Who does not love music? Everyone loves to spend their activity accompanied by music. Doing exercise, cooking, and even washing clothes are all better if we listen to music. It is said that it can help to increase our mood, but does music really help you to study better? While some people think that music can help to concentrate, many also believe that listening to music while studying will just distract our focus.
Majority of student think that music can help them to concentrate better. They prefer to work while listening to music because they think it will help them to be more focus on their task. Recent research has found that music can have beneficial effects on creativity. "Music activates both the left and right brain at the same time, and the activation of both hemispheres can maximize learning and improve memory," said Dr. Masha Godkin. However, music does not always help us to concentrate better in every situation, take studying as an example. Research has shown that performance in tasks involving memory and concentration was better in a silent environment. Subjects tested in environments with background music were found to get better results than those tested against background noise. Therefore, the beneficial effects of music do not always apply in every situation. These reasons below will convince you more on why music does not help to concentrate better while studying.
The first is listening to music while studying will be less efficient and distract our focus. Who can avoid their favorite song? Almost everyone can not resist singing along to their favorite song being played. Sometimes without realizing, we will move our body along to the song. Those are the effects of music which can increase our mood. However, the result of joy created by music can make us lose our focus and forget our preference. Keep in mind that we also have to spare our time to change the song we do not like and search for a new song. This kind of act definitely waste our time and lead to tardiness.
The second reason is the difficulties to recall the information. Having music as a background can maximize the productivity levels but it depends on the task. If the task requires creativity or some element of mental rotation then listening to music one likes can increase performance. In contrast, if the task requires one to rehearse information in order then quiet is the best. In the case of studying, of course it requires memorizing a lot of information. Therefore, it is better for us to study in silent. How sound affects performance has been the topic of laboratory research for over 40 years and is observed through a phenomenon called the irrelevant sound effect. Basically, this effect means that performance is poorer when a task is undertaken in the presence of background sound (an irrelevant sound that you are ignoring), in comparison to quiet.
The last reason is the student's fault in choosing the music for studying. It is important to choose the right song to be our company while studying. The style, volume, rhythm and ‘state’ of the music can also be significant factors. Classical music is generally viewed as the best to listen to while studying, however, not many students listen to classical music. They are just using music as an excuse for them to study better, while in fact, they do not give attention to what kind of music that really help them to have a better concentration. According to the statistic on favorite music genres by age group, 57 percent of respondents aged 16 to 24 years stated that pop music was their favorite music genre. The second rank is Hip Hop/Rap with 44% and 16% for classical music. Meanwhile, listening to music which is constant in state, has a steady a repetitive pulse, and is not too loud is better for concentration than inconsistent musical styles.
In conclusion, while many students believe music can help them to concentrate, it actually does not apply in every situation. Listening to music while studying will be less efficient and cause difficulties to recall the information that we have gotten. Furthermore, the student actually ignores the facts that not every music help them to concentrate. In many cases, they just use it as an excuse, so they can still listen to their favorite music. Silence is golden. Therefore, studying will be better if we do it in silence. Instead of studying and listening to music at the same time, listening to music should be done before studying in order to increase the mood.
Source:
Perham, Nick. 2017. Music only helps you concentrate if you’re doing the right kind of task. http://theconversation.com/music-only-helps-you-concentrate-if-youre-doing-the-right-kind-of-task-86952
https://www.ncu.edu/blog/listen-your-way-better-grades#gref
Picture Source:
https://theconversation.com/music-only-helps-you-concentrate-if-youre-doing-the-right-kind-of-task-86952