TESOL Essay SIX

Essay Six

Music and Language Learning

By Syrbastyian Vzampfyier

“No music, No life” a simple saying that expresses many people’s view of the importance of music in their life. For most of human existence rhythmic patterns feet walking, waves, a bird’s song, etc have had some influence the human brain, body, mind and behaviour.

Music affects our emotions, it can make us feel happy, sad, energetic, sleepy, etc. In fact from your own personal experience you have probably used music to help you do some activity be it studying, exercising, house-cleaning and so on. Yet in the classroom many instructors and teachers may ignore music and, or believe that using music in the class has little or no benefit for the students and learning.

Show how music can benefit the students, here a short story about Albert Einstein given by (O’Donnell, 1999) in his piece on “Music and the Brain”:

A little known fact about Albert Einstein is that when he was young he did extremely poor in school. His grade school teachers told his parents to take him out of school because he was “too stupid to learn” and it would be a waste of resources for the school to invest time and energy in his education. His mother did not think that Albert was “stupid”. Instead of following the school’s advice, Albert’s parents bought him a violin. Albert became a good violin player. Music was the key that helped Albert Einstein become one of the smartest people who ever lived. Einstein himself says that the reason he was so smart is because he played the violin. He loved listening to Mozart and Bach the most. A friend of Einstein, G.J. Withrow said that the way Einstein figured out his problems and equations was by improvising in the violin.

Music has a power on human beings. It has been scientifically tested and proven that music can affect our psychology, emotional states and physiology. People exposed to a large amount and a variety of music when they were children, usually, have a more balanced approach to life and able to deal with life difficulties and stresses. Music affects our emotions; it can make us feel happiness, joy, sadness, depression, aggressive and calm. Even our physiology is affect by music. MRI’s of profession musicians show that their prefrontal cortex is more develop than people who do not play an instrument. When we listen to music with a fast rhythm our heart rate and breathing speeds up and when we listen to a slow rhythm our heart rate and breathing slows down for example, classical music from the baroque period causes the heart rate to slow down to the beat of the music.

Not only humans but also animals and plants have been scientifically tested and proven that music can have positive and negative effects on them. When plants are exposed to baroque music or Mozart’s music they grow faster and stronger, but when expose to hard rock or heavy-metal they grow slower and weaker. For animals the same effect is also true for example, chickens will lay more eggs and be less stressed and cow will produce more milk when they exposed to baroque music or Mozart.

Dr. George Lozanov a psychologist in Bulgaria designed a way to teach foreign languages using baroque music which utilises baroques music’s 60 beats per minutes that activities the left and right side of the brain. Students in his programme are able to learn a half a school term in vocabulary and phrases (over 1000) in one day.

Such is the power of music to assist in learning and build pathways in the cortex of the brain. They are many more studies and every day more studies prove the power of music to advance learning.

In the classroom there are many ways in which a teacher or an instructor can use music in their lessons. With all the research, studies and acknowledgement of the power of music it is amazing that teachers, instructors, schools and education in general ignore and do not utilise this powerful tool to benefit the students.

If one truly cares about education and help their students develop the skills for their future then one must use every method available to advance the students learning and music is one powerful tool they teachers can use to benefit the student.