When SMCS expertise helps demonstrate that music facilitates language learning
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For several years, Professor Pauline Degrave (Institut of Language and Communication - ILC), with support from the SMCS platform for methodology and statistics, has been studying the role of music in learning. Her research all points in the same direction: music can make learning a foreign language easier
Prof. Pauline Degrave - « Music helps reinforce certain features of a language.
In Dutch, for instance, stress plays an important role, unlike in French.
Through melody or rhythm, music strengthens the placement of that stress, making it easier to perceive.»
Moreover, having musical knowledge and playing an instrument also makes learning Dutch easier, a finding that has already been observed in the past for other languages.
Prof. Pauline Degrave - « Why is that? We don’t know exactly yet, further research
is needed. But most likely, practicing music develops listening skills,
attentive listening, as well as memory capacities, all of which are
beneficial for language learning. »
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Video coverage from May 27, 2025
Publications
- Degrave, P. (2022). Music training and the use of songs or rhythm: Do they help for lexical stress processing?. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 60(3), 799-824. https://doi.org/10.1515/iral-2019-0081
- Degrave, P. (2022). Using music in a word stress processing task: Does it favor learners with a musical background?. ITL-International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 173(2), 228-250.
- Degrave, P. (2021). The contribution of prosody to intelligibility, comprehensibility and accentedness in foreign language acquisition: Can music help?. Nederlandse Taalkunde, 26(2), 273-298.
- Degrave, P. (2019). Music in the foreign language classroom: How and why. Journal of language teaching and research, 10(3), 412-420.