The Effect of Background Music on Reading Comprehension and Concentration

One of the struggles of modern educators today, as posted in scholarly literature, (Luttrell & Parker, 2001) is the lack of basic proficiency of children and adolescents. Students have challenged their learning capacity with different study habits and still trying to figure out the best strategy that suits their preference in the specific learning styles. Thirty percent of children have difficulty on reading, not only the accurate reading but also the comprehension on what they have read (Register, Darrow, Standley, & Swedberg, 2007). Several attempts of distinct studies by educators to boost student reading and writing competency that have been categorized from exploring online strategies (Coiro, Dobler 2007), to assessing a cooperative learning (R.

J. Stevens, R. E. Slavin, & A.M. Farnish 1991), to using increasing student’s motivation (Irwin, 2003) to changing the physical conditions of classrooms (Hong, Milgram, & Rowell, 2004) and usage of music to promote pleasurable art form, that may also serve important psychological functions (MacDonald, Hargreaves and Miell, 2002). Numerous studies have already conducted a research studying about music’s effects on intelligences.

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One of the well-known theories was the Mozart effect, stating it raised the IQ level of an individual (Gray &Della, 2007).

The cognitive processes increase in high risk levels can be assumed when music is present while Ho (2003) discovered that music affects children’s verbal memory that makes them more fluent, hence S. Anderson and G. Fuller (2010) focused on the effects of music on reading comprehension of Junior High School students. This quantitative study balances between the positive and negative effects of music resonance to adolescents.

The self-regulatory was an important variable in this research. Teens of the same gender are reportedly using music as one of the essential elements on study habits but associated with self-esteem and social identity. (Tarrant, 2002) The one thing that these studies are related to is their cause of motivation to do such habit while their studying. The mind processes the tunes and lyrics separately when a person listens to music, according to a neuropsychological research. (Bosson, Faita, Peretz, Bonnel and Requin, 1998) This shows that aside from the function of processing the lyrics and melody in music, the brain faces more extensive work while studying. Meanwhile, the Yerkes-Dodson law further explains and implies that the impact of music on personality and learning has something to do with the arousal and mood. It is said there that the level of arousal of an individual boosts performance in learning up to a stage that is optimal which is beyond the deterioration in performance brought by over-arousal. It means that the stimulation of music increased in arousal enhances learning ability and performance on simple details or task.

The level of learning or comprehension of complex ideas might deteriorate once over aroused by music stimulation. Having defined the effects of listening to music to a person’s mental processes, we must also bear in mind that young people of today’s generation are widely exposed to different kinds of music. According to a study of Kotsopoulos and Hallam, studying while there is music in the background results to more concentration, relaxation and relieving of students’ boredom. A research also states that in the span of their adolescence, listening to music becomes increasingly significant for those who listen in the average of three hours a day. This is relating to the fulfilment of emotional influences on one’s self and the development of their imaginations. (North, Hargreaves, and O’Neill, 2001) Listening of music must have effect in our mind, soul, body that regulate in our self to help them or to lessen our stress. Music is one of the factors why some students are enjoying or help them to study while listening of music, they can help them to focus and concentrate on studying. But it depends on what type of music while studying, maybe classical, pop, rock or ballad but some of this are majority to listen are Classical and rock. Classical we considered that this type of music helps them to focus and to manage and to relax our mind and we find out that most of them are related on classical because of they understand the meaning and they fit on that music, while some of them are choosing rock because of intense of lyrics and tempo of that kind of music. And also, the emotions of every individual while listening of music they follow the Lyrics and they sing it while studying. They said that the more you loved the music the more you are interested on what you doing. We can say that one the factor why are some students are choosing to listen the music is to lessen and to avoid the negative vibes of their spirit. we can considered that some of the student are not really not like to listen the music while studying: one of the factor that they presented because of music is distraction, time, not inclined of music and others factor that really affect their study while of listening of music. It is hard to senior high student who Listen music while their walking to class or while their studying to unplugged. On the other hand, listening of a music like pop might not be the best idea for you when you are studying, however if you have yet to be convinced that classical music is the way to go, you would be happy to hear this study”. Everything is conditional, it depends on the situation on what type of music preferred to listen what they are studying or reviewing. One thing known is that effective studying involves our undivided attention. Our attentional resources allow to us concentrate in one thin, while ignoring other stimulation from the environment.

