A music education has numerous benefits that should
not be ignored. Research shows that learning music
helps children learn other subjects, such as math, and
enhances skills that kids use in other areas as well. In
my research of this topic, the following three benefits
stood out most.
Language Development
According to professor of theory and music
composition Anthony Brandt, even newborns have a
basic understanding of music. He says it is the sounds
of music, not the meaning of it,that babies first learn.
Later, they can associate these sounds with what they
mean. In his research paper titled Music and Early
Language Acquisition, Brandt said that newborns can
dissect parts of sounds like timbre, pitch, and rhythm,
and therefore exposing the infant brain to music trains
the brain for language comprehension.
The benefits do not end in infancy, however. Receiving
a music education in the formative years helps develop
reading comprehension skills as well. By applying the
familiarity of melody to the way sentences are spoken
aloud, there is a stronger likelihood of understanding
the language more quickly.
Strikingly, Harvard researcher Gottfried Schlaug
found a correlation between music training and
language development in dyslexic children. He said,
“[The findings] suggest that a music intervention that
strengthens basic auditory music perception skills may
also remediate some of their language deficits.”
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