Musical Ability and Second Language Learning: What's the Connection?

• In Event: Multilingual Literacies: Predictors and Practices

Abstract

Ninety-nine English-speaking college students took a 24-item musical ability pretest assessing their ability to recognize differences in the pitch of musical notes and then completed an online learning task in which they learned to classify each of six spoken Mandarin tones across 36 listening trials. There was a strong positive correlation between percentage correct on the musical ability pretest and percentage correct on the Mandarin tone learning task (r = .63, p < .001). Based on a median split, students who scored high on the musical ability pretest achieved a higher score on the Mandarin tone learning task than those who scored low (d = 1.19, p < .001). Musical ability may be a core competency across disciplines.

Authors

• Bradford Fried, University of California - Santa Barbara
  Presenting Author

• Richard E. Mayer, University of California - Santa Barbara
  Non-Presenting Author