M
usic therapists must be made aware of the fragile status of music in the language classroom. Musical language teachers face institutional pressures to whitewash their classes in order to make them "serious," "challenging," or "test-driven." In many schools, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policies for testing keeps language teachers from integrating more innovative
methodologies, because they must "teach to the test." Furthermore, recent advances in language acquisition methodology have focused primarily on activation of a real context through problem-solving and social interaction, not on joint singing and dance, although these are equally as "real." Some of the most exciting and supportive studies for music-language joint study have been done recently, but the reader should note that while the validity of some results have improved, in part due to advances in language teaching generally, and in part due to the nature of the tested outcomes, the basic premise of all of these studies has been the same Muse-inspired impulse to choral singing and dancing.
T
he conclusions for the use of music in the second language classroom are clear. Since music can be as viable a vehicle for second language acquisition as stories, then songs should not be treated as extra-curricular entities (Medina 18). For relatively small investments in time, gains in vocabulary are possible, with facilitative effects in acquiring more. All of the participants reported enjoying song stories more than regular stories (Medina 14). Story-songs are valuable because they use different words and phrase structures than standard speech, and illustrations help to make these words comprehensible (Medina 18).
The music and illustrations had a visible effect on vocabulary acquisition according to the tests, and they have the added benefit of being fun and low-cost. The vocabulary gains in songs could be increased with another type of extra-linguistic support, namely gestures (Schunk 118). Because story songs are more motivating and naturalistic in speech intonation patterns than regular reading primers, they become children's' favorites.