A new study found that adopting a listen-and-repeat singing method can help students learn a foreign language more quickly.
Nearly all schools have made it mandatory to study a second language or foreign language. Sometimes students find it difficult to pick up a foreign language quickly. Researchers from the University of Edinburgh's Reid School of Music may have found a solution for this.
"This study provides the first experimental evidence that a listen-and-repeat singing method can support foreign language learning, and opens the door for future research in this area. One question is whether melody could provide an extra cue to jog people's memory, helping them recall foreign words and phrases more easily," Dr Karen M. Ludke, who conducted the research as part of her PhD at the University of Edinburgh's Institute for Music in Human and Social Development, said in a press release.
They conducted a study where Hungarian was chosen as the foreign language as most people who speak English are unfamiliar with this language. A set of 20 people were randomly assigned to three groups and were asked to listen to short Hungarian phrases. The first group was asked to repeat the phrase while speaking, the second by singing and then third by speaking rhythmically. Researchers observed that participants of the second group performed better than the other two groups with participants of the first group performing the worst.
The study was conducted across five tests and people who repeated the phrases by singing fared the best in four out of the five tests. In one study, participants from the second group performed twice as well as participants from the first group.
Researchers also found that participants that learned through singing were able to remember and recall the phrases for a longer period of time.
Findings of the study were published in Springer's journal Memory & Cognition
