Motivation is a key concept in learning foreign languages. My motivation as a language learner was, and still is, music and literature, which I desperately wanted to be able to understand in the language in which they were written. When the time came to choose my dissertation topic for my MSc it was clear to me that music in ESL classrooms should be my focus. The bibliography was almost as sparse as my mood was rotten while I wrote it. No one wants their student years to be over and relocating back to my home country was not a prospect I was looking forward to. Poring over hundreds of song lyrics in order to find appropriate songs, my conviction that music promotes language acquisition became stronger and remains with me today.
