Musical Literacy: How Song Can Help You Read

The benefits of music education on math skills are now common knowledge. They also make sense. Counting rhythms, building spatial relationships, and dividing measures require analytical skills that can help students face similar math equations. So music is all about math, right? Wrong. Researchers are now finding that music can help build phonics, cognitive memorization, vocabulary, and reading comprehension.

Oddly enough, the foundations of music and learning lie in our earliest attempts at communication. Babies, for example, learn how to communicate through rhythm and sound repetition. Because of this, easy rhythmic words such as “mama” and “dada” are internalized quickly. Scientific research points to our earliest speaking attempts through a trial and error process, one that requires us to imitate rhythm first, then sound, then finally committing a word to memory.

Students who struggle with reading or are below average often move quickly through words and lose their meaning in the process. By slowing down this process, children can build their phonetic abilities and retain more information. How do we achieve this? Many new programs suggest that singing a word is the answer. A recent article by Laura Woodall and Brenda Ziembroski argues that singing a word  is far better than speaking a word. When we sing, we pay attention to the rhythmic qualities of the language and better concentrate on the sound or pitch of the word.

Although this process of literacy education is widely accepted, few schools are willing to adapt this new system into their older methods of education. Students therefore must look to outside education centers who offer the technology necessary to assist with reading comprehension. One such center is Five Points Learning in Brooklyn, NY. Five Points Learning offers a unique Reading tutoring program that integrates reading, vocabulary, video and song to assist students as they build their reading skills. Through this unique reading tutoring program and its dedicated and passionate Reading tutors, English tutors, and Writing tutors, students are able to make 1+ grade level improvements in just 9 weeks.

In our ever-growing technological world, multi-disciplinary approaches are necessary advancements in the field of education. While music in education are historically linked, creative instruction and multimedia technology will continue to harness the benefits of this useful method.