Music and Language Running head: MUSIC FACILITATES LANGUAGE LEARNING

Music Facilitates Foreign Language Learning in 5 year olds

Vanessa Torres Lautenbach

Barnard College of Columbia University

Music and Language Abstract In most schools music has been taught as an independent subject. The effects of a song or music on learning are so beneficial to students that it has been incorporated in other classes like science. Music addresses the musical intelligence of a child and it is at the same time an engaging and motivating method. Music has also proven to facilitate cognitive processes. A song helps to encode the information into long term memory and it makes children relate

words to the rhythm, hear the accents of the music together with those of the words and even relax. In this study 5 five year old children have been taught a German traditional song. Added to the music to further support the learning process were a choreography, a video, a discussion about the song and the children drew the story of the song on paper. The effect of music on language learning is because the children remembered at least 80% of the song after 2 weeks.

Music and Language Introduction An elementary school teacher behind a piano and students singing along is not an unfamiliar scene for most of us. Music has been used to teach since the Romans (Wheatherford-Stansell , 2005) But music has mostly been used as a separate subject in schools rather than support for

other subjects. Music has been proved as a tool for relaxation, learning, to gather attention or as a disciplinary enforcement tool. Since Gardner (1993) discovered the theory of multiple intelligences , music has been applied in other subjects as a complimentary teaching tool and has proved to provide a vehicle for the optimization of learning. Scientists have mostly studied musicians and their cognitive abilities compared to those who do not play an instrument. In some cases researchers attention has turned to the field of education and its usefulness and for teaching languages. Jensen in her article states that "The overall, positive effects of music on learning, such as activation and stimulation of the brain's limbic system, stress reduction, and increased molecular energy--all of what affect cognition and creativity--are well documented." (Jensen&Dabney, 2000.) There are many common aspects to the fields of music and language processing (Weatherford, 2009) and both study tuning, rhythm, accent, prosody, sound perception and many more (Jourdain, 293) . It is true that traditional folk songs have been used for a long time in schools by teachers. These songs, contrary to more modern ones, imitate the structure of the language in a more accurate way by respecting accents and rhythm (Wheatherford Stansell,2005.) Music and Language, as two different disciplines, use different intelligences, a theory that Howard Gardner called Multiple Intelligences. He divides Intelligence into eight categories: naturalistic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, musical-rhythmic, bodily-kinesthetic, visual-spatial,

Music and Language mathematical-logical, and verbal linguistic. (1993, p. 40-44) Although these intelligences are

separated, they reinforce each other. Thus language learning benefits from musical learning even if each is taught in a different class or context. (Miller,2004 ) It addresses other learning styles different from the most commonly used verbal/linguistic or mathematical/logical. (Bell, 2008) The use of music enhances memory and encoding (Palmer & Kelly,1992 ) because pupil pairs rhythm and words when singing a song. The fact that an enriched environment is more beneficial for the students was discovered by Diamond , who was studying the performance of the environment on mice. If it was enriched, meaning that it had interesting mazes, activities and challenges mice learned more , contrary to those who were not in that enriched condition (Diamond, 1964 ).To enrich a classroom the teacher should address diverse types of intelligences. Many students love and profit from music but others benefit from other experiences like dancing or clapping (kinesthetic intelligence) and others from visual material like videos or a simple diagram on the chalkboard. If the teaching style addresses many intelligences it is said to be multimodal. In her essay, Merrel identifies the core characteristics that music brings to the classroom. She identifies benefits that range from relaxation, social behavior, reduction of competitive instincts and motivational characteristics. She also describes how pupils pick out vocabulary of familiar words while listening to a song, the song fosters creativity and critical thinking and it acts as a motivator when the lyrics are relevant to the student. (Krachen as cited in Richard-Amato as cited in Merrel ). Importance of this study It is of the utmost importance that teachers regard music as a supportive tool even if they teach science or history. The reality is that more and more schools are cutting back on music lessons to

