Lyrical Learning

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The concept of using lyrics and music to teach and to learn is as old as education itself. Before the printed page, and still today, singing songs and ballads or reciting poems or chants have been used to communicate ideas, history, culture, and other information. We may remember the alphabet song, nursery rhymes, and tunes heard on the playground or around the campfire for the rest of our lives. Advertisers have long used lyrics and music to plant commercial jingles firmly in our minds. Why is this so effective? What is it about lyrics and music that makes what we hear and sing to stick in our brains? In this article I would like to share 1) what is now understood from research done in how the brain processes, stores, and retrieves information, and 2) some applications of what I call Lyrical Learning in education. How The Brain Works: Two Brains In One!: The Split-brain. We have a "dual brain" system. The left side takes care of organizing, sequencing and analyzing; language skills; mathematics and logical reasoning. The right side takes care of patterns, spatial relationships, and concepts; music, visual arts and poetry; intuition and holistic perception. Because of this, we can better retain and recall what we learn if we combine text with music — the text being processed and stored in the left side, and the music in the right. The concept of "dual-coding" or "multi-modal teaching" deals with using more than one mode (in this case, language and music). Several researchers have found that the use of music, songs, poems, and other musical mnemonics have greatly aided learning for slow learners and learning disabled children. But all of us can benefit from using both sides of our brain! Something New And Different: Novelty and Increased Emotional Involvement. The recall of information is improved when words are put to music partially because of the heightened attention given to something novel — something that is new and/or different. When songs are learned, there is an optimal balance between the redundancy of practicing and the novelty of learning in a way that is interesting. The aspects of interesting lyrics, novelty, and emotional involvement are thought to be what makes history come alive in ballads. For example in The Battle of New Orleans, a song made popular be Johnny Horton years ago, the who, when, where, and how are stated in the first verse: "In 1814 we took a little trip, along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Missisip; We took a little bacon and we took a little beans, and we caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans." Connections And Grouping: Association and "Chunking" The association of new words to a known melody, or even a new melody, has been found to be helpful in remembering both. With "chunking", the brain seems best able to process information if it is in "chunks" of about 7 (from 5-9). This concept is easily incorporated into lyrical phrases or musical measures. An example of this is the easily remembered "Alphabet Song," sung to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star": ABCDEFG (7) HIJKLMNOP (9) QRSTUV (6) WXY and Z (5).

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