Music and Language Learning

This morning I watched a very interesting tv programme on music therapy in NZ. It was amazing to see the kids who are obviously benefiting from music therapy and to listen to their teachers, parents, therapists talking about the change music has made to their lives. Truly inspirational!
I've always thought there's huge potential in music assisting in the learning of languages. Either as a way of relaxation and 'fine-tuning' with the tones, intonation and rhythm of a language or as a help in learning vocabulary, grammar structures, etc, through lyrics. It works both ways, I think.
I know of a couple of research projects currently in progress which are looking at the relationship between musci and language learning and there certainly must be more. I will be looking for them. In the meanwhile I have found these two articles which are both interesting and inspiring:

Does music help us learn language
Best music to listen while studying

Rote learn /memorize or not?

Here is some food for thought - whether we need to rote learn or not? Memorize or not? A nicer way to call it may be learning by heart . Does it help with learning a language? Why? Why not? Does leaning poems by heart help learning other things? It may be, although many educators will say it doesn't have anything with creativity or can even supress the creativity... But, how come kids love nursery rhymes so much and remember them for the whole life? We all do, don't we? Learning by heart may be a kind of training for our brains - although it seems we tend to neglect the importance of training our brains as there's more and more stuff around ready to be used instantaneously, just to spoon feed us...
Here is an interesting article, and comments as well.

Rote memorization: Overrated, or underrated?

Education and Creativity

If you have a little bit of time watch this - a wonderful perfomer, insightful thoughts !!!

Once Upon a Time

Do you still remember the gramophone and the LPs? the old radio? black and white TV? the tape-recorder? typewriter? (I still have one at home - wasn't so long ago when we used it ...) Amazing, isn't it?

Why MyLanguageLane?

I created my first blog two years ago http://catch-the-breeze-01.blogspot.com/ when joined the EVO BaW 2009, but didn't carry on although I thought I would !? I also participated in the blog Collaborative Writing http://collaborativewriting09.blogspot.com/

to which I contributed some of my thoughts on writing and language learning. Now I have created this blog - as a task for BaW2011. Sure, I regret I didn't continue with that one and regret I couldn't join the EVO last year, but the BaW2009 inspired me to start a wiki with my French class at Mt Albert. It was fun, and there are still some French songs I enjoy listening to. I've noticed quite a number of people around the world have seen that wiki (frankly, it wasn't bad at all. I'm quite proud of it:) http://tiare.pbworks.com/w/page/11607195/FrontPage

As I am currently not teaching but mostly engaged with my research, this blog probably won't be a place to post the tasks for students but rather a place for discussion about learning and teaching, in particular the learning of language(s). That's what I would like it to become, but who knows what's actually going to happen? I am not good at planning - however, it's worth trying, isn't it?