Songs for learning, songs for remembering: linguistic and (inter)cultural education through songs

Abstract

Music and songs are excellent instruments for linguistic education: they help the memorization of lexis and grammatical structures thanks to melody, rhyme, repetition and redundancy and to their multisensory characteristics. Furthermore music avoids the production of steroid, the stress hormone, creating so the best conditions for learning processes and increasing students’ motivation. Music represents, in fact, one of the first communicative channel used by young people. We can also use music for intercultural education considering that music was one the first communicative channel used by prehistoric hominids representing so a sort of universal language. It is possible, then, to develop cultural and intercultural paths thanks to the fact described in songs and, through the memory of the event or situation described, to lay the bases for a better future.