In the modern world, the role of a foreign language in the learning process is significantly increasing. Changes in the sociocultural context of public life entail changes in the requirements society places on education in general, and language learning in particular. Since in this situation there is no “natural need” for a foreign language, the stimulating factor is the motivation to learn a foreign language.

Every teacher wants to make his lesson interesting and exciting, to ensure that the cognitive interest of schoolchildren and their creative mental activity develops. Students often ask: “Why learn a language?” The question is completely natural and simple for them, but very difficult for the one to whom it is asked. The answer should provide a lesson. Without seeing the purpose of their actions in the classroom, students perceive a foreign language as a certain thing in itself, until they have a motive for each speech or language action, for performing an exercise or task. Practical experience convinces us that the most important thing in teaching a foreign language is the motivation of students.

Students without motivation to learn simply do not exist. Any cognitive activity of students, along with operational components (knowledge, abilities and skills), also includes motivational ones (motive, interest, attitude).

In addition to desire, an object is needed that, responding to a need, would be a stimulator of activity and would give it a certain specific direction, that is, a motive is needed.

Modern psychologists and teachers are unanimous that the quality of an activity and its results depend, first of all, on the motivation of the individual, that is, his motives for activity (including motives, needs, goals, interests, desires). It is motivation that causes purposeful activity, which determines the choice of means and techniques, their ordering to achieve goals. Therefore, motivation is the trigger for all human activity, be it work, communication or cognition. The problem of motivation in learning arises in every school subject. However, the problem of motivation for learning foreign languages at the secondary stage of education is especially acute. Having an interest in the subject is an important condition for activating students’ cognitive activity in the learning process. The task of providing conditions for the generation and maintenance of interest falls on the teacher, who, to solve this problem, must turn to the experience of students in the learning process.

It is known that in order to achieve effectiveness in teaching a foreign language, it is necessary to widely use students’ emotions in this process. One of the areas of interest for teenagers is music. But usually the teacher saves the songs either for the end of the lesson or uses them as a reward for good work.

Songs often have no place in the learning process itself, but are seen only as a way to relax. Moreover, if, for example, a topic in a textbook ends at the end of the year, it is the songs that “fall out” from the learning process. The teacher may explain this by lack of time for entertainment. However, this type of activity has serious goals. It is necessary to note the dense, accessible and systematized way of presenting grammatical material in songs, which does not lead to students getting tired of theoretical material and contributes to the simultaneous development of grammatical phenomena.

Working on a song develops listening and translation skills, since the song touches on vital issues, it introduces vocabulary, performing a communicative function. What is most important is that a song, like any literary text, provides “living” grammatical structures, that is, grammar in action.

No less important is the fact that using a song in a foreign language lesson helps the student realize that he needs a foreign language now, and will not need it sometime in the future – after all, as a rule, children show interest in modern English-language music and lyrics.

In the schools of ancient Greece, many texts were learned by singing, and in elementary schools in India, the alphabet and arithmetic are still taught by singing.

Learning and performing short songs with a simple melodic pattern and frequent repetitions helps to consolidate the correct articulation and pronunciation of sounds, the rules of phrasal stress, rhythm features, etc. In a foreign language lesson, you can use songs, if possible, at all stages of the educational process:

• for a stronger consolidation of lexical and grammatical material;

• for phonetic exercises at the initial stage of the lesson;

• as an incentive for the development of speech skills and abilities;

• as a kind of relaxation in the lesson, when students need relaxation, relieving tension and restoring performance. The purpose of relaxation is to relieve tension, give children a little rest, evoke positive emotions and a good mood, which leads to improved learning. A good type of relaxation is a song, which provides students with the opportunity not only to relax, but also serves to develop grammatical, phonetic, and lexical skills.

Strong memorization of song lyrics is facilitated by a complex of factors such as rhyme, mode, tonality, and melody. Numerous repetitions, characteristic of the song genre, contribute to easy and involuntary memorization of lexical and grammatical structures, thereby increasing the effectiveness of training.

According to teachers, an important stage of work is self-control, which activates the feedback mechanism, helps to increase students’ responsibility, optimize their language acquisition and, as a result, significantly improve motivation and academic performance.

Modern, popular songs among young people can also stimulate conversations and discussions. Based on the song text, you can discuss the problems of young people, getting acquainted with the characteristic features of their life abroad. You can invite the students themselves to bring them to the lesson in recordings. It is desirable that they be interesting in content and stimulate students to further discussion, expressing their attitude to the song, its content and performance. You can work with songs the same way as with texts.

They must meet certain requirements, namely:

• be authentic, accessible in information and language terms, emotional, problematic and http://www.tilt.tci;

• meet the age characteristics of students.

The use of songs in the target language continues to be http://www.tilt.tc at the intermediate stage of teaching foreign languages for the following reasons:

• song materials are diverse not only in content, but also in terms of the linguistic information they contain. The songs represent all speech genres (story, description, reasoning), they contain direct and indirect speech, they demonstrate examples of different functional styles of speech from colloquial to sublime;

• students become familiar with the culture of the country of the language they are learning, since students, according to psychologists, are especially sensitive and receptive to foreign culture;

• when working with this unique linguistic and cultural material, a good prerequisite is created for the comprehensive development of the student’s personality;

• the same song material can be used to achieve different learning goals depending on the tasks performed on its basis, that is, songs have the property of complex multi-purpose use;

• various components of song materials (music, lyrics, legends) can be used as a support for teaching;

• unlike other audio materials, which require listening to a maximum of three times, songs, as a rule, are subsequently learned by heart by students.

It should also be noted that the advantage of using songs in foreign language lessons is that songs help easier and more durable assimilation and expansion of vocabulary, since song texts include new words and expressions. In songs, already familiar vocabulary is encountered in a new contextual environment, which contributes to its activation. Songs often contain proper names, geographical names, realities of the country of the language being studied, and poetic words. This helps students develop a sense of language and become familiar with stylistic features.

The duration of work on a song depends on the desire, imagination, and preparation of the teacher and students. It is absolutely not necessary to take both grammatical and lexical material in the same lesson. This can be done over 5-6 lessons. Moreover, it is always necessary to take into account the level of knowledge of students in a foreign language, their interests and emotional state.

To summarize, it should be concluded that the presence of a desire to learn a foreign language in itself does not provide positive motivation. Motivation must be supported by students’ interest in performing educational activities. Therefore, one of the main tasks of a foreign language teacher is to maintain students’ interest in the subject. Many methodologists and psychologists give special preference to song as one of the effective and intensive methods of teaching a foreign language, since it is song that allows one to achieve high results in the learning process, bringing joy to students and contributing to their cultural development and aesthetic education. Song is one of the most powerful motivating factors when learning such complex material as grammar. According to research, the use of intensive methods is more productive compared to traditional methods of mastering grammatical material. Thanks to the song, students deepen their knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary, develop auditory pronunciation skills, improve them, and improve accuracy in articulation, rhythm and intonation. With proper organization of work with a song, it can be organically introduced into the lesson, being an integral part of it and contributing to the effective teaching of a foreign language.

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