Good Vibrations: Connections Among Memory, Musical Ability, and Second Language Acquisition, and the Skillful Employment of Music in the Foreign Language Classroom
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Good Vibrations: Connections Among Memory, Musical Ability, and Second Language Acquisition, and the Skillful Employment of Music in the Foreign Language Classroom Matthew M. Kalin This paper was completed and submitted in partial fulfillment of the Master Teacher Program, a 2-year faculty professional development program conducted by the Center for Teaching Excellence, United States Military Academy, West Point, NY, 2020. ABSTRACT The mission of the United States Military Academy Department of Foreign Languages is to educate and train the Corps of Cadets in language acquisition, cultural competence, and regional expertise, so that each graduate is a commissioned leader of character who can leverage foreign language learning to bridge cultural chasms and build relationships critical to the Army, and to inspire each graduate for a career of professional excellence and service to the Nation as an officer in the United States Army. This paper is intended to support the language acquisition pillar of the Department of Foreign Languages’ mission by providing background research, contemporary analysis, and practical application drawn from the connections among memory, musical ability, and second language acquisition. To that end, this paper introduces the topic, discusses the nature of memory, explores music and musical ability, and presents some key aspects of second language acquisition. The paper then traces connections among those three subjects, after which it provides applications for the use of music in the foreign language classroom. Before concluding, the paper addresses some critiques about the application of music in teaching and learning languages. Ultimately, this paper concludes that music is an effective tool in enhancing second language acquisition, and that teachers should skillfully employ music in the foreign language classroom. INTRODUCTION Language and music seem to be innately connected: both involve the production of sound with the generation of vibrations projected through the air, sign language excluded; both support the conveyance of meaning or expression usually in a social setting, sign language included; and the capacities for both develop in human beings at a very young age. Interestingly, the prospectus from a 2008 conference in Dijon, France titled “Musique Langage Cerveau” (“Music Language Brain”) states that “Les similitudes entre ces deux activités ne sont donc pas superficielles: la musique et le langage pourraient être deux expressions d’une même compétence pour la communication humaine” (“The similarities between these two activities are therefore not superficial: music and language could be two expressions of the same competence for human communication”).1 No species aside from human beings creates language and music, so it makes sense that music and language could express the same competence of communication. 1 Jackendoff, “Parallels and Nonparallels,” p. 195. 1 If music and language are somehow connected as a communicative human competence, then one can logically theorize that development in the capacity of one might positively affect the capacity of the other. For “while speech is symbolic, sound is the bearer of its message.”2 This paper explores the research and literature about that hypothetical connection at the cognitive level, while also proposing practical applications of the research for classroom use. More specifically, this paper is intended to support the language acquisition pillar of the Department of Foreign Languages’ mission by providing background research, contemporary analysis, and practical application drawn from the connections among memory, musical ability, and second language acquisition. To that end, this paper introduces the topic, discusses the nature of memory, explores music and musical ability, and presents some key aspects of second language acquisition. The paper then traces connections among those three subjects, after which it provides applications for the use of music in the foreign language classroom. Before concluding, the paper addresses some critiques about the application of music in teaching and learning languages. Ultimately, this paper concludes that music is an effective tool in enhancing second language acquisition, and that teachers should skillfully employ music in the foreign language classroom. MUSIC AND EARLY LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT As stated in the introduction, language and music can be considered as a connected expression of human communication. However, language and music might not only be two distinct expressions of this uniquely human skill. Rather, language could actually be considered as a form of music. If we view musical ability as a priori to language, it can provide a better framework for understanding the development of the two in the young human brain, and later in the adult brain. Children are born with an appreciation for music, well before they are able to speak. According to Brandt, Gebrian, and Slevc, “Spoken language is introduced to the child as a vocal performance, and children attend to its musical features first. Without the ability to hear musically, it would be impossible to learn to speak.” Research in this area shows that music and language are “deeply entangled in early life and develop along parallel tracks.” For this reason, it is more useful from the perspective of human development to describe language as “a special type of music in which referential discourse is bootstrapped onto a musical framework.”3 The idea, then, is that children have an innate musical ability that can be used for the transmission of language. To provide a more concrete example of how language is attached to and transmitted by a musical framework, consider how adults speak to infants. Commonly known as “baby-talk”, think about the tones that adults use when speaking to young children—that is, the sort of “goo- goo-ga-ga” language reserved for infants. In the linguistic world, this infant-directed speech is known as motherese, and it is characterized by high-pitched, slow, and rhythmic patterns. Furthermore, “the use of motherese appears to be a cultural universal, and intentions expressed in infant speech can be understood even across very different languages and cultures.”4 So naturally, one might wonder why this is a near-universal cultural phenomenon. Why is it that people talk to infants using this sing-song style of speech? 2 Brandt et al., “Music and Early Language Acquisition,” p. 3. 3 Ibid., p. 1. 4 Ibid., p. 7. 2 According to the research, it is possible that “infant directed speech and singing serves as an aid for language learning by capturing and engaging attention and communicating affective information, and later by enhancing the important patterns in language (such as vowel categories and word divisions, e.g.).”5 It seems that motherese is an evolutionary trait, universal in the human species, that serves to facilitate the transmission of language from one generation to the next in a musical format. In other words, “infants use the musical aspects of language (rhythm, timbral contrast, melodic contour) as a scaffolding for the later development of semantic and syntactic aspects of language. Infants are not just listening for affective cues nor are they focused exclusively on meaning: they are listening for how their language is composed.”6 For greater detail, note the following figure7 which explains parallel development of music and language in children from the ages of six months to twelve months. In the figure, blue text is used to annotate parallel development, while purple text is used to annotate related development. Black text annotates development of language only. In the figure, it is plain to see how the development of music and language in the infant brain is clearly intertwined. This interconnectedness of music and language development at a young age is noteworthy, because it underscores how “it is our innate musical intelligence that makes us capable of mastering speech.”8 This connects back to the idea stated in the beginning of the section that, perhaps, instead of developing on two separate paths in the human brain, language is in actuality a special type of music that stems from the innate musical intelligence found in all human infants. In the subsequent section, this paper will discuss how such a musical intelligence 5 Brandt et al., “Music and Early Language Acquisition,” p. 7. 6 Ibid., p. 6. 7 Ibid., p. 7. 8 Ibid., p. 10. 3 can influence mastery of speech at the adult level, and similarly how music can also play a role in improved second language acquisition later in life. MUSIC AND ADULT SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION In the previous section, we established that music and early language development is intertwined in the brain of the infant and the child. As the human brain matures, the connection between music and language may seem to be less apparent. However, that connection never truly dissipates over time. “Although the initial entanglement of music and language gradually unravels over the course of development, the fact that underlying deficits in musical hearing are associated with a variety of language impairments argues for the idea that although music and language grow apart, they are never truly separate in the brain.”9 Additionally, if deficits in musical hearing are connected to language impairment, one might assume that cultivation of musical hearing could be connected to language improvement. Or put more simply, one might assume that musical training later in life would result in improvements