Latihan: Evaluasi teks Bahasa Inggris 1

Text: Does background music help students study?

(1) Many students say they cannot study without music. But does music really help, or does it only make studying feel more pleasant? Researchers have tried to answer this question for many years, and the results are mixed.

(2) In a small study at a university in Yogyakarta (rekaan), 40 first-year students read two short articles and then answered questions about them. Half of the students read in a quiet room. The other half read while listening to popular songs with lyrics. The students in the quiet room answered 78% of the questions correctly on average, while the music group scored 64%.

(3) Other studies suggest that the type of music matters. Songs with lyrics seem to compete with the words we are reading, because the brain has to process two streams of language at the same time. Calm instrumental music, on the other hand, does not seem to reduce reading scores much, and some students in these studies said it helped them feel relaxed.

(4) A student blogger who read about the Yogyakarta study wrote, "Science has proven that music makes everyone worse at studying." This statement goes too far. The study was small, it tested only one kind of task, and it used only one kind of music. It did not test maths practice or memorising vocabulary, and it did not measure how long students were willing to keep studying.

(5) So what should students do? If a task requires careful reading, a quiet place is probably the best choice. For simple, repetitive tasks, quiet instrumental music may make the work less boring. The most useful approach is for each student to test what works for them, and to be honest about the results.