Giving children music lessons won’t just lead them to a world of melody——it could also greatly improve their language skills.

While numerous studies have shown that learning an instrument can impact things like language ability, it wasn’t understood if this was a side effect of a general improvement to cognitive skills, or something that directly affected language processing.

Now, we know more about that, from a study of 74 Chinese kindergarten children，led by neuroscientist Robert Desimone. “The children did show improvements in word discrimination (辨别)，particularly for consonants(声母),”explains Desimone.

For the study, Desimone’s team randomly divided the Mandarin—speaking children into three groups. One group received a 45-minute piano lesson three times a week, while another received extra reading instruction classes. The third group acted as controls, taking no extra lessons beyond their usual routine. The classes lasted for six months, after which the children were tested on their ability to discriminate words based on differences in tone, consonants,o r vowels.

The test results showed that the children who had taken piano lessons performed significantly better at discriminating between words, compared against the children who took extra reading lessons. Compared to the control group, both the music learners and the extra reading group did better in discriminating words.

To learn why these differences happen, the researchers studied the children’s brain activity via electroencephalography (EEG) and found the piano group showed greater sensitivity to tonal changes. The thinking goes, having music lessons helped develop this tonal sensitivity, which partly explains better word discrimination.

It’s also worth emphasizing that the musical education helped these children outperform their peers in language tests—even beyond the results of kids who took extra reading classes. “It’s better than extra reading. That means schools could invest in music,” Desimone says．

【小题1】What did previous studies show?

A．Instruments learning helps language ability．

B．Language is a side effect of cognitive skills．

C．Learning an instrument slows down language processing．

D．Extra reading is needed to improve language skills．

【小题2】What is paragraph 4 mainly about?

A．Why the study was carried out．	B．The differences between word discrimination．
C．How the study was carried out．	D．How the groups were divided．

【小题3】According to paragraph 6，why were there differences between word discrimination?

A．Because of the limitation of brain activity．

B．Because of electroencephalography．

C．Because of tonal changes between different groups．

D．Because of different levels of tonal sensitivity．

【小题4】What does the underline word“outperform”in paragraph 7 mean?

A．Compare with．

B．Invest in．

C．Do better than．

D．Differ from．