SandScript 2023 [Digital Exclusive]

Academic Essay
THE AID OF MUSIC IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE
CLASSROOM
Marriah Nissen
Students learn language through many different tools, and while some stick, others
never seem to aid in the learning process. One tool that allows for the knowledge to become
more thoroughly processed in a student’s mind is the use of music. In many ways, teaching
music is similar to teaching a foreign language through the way it engages the student’s mind
in both learning ability and style. Foreign languages and music deal with sound and how it
should properly be produced. In this paper, I will show that music is a useful tool that allows for
a student to not only process the information, but also increases the ability for this information
to remain in the student’s memory.
As I stated above, teaching music and a foreign language are very similar. Gerald S.
Giauque, in his essay “Foreign Language Acquisition and the Study of Music,” puts it simply,
“That since both music and foreign languages deal with sounds, making the transfer from
one discipline to the other is fairly easy” (Giauque 2). He is right. Music and language do
share several features. First, we see that both stem from the processing of sounds. Next,
we see that both are used by their authors/speakers to convey a message whose effect is
mainly emotional. They also both have intrinsic features in common, such as pitch, volume,
prominence, stress, tone, rhythm, and pauses. Another shared feature is that we learn both of
them through continued exposure. Just like music, a foreign language is almost impossible to
learn without having a high level of contact with it in the classroom.
Giauque has a very simple way of comparing how both are approached similarly. Students
come to class and they go through what he calls the “warming-up” period. In a music
classroom, the warming up period requires getting out the instruments and tuning them so
they are ready to play correctly when the time comes. This idea is very similar in a foreign
language environment. The students come in and right away the instructor starts off with a
revision or a “warm-up.” The instructor usually does not allow for a time in which the students
sit around and speak in English. They become disciplined to know that, once they enter the
door of the foreign language classroom, they should be ready to speak the target language.
Once the students have had this revision time, they are more comfortable with continuing with
the rest of the class period. “The reason for this is that the student must CONSCIOUSLY turn
his mind to the foreign language and begin to concentrate on the language, if he is to acquire
it and begin to think in it, if he is to become fluent” (Giauque 3). Playing music and speaking a
foreign language require a conscious effort to be productive with the information the student
is given. The idea is to exclude English from the classroom, so this requires an effort on the
part of the student along with concentration and will. With music, the student must be ready
to play, and this means leaving everything that is disruptive to the learning process outside
the classroom and focusing in on the instruments and sheet music before them. The student
must decide with conviction that he will communicate through the target language, even if the
language is music.
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