Professor Goswami, director of the centre for neuroscience in education at Cambridge University, claims that music can aid in the learning process for reading:"Having an enriched musical environment in nursery should prepare the child for optimal ability in reading because a lot of this rhythmic learning is much more overt in music than language. We now want to see if interventions can train this system in the brain."
The idea is that strengthening musical abilities gives the brain a better way to latch onto symbol reading and sound comprehension. However, there is some controversy with this theory, because it is possible for people to be successful musicians while being dyslexic. (A well known example being John Lennon.) It is also noted that dyslexics, while having trouble with written and spoken language, can still latch onto other sounds quite well.
In May 2006, the Chicago Weekend did a report on Daryl Duncan, a musician\jingle-writer living with dyslexia. Despite living with dyslexia, he has still managed to live a successful career. In a sense, music has helped him cope. While Duncan has a hard time reading or performing his own written music, he says, "While I don't perform live, I'm able to create things from scratch because I hear the entire piece in my head before I compose it."
Duncan's dyslexia seems to be limited to written symbols -- such as letters or music notes on a page. However, he does not mix up sounds, and this may reinforce Goswami's theory that music can help cope with Dyslexia: Duncan may still suffer from dyslexia, but it is limited to visual comprehension -- his auditory comprehension seems to be unimpaired.
Works Cited:
Lesley, R. C. "Dyslexia Doesn't Stop the Music!" Chicago Weekend: 1. May 17 2006. Ethnic NewsWatch. Web. 15 Nov. 2012 .
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