When teachers or parents say that you can’t study with music, did you ever wonder if that’s actually true? Due to my curiosity, I decided to investigate the matter, and analyse to what extent music does or does not help with studying.


According to the website Foundation Education, study music can actually be said to be beneficial for students to absorb the information they are revising. Moreover, they also state that music can help students retain their focus and calm for longer. Another website (Keyreads) states listening to music while writing an essay, making notes or preparing a presentation can actually help. However, they also advise you not to listen to music if it has a very distorting melody and catchy lyrics, specially if you are memorising facts or studying subjects such as maths or physics.


A research article published in the IOS press supports this idea: according to an experiment they did, the students that listened to background music throughout the test scored lower than those who listened to classical music before taking the examination. Furthermore, in 2009, a study was conducted in Taiwan with 133 university students, in which they took a comprehension test and each group of students listened to a different type of music or no music. The results revealed that those who listened to classical music or background music scored higher than those listening to hip hop, rock or rap.


In closing, to answer the question if music helps with studying, the answer is it can help if you listen to the right type of music for appropriate tasks, therefore if you are going to listen to a very loud songs while memorising formulas it would be better to revise with no music at all.




https://www.keyreads.com/music-while-studying/
https://content.iospress.com/articles/work/wor00880
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ882124
https://sites.psu.edu/siowfa16/2016/12/02/does-listening-to-music-while-working-affect-performance/