要小看音乐课的作用

　　BBC News: US research suggests learning to sing or play a musical instrument can help disadvantaged children improve their reading skills.

　　After a year of music lessons, the reading scores of nine and 10-year-olds held steady compared to a dip seen in those who were not taught any music.

　　Another group of musically-trained children were found to be better at processing sounds and language.

　　The research is being presented to the American Psychological Association. The research was led by Dr Nina Kraus at Northwestern University and involved hundreds of children at high schools in impoverished areas of Chicago and Los Angeles.

　　Her research had previously highlighted that learning music could improve the concentration, memory and focus of children in the classroom by improving their neural functions. But much of the research had focused on the impact of music lessons on relatively affluent children.