The Effects Of Background Music On The Reading Comprehension Of Chinese English Learners

Background music, though non-appreciative, has become literally an almost ubiquitous aspect of contemporary living and, not surprisingly, has developed into a conscious pursuit to optimize the environment, whereas it seems novel to probe on the introduction of background music to educational settings in China. In today’s society, with the rapid expansion of the mass media industry and the development of the humanistic principles, research on the effects of background music on human cognition and learning has been of great interest to plenty of psychologists, educational psychologists in particular. In a bid to verify the facilitation or interference of background music on learning, researchers have conducted many scientific experiments on the effects of music on memory, attention and spatial-temporal reasoning etc. Consequently, a large body of evidence indicates that background music brings forth positive effects on the performance of psychological and behavioral cognition, yet there are a number of reports lending support to the interference or null effects of background music with respect to the learning performance. In general, the effects of background music on learning are still under discussion.Based on the previous literature, the current study attempted to investigate the effects of background music on the reading comprehension performance considering the facets of music, participants’ music preference and individual differences. Specifically, it examined the effects of classical Mozart sonata and the preferred music on the reading performance in a sample of 69 Chinese English learners. Furthermore, it was designed to expand and delve into the role of individual differences in personality and gender on reading comprehension in the presence of background music. To this end, the 69 individuals were invited to carry out three reading passages in a design of repeated measures. In the experimental phase, chronologically each participant experienced three different background music conditions(silence, Mozart sonata, and the preferred music) whilst performing reading comprehension tasks.The results showed that Mozart sonata neither significantly enhanced nor significantly impaired the reading performance as achieved in the silence, and that the preferred music had significantly detrimental effect on the performance. Further, it was revealed that, though the extroverts did not perform significantly better in both of the Mozart and the preferred music, there was a marginally significant increase of scores in the Mozart when compared to the silence. Also, with the exposure to background music stimuli, the females were found much easier to be distracted than the males on the reading task performance. Generally, taking into consideration both the gender difference and the personality trait of the participants, either for the males or the females, background music of Mozart was demonstrated to be beneficial to the reading performance of the extroverts and conversely detrimental to the performance of the introverts; compared to the performance of the participants in the silence, the preferred background music was demonstrated as being detrimental for all, whether the males and the females, or the extroverts and the introverts.Clinically, results of the present study have several implications for the application of background music to optimize work environment and improve efficiency.Primarily, background music stimuli may bring benefit to language teaching. However, application of background music in the course of language teaching, foreign language reading teaching specifically, appears to be fairly complicated. Teachers in the first place should get familiar with the classifications, related theoretical overview and recent research results of background music so as to make it clear whether background music is capable of facilitating language teaching. And if this is the case, what particular music types then can be employed to create a more comfortable and favorable environment for teaching. Meanwhile, teachers are anticipated to interiorly take notice of students’ emotional states in class to modify the way of teaching in accordance to differences of the individuals as degrees of extraversion and gender differences.Besides that, cultivation of the habit that one works with background music on is not synonymous to the adaptation to the interference of irrelevant background stimuli. One should choose the background music proper and appropriate to him/her based on a good knowledge of the basic and recent information of background music. Particularly, as for individuals with background music preference who have been remarkably adaptive to stimuli, classical music appears to be of great help to attention-focusing and drabness-relieving. Correspondingly, if one holds a critical expectation for academic environment and prefers a rather quiet setting, he/she is suggested not to listen to background music, the preferred music in particular.Additionally, complexity of the cognition and learning tasks involved should be taken into account as well. Background music is only advocated in relation to simple materials with less verbal information. As the case stands, instrumental music with calming or smoothing effect, Mozart sonata alike, should be a feasible choice in anticipation to bring about fairly less interference. However, when it comes to complex cognitive tasks as reading in foreign language, it is better not to experience background music, the preferred music particularly. Notably, the preferred music is demonstrated to distract the participants’ attention and only turn out to be detrimental for all.