Education Week – Jennifer Paterson
“Musicologists and ethnomusicologists know that music is not only an important driving force of a society’s culture, but also a vital piece in the learning process. This is especially true when it comes to language acquisition. Music is a universal factor when it comes to human development and cognition, making it important for learning languages. If you think about it, the spoken word has a sort of musicality to it. The way we enunciate, our voice inflection, our word choices, and even the volume and speed at which we speak all have a musical effect…our brains process language musically, so there is much to be said of studying music alongside language, and at a very young age…According to professor of theory and music composition Anthony Brandt, children as young as newborns have a basic understanding of music…Brandt said that the sounds of language, not the meaning of it, are what infants first learn…newborns can dissect parts of sound like pitch, timbre, and rhythm. Therefore, exposure to music trains babies’ brains for language comprehension and the art of speaking…The connection between music and language acquisition is powerful, so use it.”(more)