translate them and sing them in English - themusic and the words are so necessary toeach other. You'd never get the same feelingby singing in translation. The African songsare a good example. You get the "mba" and"nga" sounds, which we rarely use in English.It's soft, percussive -the way you're usingyour mouth changes.'For the choristers, many of whom arebeginners, this additional challenge quicklybecomes a pleasure. Motivated by the 2006BBC documentary The Choir, Dennis Spencer-Perkins - a bus driver from Dagenham -helped Eaton establish their local choir.'Everyone who comes thinks it's going to bereally hard singing in all these languages, butit makes us put more emotion in, somehow,'he says. 'Sometimes a song's really powerfulI was using songs in mylessons but I worried itmight not be helpful. Iwas surprised how littleresearch there was26 TheLinguistAUGUST/SEPTEMBER www.iol.org.ukFEATURESCommunity choirs are increasingly popular, but canthey support language learning, asks Jessica Moore On Monday nights, between 8pm and 10pm,a beautiful sound flows from the Inter FaithCentre in Queen's Park, Northwest London.It'sunfamiliar. Uplifting. Not at all what you'dexpect to overhear on a residential city street.'Our community choirs sing in a range ofdifferent languages,' explains CatherineDyson, Founder and Director of Vocality,which currently runs eight a cappellachoirgroups at locations in London and Surrey.'There's a wealth of music out there - the littlebit of our rock and pop that most of us areused to hearing is just a drop in the ocean.World music is often perfect for singingunaccompanied, because a lot of it has beenpassed through the oral tradition, throughcommunities, from person to person.' Songs in languages as diverse as Zulu,Shona and Georgian are taught, using, saysDyson, 'as little paper as possible'. The choirleaders sing their hearts out, teaching byexample. The choirs have an all-welcomeapproach and a fun-loving attitude that'sevident in the sounds they produce.It's a risky strategy. 'People are oftenfrightened of singing in different languages atfirst,' admits Dyson. 'We tell them what thesongs are about, but the words are unfamiliar.We rarely sing in French or Italian, or otherlanguages that people are more likely tohave some knowledge of. In many ways, thatactually makes it easier -because you don'thave to think about the words: you associatethe sounds with the rhythm of the music.' 'Singing in a range of languages can be agreater challenge, but it makes for a moreinteresting programme,' agrees CharlotteEaton. Having worked as a choir leader forVocality, Eaton recently established her ownmulti-language community choir inDagenham, East London. 'The importantthing about the songs we choose is thatthey're from other cultures. We would neverTuning the mindand you feel the energy coming through. It'slike at football: we all sing as one.' It is a learning curve, however: 'In English,you use certain muscles, but in differentlanguages, you use different ones. You mighthave to roll your tongue, or pronounce a "j"like an "h".' An understanding of contexthelps. Spencer-Perkins adds: 'If you knowwhat a song is about - whatever language it'sin - you understand when your voice mightgo up or down, a bit sad or lively, whatever itis. It's story-telling.'The absence of a core language also has alevelling effect. 'You can have a choir withpeople from 20 different nations in it - so youmight have people who speak the languageof one of the songs,' says Eaton. 'I can askthem the best way to pronounce the words.'Dyson agrees: 'We do get people saying "Ispeak Swedish and it's not pronounced likethat", or whichever language it is. Thatmeans the people in the choir can contributeand then it becomes a community project ina greater sense. Everyone can contribute.'Far reaching benefitsThere could be other benefits of singing in adifferent language. Karen M Ludke, aPostdoctoral Research Fellow at the Universityof Edinburgh, has found strong benefits forsinging when learning a second language.Her postgraduate and doctoral theses soughtto evaluate whether listening to songs andsinging in a new language could help withlanguage learning, compared to moretraditional teaching methods. The results of her studies are remarkable.In a classroom-based intervention in Frenchlessons at schools in Scotland, Ludke says:'There were much stronger findings than Iexpected. Singing is fun and motivating, butthe results also showed positive effects ongrammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. We

taught one group through music and songsand another with visual arts and dramaduring their French lessons. After six weeks ofinstruction, the singing group's performancehad improved more in the French tests thanthe control group. This is especially interestingbecause we didn't test them on the specificwords of the songs or dialogues; it wasgeneral French skills, such as listening,speaking, pronunciation, reading and writing.'For her doctorate, Ludke set English-speaking adults a series of strictly controlledtests. Three groups were taught 20 Hungarianphrases using a 'listen-and-repeat' method.One group learned spoken phrases, asecond learned rhythmically spoken phrasesand a third learned sung phrases. 'Overall,the people who learned through singing didbetter in the five Hungarian tests, and therewas a significant difference between them andthe other groups' performance for the twotests where they had to speak in Hungarian.'Vol/51 No/4 2012AUGUST/SEPTEMBERTheLinguist27FEATURESschool children, but the activities are reallyadaptable - you can use them for differentclassrooms and teaching environments,' she says.The otolaryngologist Charles Limb, a self-professed music addict, has conductedequally interesting research. In order toexplore the effects of musical improvisation onthe brain, he put jazz musicians with portablekeyboards into an fMRI scanner and recordedtheir brain function while 'trading fours' - amusical 'conversation' in which musicianstake turns to improvise a passage of music.The areas of the brain that engaged werethose used in language and communication. New soundsWhile multi-language choirs don't aspire toteach their members any of the languages inwhich they sing, they can offer an introductionto the types of sounds those languagescreate. 'There has been a link between musicand languages for a long time,' says ElizabethLake MCIL, an interpreter, teacher and trainer.'If you're using an entirely new language, it'seasier if it's put to music, as you've gotsomething to pin it on and associate it with -and if you're learning a tune at the sametime, you're doing two things at once, whichinterests me because of my interest insimultaneous interpreting.'Eaton feels these choirs can also extend anunderstanding of culture. 'Teaching in arange of languages adds to my feel fordifferent types of people. A good example isthat this term my Dagenham choir is doing aShona funeral song, which is a celebration.That's interesting culturally. It's a South Africanlanguage, and they sing about sendingsomeone off to a really good place. It's nothow we would generally view death.'Dyson adds that it also gives choristersnew confidence. 'Being able to stand up andsing does a lot for people, and I think doingthat in different languages gives them evenmore confidence. It opens minds.' But for allthe philosophising, what's important, saysDyson, is the music. 'We're all about enjoyingyourself and enjoying sound,' she concludes.See www.vocalitysinging.co.uk for more onVocality; www.lifebulb.org for details of theDagenham and Barking choir; andwww.emportfolio.eu for information onEuropean Music Portfolio workshops,methods and downloadable resources.SINGING LESSONS: The Vocalitysummer concert last year (above); and astudent in Ludke's Hungarian study (left)What makes Ludke's research moreinspiring is the nature of the 'eureka moment'that prompted it. 'I was in Cantigas Women'sChoir in New York City, where we wouldoften sing in different languages,' sheexplains. 'I was also teaching English as anadditional language to adults, and when I waswalking home from choir one night, I had aflash of insight that I should research the linksbetween singing and language learning. I wasusing songs as a tool in my lessons, but then Igot worried that it might not be helpful: songssometimes have quite unusual grammar, andI wondered whether that might, potentially,hinder their language learning. I looked into itand I was surprised at how little research therewas. I couldn't find any studies comparinggroups that had been taught material from anew language with singing and without.' Her research, conducted at the Universityof Edinburgh, informs the 'European MusicPortfolio - A Creative Way into Languages'project, which runs workshops and providesdownloadable resources on teachinglanguages through singing and musicalactivities. 'A lot of that is targeted at primary