MUSIC AND LITERACY BY TING-HSIEN LI

Promoting Literacy Through Music Music is a natural way for children to experience rich language in a pleasurable way. Young children seem to be naturally wired for sound and rhythm. Music plays an important role in language and literacy development. Through music, memory skills can be improved, and aural discrimination increased.

ESL THROUGH MUSIC Music can be used by educators to promote second language acquisition. Through songs, students are exposed to authentic examples of the second language. Target vocabulary, grammar, routines and patterns are modeled in context. These are but a few of the benefits associated with music use in the second language classroom. Songs have demonstrated to have a powerful impact upon rote memorization and language acquisition.

MUSIC FOR YOUNG CHILDREN Early musical training helps develop brain areas involved in language and reasoning. Music provides children with a means of self-expression. Music performance teaches young people to conquer fear and to take risks. Music study develops skills that are necessary in the workplace. Students of the arts and music learn to think creatively and to solve problems by imagining various solutions.

CHILDREN, LITERATURE, & MUSIC Children experience an interdisciplinary approach to the arts by actively exploring relationships between movement, drama illustrations, speech, and music. It allows children to explore and learn music in the way they naturally do outside of formal music education by using it in the context of play. It promotes ensemble work, including the sharing and refining of creative ideas, and a concern for performance matters such as balance, tempi, cues, etc. Children are encouraged to interpret stories in sound, the act of interpretation being a learning process that is increasingly regarded as essential to cognition in the arts.

MUSIC FOR EVERY CHILD Music is meant to develop one's entire being-personality, intellect and emotions. Music is a spiritual food for everybody. Music education should be started at as early an age as possible. Music should be at the heart of the curriculum, a core subject used as a basis for education.