T L L
Music and Language
Resources for foreign-language teachers
Teaching and Learning
Languages
We don’t have to forget that, in this case, music is a tool, therefore, music has to be used as a tool, and we don’t have to transform an English lesson into a music lesson. We should be teachers through music not music teachers, and that means that we must use music in a transversal way.
Tomatis Therapy helps you listen well and understand better the message, moreover, it stimulates your brain and contributes to your personal development.
Alfred Tomatis
(Nice, 1920 - Carcassonne, 2001)
Tomatis Therapy
First of all, Language is music, in other words, the combination of specific rhythms and sounds. These rhythms and sounds are the sounds fundamental basis to the acquisition of semantic, lexicon and syntactic parts of the language.
Tomatis Therapy main goal is bring people, which want to learn a foreign-language, the specific rhythms and sounds of the language in order to be able to analyze and articulate them. Therefore, the therapy consists in retrain the ear and make away with your own specific mother tongue rhythms and sounds.
Tomatis developed ways to disort sound (high frequency filtered Mozart, with electronic gating) in such a manner as to tune in listeners to what they were missing. Thus, the method opened new pathways in the brain, which provided a wider perception of incoming information, and even created more of a desire to communicate with and learn from others (Thompson and Andrews, 2000).
Tomatis Therapy uses Violin Concerts of Mozart with specific modifications of sound. These modifications exercise the muscles of the ear because of the combination of bass and skirl sounds.
