Hey, what's up guys? Today We're gonna talk about why it's so
Important to listen to music in your target language and I have four main reasons that I want to share with you to support that
argument, but before we get into that
I want to mention that language learners should help each other and we should be able to bounce ideas off of one another
with that said I want to encourage you to leave some comments below with the language that you're learning and
Some songs that you have found useful for learning your target language and I'm gonna do the same
So with that said let's get into this video
The first reason is that when you learn languages with music, you're naturally using the chunking method
This means that you're learning whole phrases instead of individual words, and this is useful for a number of reasons
First of all, because when you speak a language you want the words to come out smoothly together rather than one word at a time
Not to mention how sometimes all the individual words of a sentence means something completely different
Than what the sentence means with all the words together as a whole
Did you ever think about how when you say I could care less what you actually mean to say is I couldn't care less
Because what you're really trying to communicate is that I don't care at all when you use the chunking method to language learning
You learn the meaning of the whole phrase
So the individual words aren't gonna get in the way and mess you up with your perception of what it means
It's also easier to memorize chunks, which is exactly what we do with phone numbers
We don't just memorize all 10 digits individually
We group them into smaller chunks that are made up of individual numbers, and it's easier to learn that way
My second reason is that learning languages with music makes learning abstract rules a little bit more concrete
Okay, really quick sidenote for those who are learning English. I want to define the difference between abstract and concrete
Something that's abstract exists in thought or as an idea, but it doesn't have any physical or concrete existence
Something that is described as concrete
Exists in a material or physical form. It's more tangible than something that's abstract
Now of course song lyrics are not truly concrete objects
but you can physically see them on the page or on your computer screen and it's easier to grasp them than
Technical grammar rules and when you do eventually learn the grammar rules, you'll have something to apply them to that
You already know and can see too often when you learn something new in class. You're just swimming in this sea of
Abstract concepts that you don't understand and you're just forced to learn these rules by memorization
because they don't actually mean anything to you yet and
music can kind of reverse this process because first you'll learn the strange way in which people actually
Speak and then when you learn the underlying
Grammatical rules in class or online or however, you're learning, they won't be quite as abstract because you'll have real-world
Examples that you can relate them to this has happened to me several times in my French classes over the last few years
For a long time. I had been listening to a song by Zaz in which she said
"Je n'en veux pas" and I understood the phrase
"Je ne veux pas"
But I couldn't understand why she kept adding that little e n, "en"
That is until I took a French grammar class in which they explained the French
Pronouns and how "en" can actually serve as a pronoun and then it just clicked it made sense
Because I had already had the previous experience with the song similarly this summer when I was in Paris
I was sitting in class and just kind of been passing while he was speaking about something completely unrelated my professor
Just give us a little tidbit and he said that in French you have the word "quand" which ends with a D
But when it's followed by a word that starts with I it won't be pronounced as a D
it'll be pronounced as a T and
Instantly when he said that my mind went straight to the song La Vie En Rose because the very first two words of the chorus
Are "quand il" and I had noticed this before I realized that she was pronouncing it more like a T than a D
But I never realized that there was an underlying phonological rule for why she was doing that and this was just a short
tidbit that my professor kind of
Spontaneously threw out right in the middle of class
I definitely would have just immediately forgotten it if I didn't already hav e a familiarity with the song and a real world
example of
Someone using that rule and with that being said it brings me really nicely into my next reason for listening to music
Which is it helps you recognize
pronunciation patterns or phonological rules if you want a more in-depth explanation about how these
Pronunciation rules work. You can check out my video link up here
I did a whole video on the scientific study of phonology and how we can use that information to help us learn pronunciation
As language learners now before we go any further I have to do a really quick
English lesson for the people who are learning English on my channel, but if you're a language learner
It should still be interesting to you
Even if you speak English as your native language in English when we have a word that ends in T
And it's followed by pretty much any variation of the word to you that T is not pronounced as a T sound
It's pronounced more like a "ch" sound and don't ask me why it doesn't make a whole lot of sense
But that's just what we do in English
So if you're learning English and you listen to the song, Don't You Forget About Me from The Breakfast Club,
You might listen to that and you might notice and you're saying why doesn't he say don't
You he says don't chew and then you listen to the Billy Joel song where he says
And then you listen to the Marshall Tucker Band
And after listening to several of these songs you'll start to put the pieces together
Even though you haven't actually explicitly learnd the rule
This is another reason why we want to use
chunking because you don't just learn the word don't and you you learn them together, and it's
Dontcha now, it would be easy to over apply this rule to any instance where you have a T followed by a Y
But then you listen to the Britney Spears song
And you think hmm that's interesting she said not yet she didn't say nochet so by listening to a wide
Variety of music you're gonna start to learn when and where to apply these phonoogical rules and the fourth
but maybe the main reason that I think you should listen to music in your target language is simply because
Uh... it's... it's easy
Yes. It is easy.
