The Potential Role of Music in Second Language Learning: A Review Article

Article	Sample: size, age, musical experience	Native language - L2	Measures	Findings
Delogu et al. (2010)	N=90 Adults Controls, musicians, Mandarin Chinese experts N=20 Children (6–8 years) High and Low Musical ability groups	Italian - Mandarin Chinese	Musical ability; L2 receptive phonology; Lexical tone discrimination; Years of musical training.	Adult musicians performed better than musically naive subjects and equivalently to Chinese experts in the lexical tone discrimination task Children with a higher musical ability showed higher tonal performance. The discrimination of segmental variations (consonant or vowel changes), was not enhanced in musically able subjects.
Lee & Hung (2008)	N=72 Adults Musicians and non-musicians	English – Mandarin Chinese	Processing of linguistic and musical pitch	Musicians more accurate at identifying correct syllables among intact or modified syllables in pitch height or pitch contour.
Marie et al. (2011)^a	N=22 Adults Musicians and non-musicians	French – Mandarin Chinese	Lexical tone and segmental processing; ERPs.	Musicians were faster and more accurate at detecting both tonal and segmental variations than non-musicians. Musical expertise improved the perception and categorization of segmental and tonal linguistic contrasts.
Marques et al. (2007)	N=22 Adults Musicians and non-musicians	French - Portuguese	Lexical tone processing; ERPs.	Musicians were faster and more accurate than non-musicians in detecting prosodic pitch violations.
Martínez-Montes et al. (2013)	N=52 Adults Musicians and non-musicians	Spanish – Mandarin Chinese	Syllabic pitch processing; ERPs.	Musicians showed larger mismatch negativity MMNs to pitch contour deviations in both harmonic sounds and L2 syllables.

[i] Note: ^aAlso studied segmental processing. L2 = second language.

Table 2

Summaries of articles that examined phonological perception of L2: phoneme duration & language segmentation.

Article	Sample: size, age, musical experience	Native language - L2	Measures		Findings
Herrera et al. (2011)	N=97 Pre-school children, (Mean age 4.5 years) None	Spanish- Spanish and Tamazight-Spanish	Intelligence; Spanish vocabulary; Phonological awareness; Naming speed; Verbal short-term memory (STM).	Applied Intervention: 2 eight-week training periods of phonological training with/without music over 2 years.	Early phonological and musical intervention improved both naming speed and phonological awareness (two predictors of reading readiness) in native speakers and L2 learners. L2 learners who received training with music developed naming speed skills and phonological awareness of the ending of words more rapidly than Spanish children in the control group.
François et al. (2012)	N=24 Children (Mean age = 8) None	French – artificial language	Verbal Comprehension; Perceptual Reasoning; Working Memory and Attention Speech segmentation ERPs	Applied intervention: 2 year training in music or painting	Children with musical training improved their speech segmentation abilities while children in the painting group did not. The difference in the electrophysiological responses for familiar and unfamiliar words was greater in the music group than in the painting group.
Sadakata & Sekiyama (2011)	N=53 (Dutch) N=54 (Japanese) Adults Musicians (excluding singers) and non-musicians	Japanese-Dutch and Dutch-Japanese	L2 receptive phonology - the timing and quality of Japanese consonants, and the quality of Dutch vowels.		Musical expertise benefited discrimination of speech materials (indicating automatic neural encoding processes) more than identification (application of categories to an incoming sound) in both L1 and L2. Musicians showed the greatest enhancement in the identification of temporal aspects of speech (duration of consonants and vowels).

[i] Note: L1 = first language, L2 = second language.

Table 3

Summaries of articles that examined phonological production of L2.

Article	Sample: size, age, musical experience	Native language - L2	Measures	Findings
Posedel et al. (2011)	N=45 Adults Years of musical training as a continuous variable	English-Spanish	Working memory (Operation span); Pitch perception; L2 phonological production; Start and duration of music and L2 training.	Correlation between the length of musical training and both pitch perception and working memory. Pitch perception was the only significant predictor of Spanish pronunciation quality.
Milovanov et al. (2008)	N=40 Children (10–12 years). Musically trained or untrained	Finnish-English	Musical aptitude Pronunciation ERPs	Children with advanced English pronunciation abilities had better musical skills than those who showed less accurate English pronunciation skills. Children with good linguistic skills showed more pronounced sound-change evoked activation with the music stimuli.
Milovanov et al. (2010)	N=46 Adults Non-musicians, choir members, English philology students	Finnish-English	Musical aptitude; Pronunciation; Phonemic listening discrimination.	All the participants performed equally well in the phonemic listening discrimination task. The participants with higher musical aptitude were able to pronounce English better than the participants with less musical aptitude.

[i] Note: L2 = second language.

Table 4

Summaries of articles that examined perception of L2 written text.

Article	Sample: size, age, musical experience	Native language - L2	Measures	Findings
Strait et al. (2011)	N=42 Children (Mean age = 10.4) None	English	Oral and silent reading; Musical aptitude; Attention/Auditory Working Memory (AWM); Human auditory brainstem responses	The music aptitude, by means of shared neural (brainstem) and cognitive (AWM/Attention) mechanisms, accounted for 38% of variance in children’s reading abilities. The effect of musical aptitude largely came from children’s rhythmic skills.
Swaminathan & Gopinath (2013)	N=76 Primary school children Musically trained and untrained	Indian languages - English	Verbal intelligence, Wechsler’s Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC); English reading proficiency	Children with music training (Western or Indian) perform better than untrained children in L2 comprehension and vocabulary, but not in reading proficiency.