Music Instruction Aids Reading Skills

Over the years many studies have been done to see if music instruction aids in reading skills. Below are a few studies that would suggest that this is true.

Music and Reading Skills

Is there a transfer of music reading skills to reading vocabulary and reading comprehension? In a experimental group done by Edwin Movsesian in California involving grades one, two, and three the experimental group received instruction in music reading skills along with their regular reading instruction. The control group received only the reading instruction.

The results: The experimental group performed significantly better on the California Achievements Tests (Reading Section), The Gray Oral Reading Test, and the Servey of Primary Music Reading Development.

Music and the Slow Learner

In 1972 Diana Nicholson conducted a study to determine the extent, if any, to which music can improve the ability of the slow learner in the development of certain reading readiness skills. She worked with 50 students who were between the ages of 6 and 8 years old.

The students were divided into control and experimental groups with careful attention to balancing the groups regarding student gender, reading achievement, age, and socio0economic status. The experimental group received music instruction in the concepts of melody, rhythm, and meter. The control group received no instruction.

At the conclusion of the study she found that the students who received the music instruction had significantly higher scores than the students not receiving the instruction in musical and non-musical areas. Students in the music group were better at letter recognition and had a higher ability to discriminate between pairs of letters that are similar. In addition to these specific gains, students in the experimental group scored significantly higher on both the Metropolitan Readiness Test and the Botel Test of Reading Achievement.

From these findings Nicholson concluded that music instruction can improve the ability of the slow learner in the recognition of letters of the alphabet and reading readiness skills.

String Instruments and Reading Achievement

In 1965 Pelletier found that teaching students to play string instruments in third grade increased their reading achievement. He divided 110 third graders into control and experimental groups. The two groups were equated on I.Q., sex, reading achievement, and spelling achievement. Then the experimental group received 25 weeks of string instrument instruction during the school day.

At the conclusion of the study he found that the experimental groups' reading gain was 1.9 months higher than the control group. Further, he learned that when just the low readers in each group were compared it was found that the experimental group students were 3.5 months ahead of the same students in the control group.

Learning to play a musical instrument in the formative stages of learning to read language will enhance the language reading ability of students and problem readers will benefit more than the average readers.

Music Study and Reading Skills of University Students

One of the most convincing studies which shows a correlation between music study and reading skills was conducted by Wood in 1990. He examined the scores on the Nelson Denny reading Test of approximately 7,500 students who enrolled in a medium sized university between 1983 and 1988.

His comparison of student reading scores from different majors revealed that music and music education students had the highest reading scores compared to their counterparts majoring in such areas as biology, chemistry, mathematics, and even English.

The implication of this study is that years of music instruction studying music notation transferred to traditional language reading in these students.