My three main goals for this youtube channel is to help make language learning fast fun and easy and
Easy isn't in there by accident. There's a big reason
I want to make language learning easy because if it's difficult
Then we're just not gonna follow through with it and it's just gonna lead to a lot of frustration
And failed attempts at learning languages
so any language learning technique that we can
Easily implement into our daily lives is worth it just on that basis when you're listening to music
It doesn't feel like studying
It feels like something fun that you do in your native language anyways
And you can do it all day long without any extra effort on your part
I have Spotify playing in the background all day long in québécois French
You may not always be paying close attention to it, but it's better to have more exposure than less exposure
So I still count this as a plus and listening to music is passive
You don't have to be actively putting all your attention into listening to the music for it to be beneficial
You can be doing other things and just singing along in your head while you do it then a lot of times without even
realizing it
You'll be practicing it throughout the day because the song is stuck in your head now after
Listing all the benefits of listening to music. There is also a few cautions that I want to mention first off
Is that song lyrics are not always sung
Naturally in the way that people actually speak sometimes when we're singing we put the emphasis on the wrong syllable
This doesn't happen all the time
But on occasion songwriters will change the stress of a word in order to help it fit the rhythm of the song better
That's why in the song dreams by Fleetwood Mac. She sings the rain washes you clean
Sounds weird to a native English speaker. It should be the rain WASHes you clean not washES
This isn't usually a problem because it makes the songs sound so
Awkward that songwriters usually try to avoid doing that but it's still something to pay attention to while you're listening on
Occasion songwriters will use strange syntax in order to help their songs
rhyme better
The one that comes immediately to my mind is the song Maggie Mae who I think is sung by
Rod Stewart and it's a good song but this line sticks out because it's so
Terrible he sings I laughed at all your jokes, my love
You didn't need to coax and if you speak English natively or if you have any basis in English
Do you know that that's just so wrong. It doesn't sound natural at all
No native speaker of English would ever say that unless you're intentionally trying to change the grammar around
To fit it into your rhyme pattern. It should really be you didn't need to coax my love
But of course then that wouldn't rhyme with jokes
And of course another thing to look out for is that a lot of times songs are more artistic and more
Metaphorical than we speak in real life if you listen to smells like teen spirit by Nirvana or mr
Tambourine Man by Bob Dylan you might get to the very end of the song and still have no idea what they're talking about
It's because they're not as worried about making sure their sentences make sense as they are about just making an enjoyable song
Okay, and you really don't want to go around speaking in really flowery
Metaphorical speech all the time
now all these warnings aren't a huge deal if you're listening to a song and you
Hear something weird that you're just not sure if it's right or if it sounds natural
Just find a native speaker to ask and they can usually clear it up right away
And if the native speaker doesn't understand what it's saying
That's a pretty good indication that you probably should just avoid
Saying that thing and the only other caution I have is don't use listening to music as an excuse to not study
Actively if you want to improve your language
You have to dedicate time towards studying and that doesn't mean just listening to music in the car
You want to dedicate a certain amount of time every day to studying actively with all of your attention
Okay, it's not a substitute just to have music playing in the background
but as long as you acknowledge that
Music is really a great way of helping to supplement your language learning routine
So thanks for watching the video if you enjoyed it, be sure to give me a thumbs up
I would really appreciate that and don't forget to leave a comment below with your favorite songs for learning languages and
I guess with that. I'll just say see you next time