My English school-

based assessment

Name: Kumar Fong

Theme: Health
Topic: The benefits of classical music on the health of
Developing babies
Name of institution: York Castle High School
School Centre Number: 100131
Candidate Number: 1001310907
 Table of contents

TITLE PAGE NUMBER

Acknowledgement....................................................1

Plan of investigation……………………………….2

Sources……………………………………………..3-7

Reflections…………………………………………8-9

Written Report…………………………………….10

Plan for Oral Presentation………………………...11

Reference Page……………………………………..12
 Acknowledgement

I want to thank the following persons for making this School-Based Assessment a success:

First I want to thank JEHOVAH for giving me strength and courage to face this SBA battle.

Secondly, I want to thank my teacher, Ms. Lawrence, for teaching me how to go about

completing the SBA and thirdly, I want to thank my group members , my family and other

well-wishers and supporters for their continued support throughout this journey. Thanks to all

of you.
 Plan of investigation

The topic of my portfolio is ‘The Health Benefits of Classical Music on the Health of

Developing Babies”. The reason I chose this topic is because I found it an interesting topic

and because of my desire to pursue medicine. I believe that I will benefit as a student of

English because I will learn new words and will be more educated on the topic. In

conclusion, the three types of material that I will collect are: an article, a song/lullaby and an

essay.
 Sources
Song Source
"Tequila Symphony No. 5"

After midnight and the moon shines down

Words don't fit right, while my head it spins again

The more I try to feed the loneliness inside

The more I know that I'm to blame

Right or wrong I gotta find myself again

Wake up from this symphony

I just need somebody who's gonna shake me up and spin me 'round

I need your lovin' maybe

I don't need some kind of inspiration like Beethoven had

I need somebody to believe in me

And that somebody is you

Now a sunrise and the daylight blinds, oh no

Shining, unkind, naked truth

I face again
 The more I try to feed the loneliness inside

Only got myself to blame

Right or wrong I gotta find myself again

In this tequila symphony

I just need somebody who's gonna shake me up and spin me 'round

I need your lovin' maybe

I don't need some kind of inspiration like Beethoven had

I need somebody to believe in me

And that somebody is you

I don't need nobody who's gonna get me up to take me down

Need somebody like...

I don't need nobody who's gonna get me up to take me down

Need somebody like you

I just need somebody who's gonna

Shake me up and spin me 'round

I need your body baby

I don't need some kind of inspiration like Beethoven had

I need somebody to believe in me

And that somebody is you

 Prose reference

There have been numerous studies on the effects of music on living things. Everything from

plants to animals have been shown to react to different genres of music, but what about a

human fetus? Because an unborn fetus is much harder to observe than a small child, animal

or plant, much of the research done has been speculative. In theory, prenatal sonic stimulation

should yield some positive results, including improved sleep patterns, sharper language

skills, enhanced attention spans, and increased cognitive development. A recent study that

had fetuses being exposed to 70 hours of classical music during the last few weeks of

pregnancy showed that children exposed to classical music in the womb are more apt to have

more positive physical and mental development after birth. When studied at six months, these

babies were more advanced in terms of linguistic, intellectual and motor development than

babies who received no musical stimulus during pregnancy. That said, there certainly is also

an intuitive sense that sonic stimulation should be beneficial- depending on the kind of music.

If you base your judgement on how living things usually react to music, numerous studies

have demonstrated the effects of different forms of music on plant growth, and classical

forms always seems to win out when it comes to a plant’s preferred choice of musical style.

All the studies have shown that plants apparently flourish – and grow toward – calmer

classical music, while actively avoiding blaring heavy metal. In addition, animal studies

indicate that exposure to “chaotic” or “atonal” music alters brain structure in a negative way.
 Article reference

The phrase "Mozart Effect" conjures an image of a pregnant woman who, sporting

headphones over her belly, is convinced that playing classical music to her unborn child will

improve the tyke's intelligence. But is there science to back up this idea, which has spawned a

cottage industry of books, CDs and videos?

A short paper published in Nature in 1993 unwittingly introduced the supposed Mozart effect

to the masses. Psychologist Frances Rauscher's study involved 36 college kids who listened

to either 10 minutes of a Mozart sonata in D-major, a relaxation track or silence before

performing several spatial reasoning tasks. In one test—determining what a paper folded

several times over and then cut might look like when unfolded—students who had listened to

Mozart seemed to show significant improvement in their performance (by about eight to nine

spatial IQ points).

Rauscher—whose work, unlike most scientists, is sometimes cited on the liner notes of

CDs—remains puzzled as to how this narrow effect of classical music extended from a paper-

folding task to general intelligence and from college students to children (and fetuses). "I

think parents are very desperate to give their own children every single enhancement that

they can," she surmises. In addition to a flood of commercial products in the wake of the

finding, in 1998 then-Georgia governor Zell Miller mandated that mothers of newborns in the

state be given classical music CDs. And in Florida, day care centers were required to pipe

symphonies through their sound systems.

