The role of the musicality of language in the acquisition process of English as a second language (Spanish text)

Researchers from different fields such as musicology, psychology, linguistics, anthropology or neurobiology confirm the existence of shared elements between music and language. In applied linguistics, a good number of teacher discourse studies identify exaggerated pronounciation and voice inflections as universal features of this type of register. In this book, the musicality present in English L2 teacher discourse has been analysed. The melodic contours found were isolated and described from a musical-linguistic perspective. Similarities between L1 and L2 acquisition processes have been widely discussed in literature. Exaggerated melodic contours have also been found in adult-directed-to-infant-speech. They are considered as a parental intuitive use to guide their babies' musical beginnings, but they are also seen as a species-specific learning guidance towards language. In this book, as regards to the musical character of language, a parallelism between adult-directed-to-infant-speech and teacher discourse has been established. Therefore, Spanish and English teachers teaching English have been recorded and their discourse has been analysed. Further more, an experimental study was designed as the existing studies on music and language learning reported in L2 acquisition literature do not offer enough information to differentiate if working with music or musicality has a facilitating effect in language acquisition. Finally, this book concludes that working with the musicality of speech, that is to say, with shared elements between language and music, such as rhythm, length, pauses or melodic contours has a positive effect on EFL students language acquisition process.