EVALUATIVE COMMENTARY

ELC231 – INTEGRATED LANGUAGE SKILLS III

NAME MATRIC NUMBER

1. FATEN NURFARHANA BINTI 2022613376
ZULKIPLE

2. NUR FARAHIN BINTI MOHD 2022838402

RICKI

GROUP:
CFAP 111 3A

NAME OF LECTURER:
MS FARINA IZZATI

DATE OF SUBMISSION:
19TH JANUARY 2024
 -Argumentative Article: Is Listening To Music Good for Your Health?

If you’re looking for an easy way to transform your mood, cue the music.
Studies have shown that music can buoy your mood and fend off depression. It can
also improve blood flow in ways similar to statins, lower your levels of stress-related
hormones like cortisol and ease pain. Listening to music before an operation can
even improve post-surgery outcomes.
How can music do so much good? Music seems to “selectively activate”
neurochemical systems and brain structures associated with positive mood, emotion
regulation, attention and memory in ways that promote beneficial changes, says Kim
Innes, a professor of epidemiology at West Virginia University’s School of Public
Health.

Innes co authored a 2016 study that found music-listening could boost mood
and well-being and improve stress-related measures in older adults suffering from
cognitive decline. Her study compared the benefits of music to those of
meditation—a practice in vogue for its mental-health perks. She found that both
practices were linked to significant improvements in mood and sleep quality. “Both
meditation and music listening are potentially powerful tools for improving overall
health and well-being,” Innes says. If the idea of listening to music seems a lot more
practicable to you than meditating, these findings are great news.

But music can also agitate and unsettle, experts have learned.
“Silence can be better than random listening,” says Joanne Loewy, an associate
professor and director of the Louis Armstrong Center for Music & Medicine at Mount
Sinai Beth Israel in New York. “Some of our data show that putting on any old music
can actually induce a stressful response.” (Just turn on the creepy themes from films
like Halloween or The Shining if you need examples of how music can fan the flames
of anxiety, rather than squelch them.)

Along with inducing stress, Loewy says, the wrong music can promote
rumination or other unhelpful mental states. One 2015 study from Finland found that
music can bolster negative emotions—like anger, aggression or sadness—much the
same way it can counteract these feelings. Why? The rhythm and other
characteristics of the songs we select can modulate our heart rates and the activity
of our brain’s neural networks, explains Daniel Levitin, a professor of psychology
who researches the cognitive neuroscience of music at McGill University in Canada.

Tracks with a slow tempo, gradual chord progressions and drawn-out notes
tend to be calming, Levitin says, while chaotic and up-tempo music tends to have the
opposite effect. But all of this is subjective. Levitin says he’s encountered people who
have said that AC/DC is their relaxation music. “These were people who normally
listened to Swedish speed metal, so to them AC/DC was soothing,” he says.
“There’s no one piece of music that will do the same thing for everyone.”

There’s also no single “music center” in the brain, he says. “One thing people
find surprising is that music activates nearly every region of the brain we’ve mapped
so far.” This hints at music’s universality and power to affect us.

If you’re looking to use music to de-stress, pump yourself up or otherwise shift

your mental or emotional state, Levitin says you probably already have a bank of
songs you can pull from that you know will have the appropriate effect. Dive in. Just
be sure to set aside distractions. “We fool ourselves into thinking we can do two
things at once,” he says. While listening to inspirational music can help you exercise
harder or longer, calm music won’t help you unwind if you’re listening to it while
you’re scrolling through your news or social feeds, he says.

To cultivate an even deeper connection between music and your health,

consider a field called music therapy, which focuses on using music to improve
patient outcomes. “Music therapy starts with the idea that, as therapists, we’re
collaborating with a person who’s looking to help themselves to feel more complete
or optimistic—or to discover parts of themselves they aren’t aware of—using music,”
says Alan Turry, managing director of the Nordoff-Robbins Center for Music Therapy
at New York University.

