Finnish researchers confirm that music helps to support the development of spoken language. This is insightful for parents of children with hearing impairments, early childhood education providers, teachers, speech therapists and other rehabilitators of children with hearing disabilities, as well as the hearing-impaired themselves.
When developing a music playschool designed for children using a cochlear implant, University Lecturer of Logopedics and speech therapist Ritva Torppa noticed that music, especially singing, benefits the brain of hearing-impaired children and their spoken language.
Researchers have demonstrated that musical activities develop children’s perception of prosody, like rhythm and pitch variation, and spoken language. These skills make children’s lives easier – for example, listening to speech in noisy surroundings become less stressful, or communicating with others and absorbing information in school and everyday life also becomes easier.
Huotilainen says that employing music in early childhood education and basic education benefits all and safeguards the right to high-quality learning for children with language disorders, those learning Finnish as a second language and children with developmental disabilities.
This use of musical methods in teaching intensifies learning and is in line with the results of the latest brain research. Music is beneficial in a way that it gives every child a voice of their own – a channel for self-expression and the chance to be heard. Huotilainen is hoping for musical skills to be better acknowledged in the training of early childhood educators and basic education teachers.
Category(s):Child Development
Source material from Science Daily
