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How effective is listening to music? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Music, Movies, TV & Radio |  | |
| Jon1991 Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5356 days ago 98 posts - 126 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French, Russian | Message 1 of 24 04 January 2011 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have read that many people on this forum listen to music to improve their language skills. I have tried it but I can't really see how it can make much of an improvement. Any thoughts or experience?
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| noriyuki_nomura Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5331 days ago 304 posts - 465 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Japanese, FrenchC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, SpanishB2, DutchB1 Studies: TurkishA1, Korean | Message 3 of 24 04 January 2011 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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For me, as what Paranday mentioned above, on days where I just don't feel like listening anymore to my language dialogues recorded in my ipod, I enjoy listening to some music - bossa nova sung in Portuguese, Italian songs such as those from Andrea Bocelli (I learnt the word 'stonate' from the song Canzoni Stonate), Korean songs, etc.
Though one might not actively be able to learn a language by listening to music, but at least it offers the next best (relaxing) alternative to language-learning...:) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5253 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 4 of 24 04 January 2011 at 2:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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I use music as an important part of language learning. Nothing beats actually speaking the language and having conversations in the language but I learn quite a bit from songs. Currently, I am learning Portuguese. I'm using my vast collection of Brazilian music (as a supplement to other methods) by listening to and following the lyrics. Here is an example of how a song can be a language lesson: Aguas do Março
Portuguese learners should check out Café Brasil Podcast for a music infused jaunt through Brazilian culture. Anyone learning Spanish should definitely listen to Ruben Blades. His band's salsa beat is infectious and his lyrics are well written and meaningful. Lyrics are easily located on-line. It's a fun way to study and learn about your target language's culture- as long as you enjoy the musical style. Edited by iguanamon on 04 January 2011 at 3:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ester Groupie Joined 5658 days ago 64 posts - 114 votes Speaks: Modern Hebrew | Message 5 of 24 04 January 2011 at 5:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Music can be used for active learning too. If you don't rush to read the lyrics first, you can listen to a song several times and then try to write down the lyrics - what you hear and what you can figure out (pausing the tape every once in a while so you can write down a few lines a time). Then, you can go online to find the lyrics and see how well you did. You can also use the opportunity to learn new words and expressions and then every time you hear that song again just to listen to it and enjoy it, it will still remind you of what you had learned.
With this technique you make the music input comprehensible, enhance your orthography, active listening and vocabulary, and just get to enjoy the music in the process. I don't think just passive listening can help a lot, but tieing some active learning to music is a very good idea if you enjoy music. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5121 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 6 of 24 04 January 2011 at 5:16pm | IP Logged | ||
The good thing about learning words - and idiomatic expressions/phrases even more so - from pop songs is that they often appear in many of the current top songs. If you go through a top 20 list of songs, I bet you find the same expressions used over and over in many of the songs. And those expressions can be used as a springboard to other phrases, etc. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5372 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 7 of 24 04 January 2011 at 5:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Though I only listen to music in other languages as a source of entertainment, if you have problems with fluency, I do recommend it. When I was learning English, I'd listen to faster, yet still natural sounding songs and tried to sing along by getting all the words right. I think it helped quite a bit, but to be fair, I was already at an advanced level.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5547 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 8 of 24 04 January 2011 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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In addition to the joy and emotional energy music brings, popular songs offer a light introduction to the sounds, melodies, rhythms and contemporary culture of a new language, and all without laying too much stress on comprehension during the early stages of learning a language.
But it's later on, once I start approaching the stage where I can listen unaided and generally get the gist, that music comes into its own, and helps me acquire common idiomatic expressions and slang that I wouldn't normally find in a course book or classic novel. It's also great for exposure at a more advanced stage, insomuch as songs are repetitive and rhyming in nature and can prove an excellent resource for chorusing dramatic or amusing new phrases, for which I've never found it too difficult to get hold of a matching transcript on the Internet (and even sometimes a translation too). Edited by Teango on 04 January 2011 at 6:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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