Music and Language keep their budget low. In a worst case scenario if there is no separate music class ,music can be integrated to other classes as an aid, to enrich the environment and hence, make the learning experience of pupils meaningful and longer lasting. Methods Subjects: 5 five- year old children, 2 boys an 3 girls of common background (all five are American born children of Greek Jewish origin, who speak both Greek and English). None of them speaks German. Because of time restrictions the children were chosen by the researcher, who previously knew the participants or their parents. Procedure The subjects were brought together twice. On the first date they were taught a song in German for 30 minutes.Alle meine Entchen schwimmen auf dem See, Kopchen in das Wasser ,

Schwanzchen in die hoh. All of the kids were shown three times a short video with the song and cartoons showing ducks going into the Lake and dipping their head into the water. Then the words were related to the American language by pointing out the similarities of the language and simultaneously pointing at pictures and talking the kids through the story. Afterwards the song was danced and choreographed. Each word was assigned a specific movement. Finally the children drew a picture with crayons and markers about the story in the song. It was made sure by the researcher that the kids knew all the words to the song by the time the first session ended. On the second session, which was held after 2 weeks, the kids had to sing back the song after listening to a short instrumental introduction that reminded of the melody. The researcher noted which words were remembered. Any word that was not remembered correctly was considered as not remembered. Measures

Music and Language Musical exposure is the manipulated factor and the independent variable is the recall of the words in the song. There is a problem with naming music the independent variable because it cannot be measured as a variable. Everybody was exposed to the same condition: a musical

environment. The number of words remembered was given the value 1 and those that were not or incorrectly remembered were given a value of 0.

Results The students retrieval of the whole song was 80%. were give an introductory instrumental introduction that contained the songs melodic line. The average was 7.4 , the median 8 , the mode 8, the standard deviation was 1.9493. It can be observed that G3 is an outlier who remembered half of the words. The most remembered word was See ,which means Lake and the least remembered words were the prespositions in das and in die Discussion Learning is optimized in an enriched environment (Diamond) and if it is supported with tools that address multiple intelligences (Gardner) the students profit even more because each brain has different intelligences. Music is a very effective vehicle that can be used to support learning. The advantages of music are numerous because it has an effect on memory, on emotion, on attention and on cognitive processes.(Merril) Music takes the tension away from the classroom and motivates the student to learn about the lyrics without them being aware of the learning process. For the teacher it is a good way to promote a friendly environment because the social skills are optimized and the structure of the language is self-taught. In language learning music has been

Music and Language an exceptional learning tool. There are processes that have not been explained in music Psychology but it is a fact that a song increases the ability of a person to remember information. (Wheater ). People still remember or secretly hum the ABC song to find a letter in the Alphabet. A song makes the learning process memorable, meaningful and it catches a pupils attention.

In the results there was one participant, G3, who remembered only half the words and it is worth mentioning that her attitude towards the study was different from the other participants. She did not want to engage in dancing nor drawing nor singing opposed to the other students who were very participative in every modality. It could be implied that her state of mind and motivation interfered with the learning process. On the other hand the least remembered words were the prepositions in die and in das. These words are not accented in the song and although they are similar to the English words in the they were the least remembered. There is a phenomena that can be observed when someone hears a familiar song, the most commonly remembered words are the last words of each verse. Although the sample size for this study is not meaningful the long lasting effect on the brain was measurable. There is a positive correlation between learning through music and learning the material for a longer time Another weakness of this study was the lack of a control group due to the lack of five year olds with a common background that the researcher has access to through their parents. German is a language that resembles slightly the English language so it can be argumented that the kids had that extra tool to understand the meaning of some words. This could be a confound because kids do not have to make an effort to learn the new word, if the languages are similar. But to learn a language also implies understanding word meaning together with phrases and in

Music and Language context . This was the case the end of the first session when the kids were singing the song without any problems and fully understanding the meaning of each word in context. The research on music and language learning is limited to the commonalities between the two subjects and to neurophysiological studies. It would be of great interest to further look into the teaching rooms and examine how teachers are incorporating their songs into their students

diverse classrooms and collecting data from their own classes. Many teachers sell CD collections about elementary level topics like spelling and numbers and some even go into science but there is not much use of song in the middle class and higher level context. The economic crisis of the governments is also a factor to be taken into consideration because they are cutting music classes in order to save money. This is a reality so there is an urge for teachers to create musical material that supports their topic. To conclude the influence of music in an enriched multimodal environment is an effective method to teach something. It also improves test scores, but most importantly it also makes the material memorable, enjoyable and available to more types of intelligences.

