Teaching Language Through Music
New language tuition CDs are designed to teach young children a second language through rhymes and songs. This is not a new idea. Children’s television has been doing this for decades. How many of us remember Big Bird and Kermit the Frog teaching us to count to ten in Spanish? How many of us can still recite it today? The fact that educational television has been using this strategy for over fifty years reveals a simple fact: it works.
But why? Why does it work, and how?
First, both language and music both have structure, rules, and patterns. Both the words and notes of a song are sequenced in a predictable pattern of rhyme and meter, rhythm and melody. When one combines language and music, they reinforce each other. These patterns enable both the music and lyrics to be learned quickly through repetition. When a child learns the same nursery rhyme in multiple languages, the pattern of the rhyme and music make it easy for them to figure out which words of the foreign language correspond to the words of their native language.
Second, nursery rhymes and songs are essentially mnemonic devices that aid memory and understanding. Similar sounding words in a predictable metered pattern are easier to remember than a set of sentences with no pattern or rhythm. Likewise, it is easier to remember something that is put to music—the pattern of the melody is easier to memorize than random notes.
Finally — and perhaps most importantly — it is fun. Putting on a children's language tuition CD doesn't seem like "homework". Children are more likely to learn in a free-form environment when they are enjoying themselves than in a rigid structured, especially one on a timetable, that the child doesn’t see the relevance in and doesn’t want to do in the first place. In contrast, chanting nursery rhymes, playing music, and singing, are active and engaging ways to introduce children to new languages, words, and concepts through repetition (don’t be surprised if children memorizes the entire song before understanding what the words mean). It is “stealth education”—children don’t realize that they’re learning, only that they’re having fun. Dancing to the music can also help children understand the words of the foreign language. Music has rhythm and poetry is metered, enabling the words and music to be combined with actions to create dances. Dance, in turn, can help reinforce to children what the foreign words mean. Furthermore, both song and dance naturally lend themselves to turn-taking behavior and group activities, encouraging children to socialize, playing (and learning) together.
Children pick up languages faster than adults. This is primarily because children are still learning the rules of grammar, syntax, and usage for their native language, so it is not that big of a jump for them to learn the rules of a secondary language at the same time. Bilingual children also grow up aware of the translation process and the subjective nature of language—the ways languages differ and the universal elements of grammar common to all languages. This makes it easier for them to learn other languages as adults. Children, furthermore, are more intellectually open to learning foreign languages than adults, as they are usually oblivious to the political and social environment that may attach value judgments to certain languages.