On the other hand, various kinds of music differ in effects on different age ranges. Hallam, Price, and Katsarou (2002) conducted a study wherein they found out that performance on studying and memory tasks within of ages of 10 to 11 years olds enhanced while there is a calming music playing on the background. There were also findings that state that the most common music played while studying across different nationalities and age groups they have surveyed is recorded pop music and classical music is the least. They also discovered that variety of music choice increases with age. (Kotsopolou and Hallam, 2010) Acquiring information and knowledge from the mentioned studies, we, the researchers aim to find out the typically preferred kinds of music of Sumulong Memorial High School – Senior High students when they are studying and how it helps them in the deeper learning of their lessons. In support to this, we will first investigate and discover the number or quantity of those students who listen to music while they study. We would also like to know how often they exercise this kind of studying habit and most importantly, if this kind of habit and their preferred kind of music effective as a comprehensive learning strategy. Music has been widely used for mood and emotions regulation management positive mood maintenance or diversion of boredom. Musician are an ideal human model to investigate possible functional and structural neural changes due the acquisition and continuous practice of complex perception and action. “Frances Raucher’s” experiment coined the term “Mozart effect” for this experiment found that listening Mozart ten minutes before test taking increased abstract and spatial reasoning.

Spatial intelligence is significant and evident when trying to understand abstract models in organic chemistry or understand complex economically supply and demand graphs. Raucher reasoned that listening the music that may prime of activation of certain areas in the brain that are involved in both music interpretation in the prefrontal cortex also associated with spatial cognitive processes.” (Journal of the royal society of medicine 94 (4), 170-172, 2001). Listening of music must have effect in our mind, soul, body that regulate in our self to help them or to lessen our stress. Music is one of the factors why some students are enjoying or help them to study while listening of music, they can help them to focus and concentrate on studying. But it depends on what type of music while studying, maybe classical, pop, rock or ballad but some of this are majority to listen are Classical and rock. Classical we considered that this type of music helps them to focus and to manage and to relax our mind and we find out that most of them are related on classical because of they understand the meaning and they fit on that music, while some of them are choosing rock because of intense of lyrics and tempo of that kind of music. And also, the emotions of every individual while listening of music they follow the Lyrics and they sing it while studying.

They said that the more you loved the music the more you are interested on what you doing. We can say that one the factor why are some students are choosing to listen the music is to lessen and to avoid the negative vibes of their spirit. We can consider that some of the students are not really not like to listen the music while studying: one of the factors that they presented because of music is distraction, time, not inclined of music and others factor that really affect their study while of listening of music. It is hard for senior high student who Listen music while their walking to class or while their studying to unplugged. On the other hand, listening of a music like pop might not be the best idea for you when you are studying, however if you have yet to be convinced that classical music is the way to go, you would be happy to hear this study”. Everything is conditional, it depends on the situation on what type of music preferred to listen what they are studying or reviewing. One thing known is that effective studying involves our undivided attention. Our attentional resources allow to us concentrate in one thin, while ignoring other stimulation from the environment.

Therefore, the present study can be supported with dependable theories asserted by different researchers and may find significant answers around the areas included and scope of the study. It only may vary with the dependent variables such as the familiarity, tempo and interaction of participants with the music heard or listened. This study wants to determine the interaction of music to students through different factors affect to the arousal of such habit. Radocy and Boyle (1998) supported a literature regarding the different factors upon participants why there are specific types of music to consider when relating to an activity assessment. Some students suffer on their studies and being tormented due to numerous works loaded in school. There are students who formulate their own strategies to come up with their preferred study goals.

The purpose of this research is to highlight the function of familiarity on music of students in different aspects of stimuli. It is to support the implementation of music as tool in reading comprehension and give design to students that music is relatively assisting the students’ comprehension level. Positive and negative outcomes are presumably will give us different aspects but it can only lead us to one concept. A concept in which everyone has a different style or types of music, depending the genres that they preferred. These through-hand experiences can develop one’s child to reason, solve problems, process a learning style and enhancing one’s creativity. The study of Anderson and Fuller (2010) had an analysis together with an observation among students while playing the top hit songs in Billboard Magazine for the week as a background music with participants of 334 7th and 8th grade students, division with their cultural groups and the results was not to test the loudness effect but to ponder the content effect of lyrical music. Thus, the significance of this study is also building a good concept for teachers who are having a hard time on making their students focus on a certain trace of behavior among students. As the present study focus on collecting several researches, most of the studies are created by educators which have fallen to conduct a research regarding on how music consoles their students on human behavior, such studies taken care of Jennifer Huckabee (2013) “Improving Student Reading Fluency Scores through Music” under the Masters of Education and Sigman K (2005) “Using Background Music in the Classroom to Effectively Enhance Concentration Within the Learning Environment” with the Degree Master of Education in the Graduate School of Marietta College.