The psychological peculiarities of prospective musicians’ English professional lexicical competence acquisition in listening comprehension

The role of musical training in developing linguistic abilities is of great interest from scientific perspective. In this article, the author provides arguments to show that music education contributes to the effective acquisition of new vocabulary, thereby pointing to the importance of music for speech perception and more generally for teaching foreign languages to music student in listening comprehension. An overview of psychological mechanisms of listening comprehension which enhance the acquisition of English lexical competence for special (music) purposes is also given. The features of musicians’ memory, attention span, thought, anticipation, motivation, reflection and language perception as well as their effect on learning professional vocabulary in the process of listening comprehension are analysed. So, the article aims at a thorough analysis of psychological features of the English language acquisition for specific purposes in listening comprehension. The conducted research is based on studying and analysing the corresponding scientific publications and literature. A drawn parallel between music and language reveals the similarities in functional organisation of both systems. The study shows that musicians are more sensitive to linguistic pitch variations in foreign languages than nonmusicians, being able to decipher and segment phonetic information during conversation. Moreover, musicians’ memory, attention span and thought are different from non-musicians and show signs of speech perception facilitation. Based on the result of the research, the author concludes that music abilities enhance the process of professional vocabulary acquisition in listening comprehension and recommends developing and improving prospective musicians’ mental processes in listening comprehension.