Innovative Strategy: Dialogic Musical Gatherings with contemporary English Songs to Develop Listening Comprehension in EFL Learners in Manta

Abstract

This study explores how  effectiveness of Dialogic Musical Gatherings (DMGs) through the use by contemporary English song  like  “Count on Me”, can support  the development of  listening comprehension  skills and improve  motivation in developing  listening skills in English Foreign Language EFL among learners  in the high schools  in Manta, Ecuador. As a teacher working in a public high school and considering the  Ministry of Education´s curriculum and the performance criteria for the high school graduated profile, which requires students to develop communicative skills  in EFL, the present study was conducted using  Critical Communicative Methodology and Dialogic Learning Theory.  This methodology was conducted with a purposive sample of five students aged 13 to 16  of B1 level during a four-day intervention. Data were collected through diagnostic listening intervention, an observation rubric, and a final survey from the students.

Inductive thematic coding yielded four analytic categories – Listening Comprenhesion Development, Dialogic Interaction and Egalitarian Participation, Motivation and Emotional Transformation, and Identity and Bilingual Self – Perception, each with four subcategories grounded in participant level evidence and make aware by current neuroscience. The findings expose  that the Dialogic Musical Gatherings (DMG) context activates a cascade of neurochemical responses: dopaminergic reward, oxytocin-mediated social bonding and cortisol reduction, that collectively create the optimal neurological condition for language learning. Group average scores rose from 7.0 to 9.6 across the intervention.  The declaration “Me siento bilingüe” by one participants on the final day wraps the study´s deepest finding: that DMGs do no merely teach listening, they transform  learners  relationship with language  students are invited into egalitarian dialogue around music that carries meaningful values.  Learners demonstrated improvements in identifying key vocabulary, understanding main ideas, and interpreting values such as cooperation and respect. The purposive sample was designed as intensive pilot methodologically justified and justified by established qualitative research criteria and develops  transferable insights relevant to EFL practitioners in limited resourced educational contexts as in public education.