Will Music Amplify Your English Learning Efforts Ep 655

Tune Into English Language Learning: Unorthodox Methods Revealed!

Want to perfect your English? Excited about the world of music? 🎵 Join us on a magical journey where we intertwine language and music, creating a fun-filled English learning experience unlike any other! Not only will you enhance your English skills, but you'll also delve into the neuroscience of music and its impact on our cognitive abilities.

🎹 Ever wondered how playing a musical instrument can revolutionize your brain function? How it can give your brain a 'full body workout'? We have all the exciting answers!

Here's what you'll discover in this lesson:

• 🔹 Learn about the brain-boosting benefits of playing a musical instrument
• 🔹 Understand the fascinating neuroscience behind music
• 🔹 Hear about personal journeys and successes in learning the piano and English language
• 🔹 Enhance your English language skills through innovative learning strategies

✔Lesson transcript: https://adeptenglish.com/lessons/learn-english-language-neuroscience-music/

Music can change the world because it can change people.
⭐ Bono, lead singer of the band U2

So are you ready to turbocharge your English learning journey? Our unique lesson melds the power of music with language acquisition, uncovering an exciting, brain-boosting avenue to fluent English. Your brain's untapped potential lies at the crossroads of language and melody.

Today, we delve into how playing an instrument enhances cognitive skills and English proficiency. In a world of mundane language lessons, don't you crave something more, something that stimulates your senses while sharpening your linguistic skills? Dive in and experience a novel approach to English learning. Your journey to mastery starts here. Find your rhythm with this #englishlesson. Let music guide your language learning journey!

Music is a language that doesn’t speak in particular words. It speaks in emotions, and if it’s in the bones, it’s in the bones.
⭐ Keith Richards, guitarist of The Rolling Stones

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🎧 Don't miss out on this fantastic opportunity to boost your English language learning in an exciting and unconventional way! Start your musical journey with us NOW! 💫

More About This Lesson

Unlock your cognitive potential and supercharge your English fluency with our unique lesson where music meets language. It's not just about English vocabulary or grammar but a fascinating exploration of language, cognition, and personal transformation through music.

I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning.
⭐ Plato

Things you will learn listening to this English fluency lesson:, you will discover:

1. Learning a musical instrument can boost your English language learning.
2. Practise English like playing an instrument, again and again.
3. Speak English fluently with Adept English's 500 Words Course.
4. Pair up with a language partner to enhance your English speaking.
5. The term 'grey matter' is often used to talk about brain function in English.
6. The phrase 'muscle memory' refers to the brain's work, not the muscles'.
7. 'Playing by ear' in English means playing without sheet music.
8. Myelin, the white substance in our brain, can be compared to a plastic cover.
9. Ever wondered how to use the words 'visual' and 'auditory' in English?
10. 'Hobby' in English signifies a way of spending time or a pastime.
11. Learn how to use words like 'neurons' and 'Corpus Callosum' in English.

Benefits of our listen & learn approach to learning

By engaging with English lesson topics like music, you're working on various parts of your brain simultaneously. This cognitive engagement greatly boosts your language learning capabilities. Drawing parallels between the melody and rhythm of music and the tonal variation and rhythm of English speech, you start to understand and imitate the natural cadence of the language. This approach will make your learning journey more enjoyable, efficient, and impactful.

Unite with learners worldwide through the universal language of music. Experience a musical #britishenglish today!

• Music's Multisensory Processing: Engaging with music stimulates multiple brain regions, strengthening your brain and making language learning more efficient.
• Neuroplasticity Boost: Learning to play a musical instrument strengthens your brain's plasticity, vital for memory, attention, and auditory skills.
• Language-Music Connection: Learning through songs can improve pronunciation, vocabulary, and syntax in English.
• Addressing Common Fears: We address common fears such as struggling with fluency, feeling stuck, complex vocabulary, tedium, lack of practice time, and nervousness while speaking English, providing strategies to overcome them.

