A new study published in the journal in Memory and Cognition, has found that adults learning phrases in Hungarian were better able to match the words with their English counterparts when they learned the phrase by singing it. Lead author, linguist Dr Karen M Ludke of the University of Edinburgh, became interested in whether singing could help in learning a language when she was teaching English as a second language in New York. "I started using a lot of song and music in my lessons, so they could practise when I wasn't around," she says. "Then I started to doubt myself a little bit. I thought, 'Is this scientific?, Is this actually beneficial to use song to teach?'" "I started to look into it, using Google Scholar to find out what research there was out there, and I did find a lot of stuff from teachers [saying it worked], but I couldn't find anything that actually compared singing with a spoken presentation." Ludke decided to answer the question herself and enrolled for a Masters and then a PhD. In her study, sixty people aged between 18 and 29 were split into three groups. One group heard spoken English phrases followed by a spoken Hungarian translation, another group heard the Hungarian phrase being sung, and a third group heard the Hungarian phrases being with the same rhythm as the song, rather like a chant.She says Hungarian was chosen as the test language because it is unfamiliar to most English speakers and it is quite different from both the Germanic languages and the Romance languages such as French and Italian. The study results showed that people who had heard the Hungarian phrases being sung performed significantly better than the other groups. In particular, when they heard the English phrases again they were better able to repeat the correct Hungarian phrase. And they were more likely to be able to translate the Hungarian phrases back into English as well.
Via
Dr. Stefan Gruenwald
Though it's a little old, this is an awesome post from one of my new favorite blogs, Both Sides of the Table.
Referencing a post frm Chris Dixon on "Techies vs. Normals," entrepreneur-turned-VC Mark Suster explains how to make a product that actually appeals to "normal" people, rather than the small demographic of early-adapters who only try out new products just to say that they tried them first.
It's easy to be distracted by the sexiness of the tech industry and to focus on building products with millions of integrations and connections - but frankly, who cares? Your tech might be awesome, but if it doesn't actually solve a problem, it isn't going to catch on. People don't have time to use things that don't solve their problems.