“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
'I don't much care where -' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
'- so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.
'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Last week, I really went down the research rabbit hole. It’s a bit of a dark place at times, full of complicated concepts and mysterious abbreviations with which the authors assume the readers’ must already be familiar. On the other hand, it is also wondrous place where you might just stumble upon what you didn’t even realize you were looking for!
My wild journey into the depths of the U of C library’s online journal collection began while I was doing some more reading on the Neurolinguistic Approach (NLA). The authors were discussing the importance of motivation when learning another language and how in particular, it is necessary to stimulate the brain’s limbic system as that is the area responsible for evaluating our desire to communicate (Paradis, 2004). The creators of the NLA, Claude Germain and Joan Netten, suggest doing this by teaching students authentic language structures in classroom contexts that are as similar as possible to the situations in which they would encounter this language in real-life. In other words, teach students the language that they can personally use to communicate in the real world, make it very obvious when and where this language can be used, and students should be fairly motivated to learn it. Seems pretty logical right? But there’s one problem, how can I make this work with my brilliant idea of using music to supplement the NLA practices? Unless your life is a musical (which mine is sometimes, I swear, just ask my partner and cats), it seems pretty unrealistic to use songs as “authentic texts.” HOWEVER, what if music were a powerful limbic system stimulant and could be used in conjunction with authentic texts to create ridiculously motivating and authentic language lessons?!?
Well, it turns out music is, in fact, a powerful limbic system stimulant. It also turns out that there have been A LOT of studies about music’s motivational prowess, many of which I am unable to fully comprehend. Nevertheless, I did manage to gather a few tidbits of useful information. For example, according to Chapin (2010), listening to an expressive music performance increases the activity in the “parahippocampal gyrus, hippocampus, medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and ventral anterior cingulate (vACC) for all participants (musician and non-musician).” In case you kind readers are not neuroscientists, those are all parts of the limbic system. The parahippocampal gyrus helps encode and retrieve memories, the hippocampus is involved in forming new memories, learning, and emotions, the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) helps plan complex cognitive behavior and is responsible for personality expression, decision making, and moderating social behavior, while the ventral anterior cingulate aids with emotional regulation. Moreover according to Periera and crew, “brain activation data revealed that broad emotion-related limbic and paralimbic regions as well as the reward circuitry were significantly more active for familiar relative to unfamiliar music...Hence, familiarity seems to be a crucial factor in making the listeners emotionally engaged with music.” (2011). So if you want to get your students hooked on your lessons, insert a familiar melody here and there and it’ll go a long way.
Like any good research binge, these discoveries left me both excited and wondering more than ever what possibilities may lay ahead. For example, most of the studies I could find focused on how the limbic system is affected when listening to music. I'd like to know if there are any studies that discuss how the limbic system is affected when producing music (ie. what happens when children are singing the songs themselves or composing the songs themselves)? Also, what are the best ways to link songs to authentic learning contexts? Surely student interests must be taken into account (ie. what genres of music they are most interested in). Maybe my classroom observations and teacher interviews will inspire some ideas? Maybe I could implement principles from the Orff Schulwerk? Is there a link to humour that makes some songs particularly memorable for children? Likewise, is there a kinaesthetic aspect to all of this as well? Nonetheless, those questions and the many more that are sure to arise, will have to wait for another day. Thanks again for reading. Until next time music and language lovers!
Sources:
Chapin, H., Jantzen, K., Scott Kelso, J.A., Steinberg, F., Large, E. (2010) Dynamic Emotional and Neural Responses to Music Depend on Performance Expression and Listener Experience. PLoS ONE 5(12): e13812. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013812 Germain, C., Netten, J. (2012). A new paradign for the learning of a second or foreign language: the neurolinguistic approach. Neuroeducation 1(1): pp. 85-114. Retrieved from http://francaisintensif.ca/media/acc-01a-a-new-paradigm-2012.pdf
Paradis, M. (2004). A Neurolinguistic Theory of Bilingualism. Amsterdam/Philadelphia : John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Pereira CS, Teixeira J, Figueiredo P, Xavier J, Castro SL, et al. (2011) Music and Emotions in the Brain: Familiarity Matters. PLoS ONE 6(11): e27241. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0027241