- New Studies Support Original Findings
That
Music Lessons Help Improve Math Skills
-
- New research continues to show music lessons, especially
piano
lessons, can help elementary school students score higher on
- math tests.
-
- In a 1999 report, Dr. Gordon Shaw of the University of
California,
- Irvine studied three groups of second graders. One group
received
- piano lessons and used a special mathematics computer
program.
- Another group used the mathematics program and also
received
- English training. A third group received only standard
classroom
- instruction.
-
- After four months of this training, the second-grade students
in the
- group that received piano lessons and used the math
computer
- program scored 15 percent to 41 percent higher on tests of
ratios
- and fractions than the students in the other two groups.
-
- In a 2000 report, Dr. Shaw studied the math test scores of a
group
- of second graders from inner-city Los Angeles who were
given
- piano lessons twice a week for a year. Shaw compared the
test
- scores of this group to the scores of elementary school
students in
- affluent Orange County who did not receive piano lessons.
-
- The second graders from Los Angeles scored as well as
fourth
- graders from Orange County. Half of the second graders in
the
- study scored as well as fifth-grade students in Orange
County.
-
- The study of music and improvement in math seem to be
closely
- connected. These new studies add credibility to the results of
1997
- research, when a specific link between music and math was
first
- reported.
-
- Source:
Sharon Begley, "Music On the Mind," Newsweek, July 24, 2000.
-
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