Music therapy can take many forms. One is “guided imagery in music,” Turry
says, where a trained therapist helps a person uncover her strengths or challenges
by listening to music the patient chooses. “A feeling of [therapist-patient] attunement
can happen with music,” he says. “Sharing music helps the patient feel like the
therapist ‘really gets me.’ ”
Other forms of music therapy may involve singing or playing instruments. “The way
each of us makes music can reveal something about us that a therapist can work
with,” he says. “Someone might play a drum in only one tempo or one dynamic, and
that may represent their difficulty in being flexible in other areas of their life.”

“Music is a way to bypass our rational side and to get in touch with the
emotional life we often keep hidden,” Turry says. “If people are having trouble,
there’s usually a way that music can help.”
 Evaluative Commentary

Based on the article that was written by Markham Heid in 2018, the author
has claimed that listening to music is good for your health based on the examined
material. The benefits are stated from different perspectives, especially in terms of
internal and external health. The author's tone is informative, positive, and
encouraging in his article. There are several reasons why the author claims that
listening to music is good for your health such as music can fend off depression, it
can be beneficial to boost our mood and music also can improve your sleep quality.

Firstly, the author stated that listening to music can fend off depression. How
does it happen? It occurs when the activation of neurochemical systems and brain
structures associated with positive mood and well-being happens when listening to
music. Next, music can be beneficial to boost your mood. It has the potential to
elevate mood, enhance blood circulation, lower stress-related hormone levels, and
contribute to improved post-surgery results, says Kim Innes, a professor of
epidemiology at West Virginia University’s School of Public Health. The effect can be
seen through the individual's actions and body language. Besides, In terms of mental
health, the author stated that both practices, meditation and listening to music were
associated with significant improvements in mood and sleep quality. If the notion of
listening to music feels more feasible to you than engaging in meditation, these
discoveries bring positive tidings.

The article is written but some things are difficult to understand in terms of the
arrangement of the content that is found compact. Moreover, the evidence taken by
the author is not varied and mostly is from the same source which makes the
contents stated almost in the same content. This is shown when the author is trying
to prove that listening to music is good for your health. After all, we agree with the
author’s point that listening to music can have a positive effect on both physical and
mental health.
 Nevertheless, inappropriate music can encourage rumination or other
undesirable mental states. The author stated that in 2015, a study conducted in
Finland revealed that music has the ability to reinforce negative emotions such as
anger, aggression, or sadness, similar to its capacity to counteract these feelings.
Daniel Levitin, a professor of psychology who researches the cognitive neuroscience
of music at McGill University in Canada clarifies that the rhythm and other features of
the songs we choose can regulate our heart rates and the functioning of our brain's
neural networks. As for our opinion, we agree with what the author stated as the data
that we found also said that some genres such as hardcore punk and hard metal can
lead listeners to engage in aggressive acts such as moshing (Tenzin. C, 2020).
Moshing is where listeners act to be energetic and have contact with other people in
a pit we call the “moshing pit”. This aggressive behavior sometimes can hurt people
and lead to violence. However, this can be filtered if the individual is wise in choosing
the appropriate song according to their moods and interests.

The article underscores the positive impact of music on health, citing benefits
like improved mood and reduced stress hormones, including its potential usefulness
post-surgery. However, the author acknowledges the subjective nature of music's
influence, recognizing that it can either soothe or disturb individuals. Emphasizing
music's potency in shaping emotions and thoughts, the article suggests the potential
advantages of music therapy for enhancing well-being. In alignment with the author's
viewpoint, a 2015 Finnish study highlights music's dual capacity to amplify negative
emotions and alleviate them. Overall, music therapy emerges as a potent tool,
offering diverse forms of therapeutic engagement to help individuals navigate and
improve their overall health.

623 words
Include our photo and details:

Name: Faten Nurfarhana Binti Zulkiple Name: Nur Farahin Binti Mohd Ricki
Matric Number: 2022613376 Matric Number: 2022838402