Silent Reading Fluency, Musical Aptitude and Foreign Language

Reading, and particularly silent reading, is a constant activity in our daily life and a basic tool for accessing knowledge. In the past two decades, there has been a proliferation of studies around the connections between music and reading skills, but most of these studies deal with native language and infants. The main objective of this article is to review the most relevant contributions that could establish a link between silent reading fluency and musical aptitude of adult learners of a foreign language. Lack of prosodic sensitivity involves deficiencies in accessing and comprehending a written text. Rhythmic and melodic features shared by both music and language become predictors of the reading process development, allowing musical interventions to have an influence and enhance learning, or becoming indicators of pre-existing individual differences. After having reviewed the existing literature, we conclude that, in order to determine the existence of a significative influence of musical aptitude in silent reading fluency of adult learners of a foreign language, more studies are needed collecting data of adults native and foreign language silent reading fluency, along with their musical aptitude, cognitive abilities and socio-economical context.