discourse analysis of nursery rhymes as a supplementary material for language learning

The use of literature to teach second/foreign languages can be traced back to over one century ago. in the nineteenth century, second/foreign languages were taught with the help of the grammar translation method. students would translate literary texts from the second/foreign language to the native language. unlike the traditional efl classes, the learner centered approach to efl teaching tried to fulfill the learner’s language needs (pillay, 2002) by providing tasks and materials as motivating factors to see the progress of the demotivated students (cheah, 2003). nursery rhymes are quite important in terms of developing children’s language skills. it was observed that there is a paucity of research looking at nursery rhymes as a supplementary material for language learning; therefore, this study was intended to fill that gap in the literature by investigating the usage of nursery rhymes as a supplementary material for language learning in general. moreover, specific analysis of lexis, grammar, intonation, pronunciation, and even culture had been taken into account as well. in other words, the aim was to see whether teachers can use nursery rhymes to teach all these points or not. in order to achieve these purposes forty well-known rhymes were selected randomly. then, these nursery rhymes were divided amongst different sub groups in terms of alliteration, culture, grammar, lexis, and repetition by coding processes. the aim was to find out the extent to which each rhyme is rich in each sub group. the findings indicated that some consonants, nouns and phrases were repeated in different rhymes. moreover, it was found that various rhymes had historical background and even different versions indicating different cultures. additionally, grammatical aspects related to different word classes and various verb tenses were found. finally, different lexical aspects containing monosyllabic as well as polysyllabic were found. the findings drew the instructors, curriculum developers, and course designers attention towards integrating more literature centered language activities in the process of language teaching. more importantly, this study indicated that like all texts affecting the world of children, nursery rhymes should be examined in terms of their content on whether they affect children negatively or not. finally, the study proposed some pedagogical implications related to literature-based syllabus to general design.