Music and Language

Tables Table 1

Total times word was remembered

5 5 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 Times remembered 4 4 3 2 2 2 2 1 1 Total ALLE MEIN ENTC SCH AUF E HEN WIM MEN 4 4 3 2 2 DEM SEE KOPF IN CHEN DAS WAS SCH SER WAN ZCHE N 4 3 IN DIE HOH 4 3 4

Total

5 Words

Table 2

Words remembered
9 Total Words remembered 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Girl1 Girl2 Girl3 Boy1 Boy2 Words

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References

Diamond, M. C., Krech, D. and Rosenzweig, M. R. (1964), The effects of an enriched environment on the histology of the rat cerebral cortex. The Journal of Comparative Neurology, 123: 111119. doi: 10.1002/cne.901230110

Gardner, H. (1993) Frames of mind. The theory of multiple intelligences. Britain.Fontanta Press. Jensen, E. and Dabney, M.(2000)Learning Smarter: The New Science of Teaching Jensen, E. (1998) Teaching with the brain in mind. Alexandria,VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Jourdain, R.(1997) Music,the Brain, and Ecstasy: How Music Captures our Imagination. William Morrow and Company,New York. Legg, R. ( ) Using Music to Accelerate Language Learning an Experimental Study.Oxford Brookes University. Research in Education 82. Miller, R.(2004) Music lessons help children climb the intelligence scale).Daily Telegraph,24 July. Palmer, Kelly, (1992) Linguistic Prosody and Musical Meter in Song. Journal of Memory and Language, 31,525-541 Weatherford Stansell, J. (2005), The use of Muisc for Learning Languages: A review. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2-41.

Music and Language Music cognition. (2003). In The Harvard Dictionary of Music. Retrieved from

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http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?qurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.credoreference.com/entr y/harvdictmusic/music_cognition

http://www.gramophone.net/Issue/Page/December%202008/46/999328/MUSIC+and+thenbs pMIND

Anderson, John R., & Bowrer, Gordon H. (1973)Human associative memory: Washington, D.C. Winston & Sons, 1973, xiv + 524 Pp. $14.95, Behavior Therapy, Volume 5, Issue 1, January 1974, Page 143, ISSN 0005-7894, 10.1016/S0005-7894(74)80111-5. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005789474801115)

Human Associative Memory: An Essay Review Review by: Andrew Ortony The Journal of Educational Research , Vol. 68, No. 10 (Jul. - Aug., 1975), pp. 396-401 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27536800

Maurice Elias http://www.edutopia.org/music-develop-social-emotional-character Use of music to develop Kids skills and character 3/19/09

Music and Language Prescott, J.,Music in the classroom http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/instructor/jan05_music.htm Merrel, A.

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http://audreymerrell.net/INTASC/INTASC6/the%20benefits%20of%20incorporating%20mu sic.pdf Has interesting bibliography

BELL,A.,http://www.dialogueonlearning.tc3.edu/model/environment/enrichedphysicalgrp.htm Unless otherwise noted, title and intellectual property rights in and to all materials contained on this web site is owned by Tompkins Cortland Community College, Dialogue On Learning, and/or the authors. We encourage you to make use of these materials to improve learning for all members of the college community. Materials may be printed or copied for noncommercial use only and must contain appropriate copyright information. Requests for use of materials outside Fair Use Guidelines should be sent to dialogue@sunytccc.edu. Many of the graphic images used on this site were obtained from, and all rights are reserved to, Microsoft Corporation. Click here to return to Dialogue Home Page.

Richard-Amato, Patricia A. Making it Happen: From Interactive to Participatory Language Teaching. 3rd ed. (New York: Longman, 2003). (KRASHEN AND MERREL)