Singing, rather than saying phrases in a new language has been proven to make it easier to remember the new language according to a new study.
The study published in the Memory and Cognition journal found that adults learning phrases in Hungarian were better able to match the words with their English counterparts when they learned the phrase by singing it.
Lead author and linguist from the University of Edinburgh, Dr Karen M Ludke, became interested in whether singing could help in learning a language when she was teaching English as a second language in New York.
“I started using a lot of song and music in my lessons, so they could practise when I wasn’t around,” she said.
“Then I started to doubt myself a little bit. I thought, ‘Is this scientific?, Is this actually beneficial to use song to teach?'”
Dr Ludke used Google Scholar to determine how much relevant research existed and found evidence from teachers that it was a proven strategy in teaching second languages.
Singing phrases leads to better recall, Dr Ludke says read more
article by ABC Science Online’s Claire Pain: Updated Thu 15 Aug 2013, 4:37 pm AEST