When you embark on this lesson, you're not just learning English, you're experiencing it. The combination of music and language fosters a more natural and fluent command of the language. There's no requirement for musical expertise. The emotive and repetitive nature of music makes language learning more memorable, engaging, and fun.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
⭐ Maya Angelou

Unlock your Brain Power: Dive into our lessons, mix music with learning, and supercharge your English skills. Subscribe now! Master English through Music: Boost your brain, enjoy music, and achieve English fluency. Follow us, let's hit the right notes together!

Are you ready to tune in to a new way of learning? Explore #adeptenglish now!

Questions You Might Have...

Think of this lesson as a harmonious symphony of English learning, where each new vocabulary word is a note and every sentence, a melody. As you learn to play this 'linguistic instrument', you are not just creating beautiful music, but also building an orchestra of knowledge in your mind. So, pick up your 'instrument', let's create an English language concerto together!

1. How can learning a musical instrument improve my English language skills? When you learn a musical instrument, you're not just training your brain to understand music, but also developing your listening, concentration, and cognitive skills. These are all vital when it comes to language learning, particularly for gaining fluency in English.
2. Can playing an instrument really boost my brain's health? Absolutely! Playing a musical instrument is like giving your brain a whole body workout. It strengthens the connections between different parts of your brain, enhances your memory, and even promotes the growth of new neurons.
3. What instrument should I learn to boost my English fluency? The choice of instrument is up to you. Whether it's the piano, the guitar, or the trumpet, the goal is to engage different parts of your brain while immersing yourself in the process. This can inadvertently improve your English learning journey by enhancing your cognitive skills.
4. What are the other benefits of learning a musical instrument? Beyond boosting brain health and enhancing English language skills, learning a musical instrument can also improve your motor skills, memory, and even emotional intelligence. It's also a great hobby that brings immense pleasure and satisfaction.
5. Is it ever too late to start learning a musical instrument? Never! It's never too late to start learning a musical instrument. Whether you're reconnecting with an instrument you played in the past, or picking up an entirely new one, you'll be doing a great service to your brain and your English language journey.

Most Unusual Words:

• Podcast: A digital audio file available on the internet for downloading, often part of a themed series.
• Neuroscience: The scientific study of the nervous system and the brain.
• Auditory: Related to the sense of hearing.
• Hemisphere: Half of a spherical or roughly spherical body or object.
• Corpus Callosum: A broad band of nerve fibers joining the two hemispheres of the brain.
• Hippocampus: A region of the brain that is associated with memory.
• Neurons: Specialized cells transmitting nerve impulses; nerve cells.
• Myelin: A fatty substance that surrounds and insulates the nerve fibers in the brain.
• Psychotherapist: A professional who helps people deal with mental or emotional problems by talking about them.
• Distinction: A difference or contrast between similar things or people; high achievement.

Most Frequently Used Words:

Listen To The Audio Lesson Now

Transcript: Will Music Amplify Your English Learning Efforts

Is playing an instrument the ultimate brain workout?

Hi there. Today in this podcast you can discover the incredible brain boosting benefits of playing a musical instrument, learn about the fascinating neuroscience behind it and hear about my personal journey of reconnecting with my love of playing the piano.

Have you ever thought about how learning a musical instrument could dramatically improve your brain function?

This isn't just an everyday language lesson. It's the journey through the world of music-making, language and the brain. Have you ever learned a musical instrument? A musical instrument could be a guitar, a piano, a trumpet, or a set of drums.

Music is the universal language of mankind.
⭐ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Maybe you did it as a child, maybe you learned as an adult.

Or maybe you've never had the opportunity to do this. But today I'm gonna talk about some of the benefits. Benefits to the brain probably aren't what we normally think about when we're imagining playing a musical instrument.

So let's have a look at what they are. And if you stick around to the end, I'll talk also about my personal experience of learning the piano.

So let's explore the magic of music and its impact on our cognitive skills, all the while boosting your English language learning.

Hello, I’m Hilary, and you’re listening to Adept English. We will help you to speak English fluently. All you have to do is listen. So start listening now and find out how it works.

