2. How learning music can enhance literacy skills

My area of art is music. I first encountered music at the age of 3 when I picked up a 1/16 size violin. I definitely feel that having musical skills helped me through the process of learning languages I know today. My first language was manderin Chinese, the official dialect spoken in China. I also can speak fluently in another dialect( in my native city in China.) Even though it is also Chinese, it sounds completely different than manderin. In fact, if you are not from the city, you probably can not understand a word. I did not learn any English until I came to the U.S at age 9. When I first came to the States, I did not even know the english alphebet, but it only took me a little less than a year to learned to speak fluently in English. Of course, there are still endless vocab to learn even till this day. But with everyday conversation, I was pretty fluent in a year. I have also been told that I have very little to no accent when I speak. Although, the age was probably a major factor. They say that the younger you are, the easier it is to learn a language. However, I still believe that the musical skills I acquired early on definitely played a part in it. Learning an instrument is a lot like learning a language. It requries one to learn how to read symbols. Notes are expressed in symbols as letters are the symbols that form words. When you learn music, you are practicing your listening skills, memory skills, as well as self-discipline. All these skills are also essential for learning a language. When you are learning to speak, you need to first listen to others speak. Then, by forms of imitation, you learn how to speak. You need your memory skills when learning new vocabularies. We build our vocabularies by remembering the ones we have learned in order to increase in volume. Last but not least, is self-discipline. It takes not only passion but self discipline to learn anything. Self discipline is what puts dreams and passion to work. It is the "do" or "action" part. When you have that, you can learn anything you want. These are some of the main reasons why music education is so important. It is why educators and artists are advocating to have music education alive in our public schools.