Learning Chinese and Piano

When my daughter complains about her extra-curriculum work load, which she does occasionally but thankfully not too often, piano and Chinese are always the two main targets. Why can't they be as fun as the other activities, like soccer and swimming?

One reason I had been pondering about is that it really may be in the teaching philosophy. In youth sports, kids gather for practice sessions, which becomes more and more frequent as their skill levels increase. But they are never required to do "homework" on their own. The few kids who really love a certain sport would gladly do extras on their own, but not at the request of their coaches.

That is certainly not the case as in piano, where a teacher can require the kids to practice every day, on their own. Is that the only way to learn the skill?

I am experimenting in cutting back homework in our Chinese learning.

Incidentally, a new study published in New York Times today is getting some attention. It claims that learning piano early could help people master a tonal language like Chinese, and even perhaps vice versa:

Mandarin speakers have been shown to have a more complex encoding of pitch patterns in their brains than English speakers do. This is presumably because in Mandarin and other Asian languages, pitch plays a central role. A single-syllable word can have several meanings depending on how it is intoned.

For this study, the researchers looked at 20 non-Chinese speaking volunteers, half with no musical background and half who had studied an instrument for at least six years.

As they were shown a movie, the volunteers also heard an audiotape of the Mandarin word “mi” in three of its meanings: squint, bewilder and rice. The researchers recorded activity in their brain stems to see how well they were processing the sounds.

Those with a music background showed much more brain activity in response to the Chinese sounds.

The lead author of the study, Patrick C. M. Wong, said it might work both ways. It appears that native speakers of tonal languages may do better at learning instruments, Dr. Wong said.