At the weekend I had an interesting discussion with a musician friend about the similarities and differences between teaching music and teaching languages.
The most obvious point of connection is that both require ‘an ear’ for the distinctive sounds.
This is something that many feel is genetic and there seem to be a privileged few who are able to pick up musical expertise /language proficiency with irritating ease while others labour for years trying to master rudimentary skills
Knowing that this is not a new topic, I did a search on the net for posts or articles on the subject. I came across a list of similarities on a blog called Fluent in 3 Months. The ones I related to most were as follows:
- Schools are surprisingly crap at teaching it
- You can be terrible at it and still find it enriching.
- Both take just hours to start with and years to master
- You learn rhythm and tone, even harmony, and then put your personality into it
- Just because you can read it, it doesn’t mean you can produce it
Related link:
Music, emotion and language (Paper about using music to communicate by Sarah E. Worth of Furman University)
