Language, Music and Exercise. Are They Connected to One Another?

Learning new languages, being physically active, playing a musical instrument or listening to music favour a good attitude towards life and activate both the brain and the body. The purpose of this study is twofold: 1) to present the findings of a small scale study of third age participants and 2) to review the literature of the inter-relationships between language, music and physical exercises. The ultimate aim of this essay, which stresses the relationship between language, music and physical education is to stimulate people in general to improve the standard of their lives through a chosen leisure program. In fact, the following experiment and its results will attest this notion. In this essay, under the premises of the achieved results, I am going to examine the role of language learning, music and physical exercises from a theoretical point of view, because the knowledge of the scientific literature about these topics is very important in order to understand the result of the research that I want only briefly to describe in this abstract. I will analyze how the brain changes the organization of its cerebral map once it is regularly stimulated with the practice of music, language and physical exercises. The experiment included ten middle class participants (male=6, women=4; age range: 55-70 years) recruited to the study. Before the study, seven participants had already attended a gym class designed for the over 50s and three participants used only to walk regularly with their friends. Rather, for the study, the subjects were asked to choose among listening to music, learning to play a musical instrument, dancing, exercise while listening to music or learning a foreign language. Six subjects chose exercise linked to music, two subjects chose dancing, one man chose physical exercise with no music, and one subject chose to learn a foreign language. Those participants were studied for one year. Results showed that adherence to the chosen leisure activity was highest in the six participants who chose 'exercise to music' as well as in the two participants who chose dancing as they were the most 'effervescent'. The participant who chose physical exercise only dropped out quite soon, whereas the participant who chose to learn a foreign language (English) learned only a few complete expressions and words but found it challenging to memorize information and was no longer enthusiastic about her choice. It was concluded that a greater effort should be put into stimulating participants to appreciate their effort, which drove them to adhere to their choice and gave them input towards facing life in general.