The effect of reading with music on reading comprehension

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of listening music while reading on reading comprehension performance. The participants of this study were made up of 129 eighth grade students. The study wasmodeled by the randomized posttest-only control group design. A Music Appreciation Test and A Reading Comprehension Test, originally developed by the researcher, were used to determine the students? music preferences and reading comprehension performance, respectively. The results showed that the reading comprehension performance of the students who read the passage with their disfavored non-verbal music, disfavored verbal music, and favored verbal music were significantly poorer than those students who did not listen music while reading the same passage.Importantly, the current results also demonstrated that the reading comprehension performance of the students who listened their favored instrumental music while reading did not considerably differ from the reading comprehension performance of those who did not listen music. This means that the favored instrumental music condition and no-music condition was not comparable with one another in terms of the students? reading comprehension performance. Implications for education and directions for future studies were also discussed in the present study