Are you stuck at understanding English, but not being able to speak?

First of all, are you learning English and you're stuck at the point where you can understand English, but you can't speak it well? Two pieces of advice for you. First of all, get a language partner, someone with whom you can practise, someone who knows what stage you're at, and then they're going to be patient with you. Just an hour a week of English conversation like this will really improve your speaking. It doesn't take that much time.

Boost Your Learning With Adept English

The other thing you can do to make it easier, how about our Most Common 500 Words Course? This course ensures that you know all the common words in English really well. And it's then easier to construct simple sentences. That's how you'll start speaking. Your English speaking journey has then begun. So check out that course on our website at adeptenglish.com. The Most Common 500 Words, it's on our Courses page. You'll be glad you did!

Learning to make music - a popular hobby

So today's topic, learning a musical instrument. Many of us had opportunity to do this as a child. Perhaps something that our parents pushed us into, perhaps something that we wanted to do. But as an adult, it can be a hobby, which gives us a great deal of pleasure. That's H O B B Y. That means 'a pastime, a way of spending time'. It offers us a lot in terms of pleasure and enjoyment, but have you thought about how it might boost your brain health? My particular instrument is piano. I don't play regularly or particularly well - more of that later!

But piano gives you an excellent understanding of musical theory and like most instruments, it exercises your brain in particular ways. In fact, according to some, playing a musical instrument is like giving your brain 'a whole body workout'. It's like going to the gym for your brain!

And it's actually better than doing 'brain training' - those Mensa exercises or crossword puzzles, which exercise the 'grey matter'. We talk about brain function in English sometimes as 'grey matter'.

Will Music Amplify Your English Learning Efforts Ep 655 Article Image

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A photograph of a man playing guitar. Subscribe to our podcast NOW. Don't miss the beat! Let English harmony guide your journey!

©️ Adept English 2023

How can music boost your grey matter?

So why is playing a musical instrument so much better than doing a crossword puzzle? Well, first of all, playing a musical instrument means that you are exercising many areas of the brain at once.

It's visual, V I S U A L, which means 'you use your eyes'. And that's, especially if you're reading music from a sheet like this, that's a piece of piano music. So you might be reading from sheet music, but you're also looking at your fingers as you play.

And if you're reading music, then your brain is having to interpret the symbols on the sheet and turn them into musical notes. That's quite a process for your brain to do as well.

It's also auditory. That's A U D I T O R Y. That means 'it uses your ears, your hearing'. So your brain is involved in listening. You listen for pleasure, but if you're playing, you're also listening to see how well you're doing, how it sounds, listening out for wrong notes, perhaps. Certainly, that's me when I'm playing!

Clang. Whoops. A wrong note in the middle of your piece.

Playing an instrument also involves muscles, M U S C L E S, usually muscles of the hands. And to make music, we have to do what we call 'fine motor movements'. ' Anything to do with movement that's controlled by the brain we call 'motor skills' - that's M O T O R. And of course this exercises yet another part of the brain.

The amazing power of practice

Rather like what I recommend for learning English, listening to podcasts over and over again, our brains learn to do amazing things when we practise over and over again, and this is true with our hands. The type of expert movements that we need to be able to do to play a musical instrument - we call these 'muscle memory' in English, as though the muscles are doing the remembering, but of course it's actually your brain. So 'muscle memory' is yet another brain function going on when we play an instrument.

If your further forward in your musical instrument playing, then you'll want to put expression and emotion into your playing. So that's yet another part of the brain, and that's hard to do unless you're actually feeling some emotion as you play.

Music making helps your brain hemispheres talk to one another

You may also be aware of the idea that your brain is separated into two halves, the right and the left hemisphere. And these two halves of the brain have different functions, different jobs to do. But the strength of the connections between these two halves of the brain are really important. The more integrated our brain, the more integrated our brain function, the better we function.

