Foreign language pronunciation skills and musical aptitude: A study of Finnish adults with higher education

Milovanov, Riia; Pietilä, Päivi; Tervaniemi, Mari; Esquef, Paulo A. A.

doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2009.11.003

Cited by 94 publications

(95 citation statements)

References 17 publications

(17 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…To the best of my knowledge, this is the first study to connect pitch discrimination with foreign language spelling ability and one of few studies that link music to spelling. The data support previous findings of Slevc and Miyake (2006) connecting music to foreign language discrimination, but contradict the results of Milovanov, Pietilä, Tervaniemi and Esquef (2010), who did not find a link between phonemic discrimination ability in a foreign language and musical aptitude.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 64%

“…They found that musical subjects who demonstrate good analysis, discrimination, and memorization ability can perceive and produce L2 sounds better than their non-musical peers. Subsequent studies confirmed that musical abilities were linked to foreign language pronunciation (Milovanov, Huotilainen, Välimäki, Esquef & Tervaniemi, 2008), and to pronunciation but not to phonemic discrimination of foreign language words (Milovanov, Pietilä, Tervaniemi & Esquef, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The relationship between pitch discrimination and Romanian students’ spelling performance

Dolean¹

2013

Psychology of Language and Communication

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Previous studies have shown that music can have a positive impact on phonological awareness and on foreign language acquisition. The present research investigates specifically the role of pitch discrimination ability in native and foreign language spelling performance. Two groups of elementary school children were selected based on their pitch discrimination abilities (high and low). Their spelling performance in their native and a foreign (fictional) language was assessed. The results indicate that pitch discrimination ability can be linked to spelling ability in both the native and a foreign language. They also suggest that studying a musical instrument might predict enhanced spelling performance ability.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 64%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

The relationship between pitch discrimination and Romanian students’ spelling performance

Dolean¹

2013

Psychology of Language and Communication

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…in a study by Milovanov, Pietilä, Tervaniemi & Esquef (2010) with Finnish higher education young adults. However, the study by Milovanov et al (2010) performs the pronunciation tests for English, which really is not a foreign language for Finnish higher education students, but should be considered as a second language. In this respect, there is a great heterogeneity to be noticed in the international bibliography regarding the mother and target language of the test subjects.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Of course, there is counter-evidence to these explanations, e.g. in a study by Milovanov, Pietilä, Tervaniemi & Esquef (2010) with Finnish higher education young adults. However, the study by Milovanov et al (2010) performs the pronunciation tests for English, which really is not a foreign language for Finnish higher education students, but should be considered as a second language.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pronunciation proficiency and musical aptitude in Spanish as a foreign language: results of an experimental research project

Vangehuchten

Verhoeven

Thys

2015

Rev. lingüíst. leng. apl.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper examines the correlation between musical aptitude and pronunciation proficiency in an experiment with 29 university students of Spanish as a foreign language. The 29 participants took a test in Spanish pronunciation and prosody as well as in musicality. The pronunciation and prosody test consisted of two parts. The first part was a receptive phonemic discrimination test and the second part was a productive test in which they had to repeat words and sentences chosen for their prosodic characteristics. The musical aptitude test also consisted of a receptive part on musicality in general, as well as a productive part, which included the reproduction of tones, tone intervals, rhythms and the singing of a melody. The statistical analysis with Pearson's correlation-coefficients revealed a positive correlation (although not for all aspects) between the musical and foreign language pronunciation proficiency aptitudes. The results are commented on in the discussion. Relevant teaching implications are included in the conclusion.Keywords: pronunciation and prosody proficiency in a second/foreign language, musical aptitude, Spanish as a second/foreign language research, experimental research, Spanish as a second/foreign language teaching.

show abstract

“…A number of scholars interested in the relation between musical ability and the development of certain pronunciation skills (e.g. Magne et al, 2006;Milovanov et al, 2010;FonsecaMora et al, 2011;Połać, 2014;Malarski and Jekiel, 2016) point to the positive influence of this kind of correlation on the foreign language learning process. According to Balčytytė-Kurtinienė (2015: 419), "[E]nhanced musical aptitude and simultaneous musical exposure seems to improve the ability of foreign language learners to distinguish between rapidly changing sounds, stresses, vowel reduction, rhythm and intonation".…”

Section: Word Stress and Musical Aptitudementioning

confidence: 99%

The relationship between the production of word stress and musical abilities in Polish learners of English

Gralińska-Brawata

Rybińska

2017

RiL

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The pilot study presented in this paper is exploratory in nature and aims first to investigate if there exists a relationship between the production of word stress and learners’ musical abilities, and then, to explore the effects of this relationship on teachability of word stress to Polish advanced students of English. The results of the analysis on the auditory recordings were compared with the information provided by the informants in a questionnaire and a performance music test. The obtained data were analysed using descriptive statistics. The results show that the students tend to overgeneralise word stress rules in English rather than transfer the penultimate syllable rule from Polish. In addition, there seems to be a relationship between word stress production and musical ability for the majority of the participants.

show abstract

Foreign language pronunciation skills and musical aptitude: A study of Finnish adults with higher education

Cited by 94 publications

References 17 publications

The relationship between pitch discrimination and Romanian students’ spelling performance

The relationship between pitch discrimination and Romanian students’ spelling performance

Pronunciation proficiency and musical aptitude in Spanish as a foreign language: results of an experimental research project

The relationship between the production of word stress and musical abilities in Polish learners of English

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About