A 2004 Stanford study tracked the media's coverage of Rauscher's study relative to other

studies published in Nature around the same period. In the U.S.'s top 50 newspapers, her

paper, titled "Musical and Spatial Task Performance," was cited 8.3 times more often than the

second-most popular paper (co-authored by famed astronomer Carl Sagan).

"It seems to be a circumscribed manifestation of a widespread, older belief that has been

labeled 'infant determinism,' the idea that a critical period early in development has

irreversible consequences for the rest of a child's life," the researchers wrote in their analysis.

"It is also anchored in older beliefs in the beneficial powers of music."

Some still argue for such musical powers. "Music has a tremendous organizing quality to the

brain," notes Don Campbell, a classical musician who has written more than 20 books on

music, health and education, including The Mozart Effect® and The Mozart Effect® for

Children. Referencing French physician Alfred Tomatis's work in music therapy on children

with dyslexia, attention-deficit disorders and autism in the mid-20th century, he believes

music that's not highly emotional or overly rhythmic has a multilayered influence on the

individual, from modulating mood to alleviating stress. "I know it improves our ability to be

intelligent," he adds.

But in 1999 psychologist Christopher Chabris, now at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y.,

performed a meta-analysis on 16 studies related to the Mozart effect to survey its overall

effectiveness. "The effect is only one and a half IQ points, and it's only confined to this

paper-folding task," Chabris says. He notes that the improvement could simply be a result of

the natural variability a person experiences between two test sittings.

 Reflection 1
How each material shaped my thinking on the topic

The online journal shaped my thinking on the topic in the sense that the author quoted several

references to studies carried out to support his view that benefits are there to be derived from

making your unborn baby listen to music and even recommended that mothers do so.

The second one was an article. The article helped me to understand that there are benefits but

at the same time it could also be a speculation.

Reflection 2
Reflection on the Use of Language in the Sources

In each of the sources I noticed that the tone of each source was different.

In the first source, which is the journal, the language was one of causality and mostly

expository as it seems to educate about the benefits. This can be seen in the expressions

“sonic stimulation should be beneficial” (lines 15-16) and “more advanced” (line 12). The

tone of the song was one of calmness and intellectuality as seen in the lines “quiet are the

meadows” (line 3) and “so peaceful birds” (line 2). And there was a good use of vocabulary.

The tone in the article, however, was one of formality and was unbiased in its presentation of

its points for and against my topic and had a lot of persuasive techniques such as references

and examples.
 Reflection 3

How the SBA process help me to become a better person

The SBA process helped me to become a better person in varying ways:

First it taught me how to deal with change. Change in the sense that CXC keeps changing the

format of the SBA and this brought a great deal of chaos as to what to do and so I had to learn

to remain as cool as a cucumber and just work with the flow.

Secondly, I learnt from this experience how to make properly reference my work and how to

present excellent work so that I get a well-deserved grade in the end. Overall it made me a

better person.
Written Group Report
 Plan of Oral Presentation

 Title: “Turning over a new leaf” by Kumar Fong

 Genre chosen: Prose Fiction

 Justification of genre: The reason I chose this genre is that I find it appropriate and

effective in doing so

 Source of inspiration: My friends and my love for telling stories

 Literary Inspiration: The following sources were the driving force behind me

choosing this topic:

1. Swaminathan, N.”Scientific American” Fact or Fiction? Babies exposed to

classical music end up smarter, Darko Radonovoic, September 13, 2007

2. Becic, S. “Health benefits of classical music during pregnancy.”

healthfitnessrevolution.com, September 25, 2017,

http://www.healthfitnessrevolution.com/health-benefits-of-classical-music-

during-pregnancy/

3. Beethoven,L. Symphony No.5 by Ludwig Van Beethoven,December 22, 1808

 Language Used: Formal Register

 Summary: This story is geared towards motivating yet-to-be mothers and those

considering having children the benefits of having their child or children listening to

classical music.
 Reference Page

Newspaper Article

Swaminathan, N. “ Fact or Fiction? Babies exposed to classical music end up smarter,”

Scientific American , Darko Radonovoic, September 13, 2007

Online Journal

Becic, S. “Health benefits of classical music during pregnancy.” healthfitnessrevolution.com,

September 25, 2017, http://www.healthfitnessrevolution.com/health-benefits-of-classical-

music-during-pregnancy/

Song

Beethoven,L. “Symphony No.5” by Ludwig Van Beethoven,December 22, 1808

Teacher’s comments