Potential Use of AREL in English Song Analysis to Improve Argumentation Skills and English Proficiency

Abstract

This study attempts to assess the potential use of AREL in English song activities as a learning method to improve the students’ ability in argumentation and English proficiency. AREL – stands for Assertion, Reason, Evidence, Link back has long been introduced as a basic structure for argument construction. Learning AREL has been a major challenge for the beginner debaters, not to mention their constraints in English proficiency. The data received in this study were analysed by means of frequency, percentage, and standard deviation. The students highly believed that the method used in this study was interesting (=3.79 SD=0.860) and comfortable (=3.86 SD=0.639), in which it indicates the enjoyable learning process and the absence of the students’ anxiety. Furthermore, this method was able to give a quick comprehension (=4.00 SD=0.654) on AREL, where applying AREL in song analysis was easier for the students, thus allow the students to gradually step up onto the real argumentation. That could be observed by the average test score where students obtained higher score for analysing song with AREL (=80) than for making real argumentation with AREL (=70). However, in order to make this method effective, the students’ attendance was a mandatory. Though no test on English proficiency conducted, nevertheless most of the students agreed that this method helped them improving their English proficiency, which included vocabularies (=4.64 SD=0.610) and figurative language (=4.50 SD=0.500) competencies.