direct objects in English. Three international students whose native languages were not English and who were enrolled at an undergraduate college in the US were asked to identify the indirect and direct objects in the texts. A total of 24 aggregate responses were generated for each test. None of the students (0/24, 0%) were able to distinguish indirect objects from direct objects in the pre-test. After a teaching intervention, the results improved to 19/24. Students performed better on the popular song titles (11/12) than on the generic sentences (8/12). The results suggest that popular song titles can be used effectively in English language learning.