Using music technology to motivate foreign language learning

Abstract

Music is a fun and engaging form of entertainment and is often used by teachers to help students learn languages. In this paper, we describe how recent advances in music technology can be used to develop language learning applications that might help children, young adults, and adult learners grow their vocabularies, improve their pronunciation, and increase their cultural appreciation. We describe two apps that are under development: a karaoke app and a personalized radio app. Our goal is to provide teachers and students with new tools that are engaging, promote joyful learning, improve foreign language learning and mother tongue retention.