Innovation in Language Learning

The idea of using music in ELT has been extensively amplified: music, or to be more specific songs, break the monotonous pace of a lesson, bring relaxation as well as the sense of collectivity and in most cases successfully serve as breaks from ‘serious’ work.  The actual and fundamental features of music, however, seem to be rarely exploited for linguistic purposes, apart from mind relaxation and target vocabulary drilling. 

Several didactic trends and theories on distinct learning styles, intelligences and aptitudes (Fleming, 2001; Gardner, 1991;) suggest that the musical learner, i.e. the learner with enhanced musical aptitude, may benefit from music instruction not only on psychological but also on overall cognitive skill activation and information retention basis. Several scholars (Tomatis, 1991; Magne et al, 2006; Moreno & Besson, 2006; Schellenberg & Peretz, 2008) have attempted to analyse the impact of music on language skills at both the cognitive and neural levels and have noticed a tight relationship between the musical aptitude and the development of linguistic abilities. 

Most tangible relationship has been noticed between music and phonetic skill formation (Nardo & Reiterer, 2009) The activation of phonetic skills through music seems to have had a positive affect on the Lithuanian learners of English with enhanced musical aptitude in the present study: the correspondents demonstrated a higher sense for auditory minimal pair sound discrimination, stresses, vowel reduction, rhythm and intonation of the target language.

Gardner, H. (1991). The Unschooled Mind: how children think and how schools should teach. New York: Basic Books Inc.Fleming, N. D. (2001). Teaching and Learning Styles: VARK strategies. Christchurch, New Zeland

Magne C., Schon D., Besson M. (2006). Musician Children Detect Pitch Violations in Both Music and Language Better than Non-musician Children: behavioral and electrophysiological approaches.  Cognitive Neuroscience. 18: 199-211

Moreno, S. and Besson, M. (2006). Musical Training and Language-related Brain Electrical Activity in Children. Psychophysiology. 43: 287-291

Nardo, D and Reiterer, S. (2009). Musicality and Phonetic Language Aptitude. In: Dogil, G. and Reiterer, S. (eds.) Language Talent and Brain Activity. Trends in Applied Linguistics 1. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin-New York

Schellenberg, E. G. and Peretz, I. (2008). Music, Language and Cognition: unresolved issues. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 12, 45-46

Tomatis, A. A. (1991). The Conscious Ear. New York: Station Hill Press