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

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