And because of all these different brain functions going on at once, left and right hemisphere, when you play a musical instrument, it strengthens the connections between. This part in the middle is called the 'Corpus Callosum'. That's C O R P U S C A L L O S U M.

Increased thickness in the Corpus Callo sum is linked to greater intelligence, processing speed and problem solving abilities. We all want that, don't we? Neuroscientific studies show that the connections in the two halves of the brain are significantly strengthened in people who play a musical instrument, and that's adults and children alike.

Music making causes new neurons to grow

Something else happens when you play a musical instrument. Your hippocampus grows - i t grows new neurons. N E U R O N S. And your neurons are the connections in your brain.

Even if you are good at playing your musical instrument, 'accomplished', we might say, it's still difficult again, each time you learn a new piece of music. And your hippocampus, the most human and thinking part of your brain is being exercised every time you learn something new. And especially if you learn a piece of music first from a sheet, and then well enough to play it by ear without the musical sheet. We call it 'by ear' in English when you play without sheet music in front of you.

So your hippocampus has to build new neural connections each time you learn a new piece. That's why it's hard work! That's why people often prefer playing pieces they already know.

So playing a musical instrument also enhances your cognitive functions as well. And guess what? It also enhances your memory. What can be better than that?

Listening Lessons

Protect the myelin in your brain, with playing a musical instrument

Another important element in our brain is something called 'myelin', M Y E L I N. And this is the white substance that covers the neurons in our brain. It covers the connections in our brain. It's rather like a wire or a flex. Imagine when you go to charge your mobile phone, you plug in and there's a wire between the plug and your phone. That wire has a plastic coating, and if that plastic coating is damaged, all kinds of things can go wrong.

And it's the same with the myelin in your brain that coats the neural connections. It's like a plastic cover. As we get older, myelin reduces, and particularly in diseases like Alzheimer's or dementia. You start to lose the myelin in your brain, and this is a disaster. But MRI scanning of the brain has shown that playing a musical instrument, especially something like piano increases the amount of this substance, this myelin in the brain.

Are you going to have a go?

So according to neuroscientists who've studied it, playing a musical instrument is like no other activity for enhancing and improving your brain function. Apparently sports and the arts, making art of some type don't even come close, though they're great for other reasons, of course.

So perhaps after hearing this podcast, you might want to dust off that old piano, that guitar, that trumpet, that French horn or whatever you may have learned, and take it up again. Or if you haven't learned a musical instrument, it is never too late to start and it can be a real pleasure.

Is rock and jazz the new classical for piano learning?

My experience? Well, I was given piano lessons from the age of 7 to 14 years. I enjoyed it for much of it, but by the time I was 14 and with a change from my old favourite piano teacher to a new one I didn't like, like many teenagers, I wanted to give up the piano. Part of the problem was that when I was young, the only route to learning was classical, and this didn't speak to my 14 year old self. Nowadays, children can learn piano through the route of jazz or rock piano. I think these would've appealed to me far more when I was that age and I may have continued.

Download The Podcast Audio & Transcript

However, when I left full-time work to become a psychotherapist, I bought a piano. I took it up again, I had lessons and I passed my Grade 4 with Distinction. That's the highest grade you can get, so I was very pleased.

Music will wait until the right time!

But I was pregnant with my son at the time and with a baby and two older children, I'm afraid the piano didn't get much time after that. But having taken up the piano many years after I stopped and succeeded in an exam, I know I can do that again.

It helps also having a nice instrument. I have a nice upright Yamaha, just waiting for me whenever I want to play. I do like my piano!

I hope you enjoyed this podcast and if you really want to improve your English, listen to the podcast a number of times until you understand every bit of it, and then a few more times after that. Happy listening and happy playing a musical instrument.

Goodbye

Enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye.

Thank you so much for listening. Please help me tell others about this podcast by reviewing or rating it. And, please share it on social media. You can find more listening lessons and a free English course at adeptenglish.com

Links

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• How Playing an Instrument Affects Your Brain
• How instruments benefit your brain - Anita Collins
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