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Turn up the tunes to boost your language learning
http://livemocha.com/blog/2013/09/03/power-music-5-reasons-music-helps-with-language-learning/
Guest post by Mireille Fiset
Everybody loves music. It is great entertainment, that helps you both relax and focus. Apart from being cool and fun, music has many positive effects on our brain. Some say it has healing power, while others claim that it helps develop the cognitive capacities of young infants. But did you know that music can also greatly help you learn a new language? And not only by immersing you in a culture and a tradition: Music genuinely helps your brain to process all this new information quicker and better. Here are five reasons why music is a great tool for learning a new language.
Music Stimulates Memory
Have you ever wondered why you get a song’s refrain stuck in your head for days on end, but never sentences from a magazine or a dialogue from a movie you just watched? That’s because music stimulates memory like nothing else. And think about it: When you were a kid, weren’t you taught all kinds of songs and tunes to help you remember stuff? The alphabet, the planets’ order in the solar system, irregular verbs, etc. Music is a powerful memory trigger, making it one of the best learning tools there is. You can listen to songs written in the language you are learning, but you can also make up your own! Pick your favorite melody and sing the days of the week to it, for example, or anything you have to memorize in a foreign language! You’ll see an improvement quickly.
Singing and Learning Lyrics Increases Vocabulary
It does so in our own language, why would it not be the same in a foreign language? Listening to a song in the language you’re trying to learn will help you enrich your vocabulary much quicker. You’ll hear words as well as word combinations that you might not have heard in any other circumstances.