Steven Morgan, of Daito Bunka Daigaku, Music Director of the British Embassy Choir and St Alban’s Church, gave a presentation examining music in EFL education.
He outlined typical ways that music is used in EFL and reflected on research into teaching EFL through music; i.e., using music as a content area. Mr Morgan discussed his PhD. Project; teaching a weekly vocal music class in English to students at a primary school in Tokyo based on Kodaly’s methodology of music education. The test group, which learned English songs by rote, was compared with a control group taught by another teacher without music to discover whether the children taught through music acquired a better sense of the prosody of English language.
Statistics on the groups have not been finalized, and although indications were that the difference is not large, there is some anecdotal evidence within the test school that its students could follow classes given in English better. Mr. Morgan accepts this could have resulted from using English as the language of instruction but raises the possibility the music training itself was responsible.
Mr Morgan discussed acquisition theories: there is increasing evidence that speech and song are initially perceived being the same. The presentation raised questions about the link between speech and music and showed a need for more research.
He outlined typical ways that music is used in EFL and reflected on research into teaching EFL through music; i.e., using music as a content area. Mr Morgan discussed his PhD. Project; teaching a weekly vocal music class in English to students at a primary school in Tokyo based on Kodaly’s methodology of music education. The test group, which learned English songs by rote, was compared with a control group taught by another teacher without music to discover whether the children taught through music acquired a better sense of the prosody of English language.
Statistics on the groups have not been finalized, and although indications were that the difference is not large, there is some anecdotal evidence within the test school that its students could follow classes given in English better. Mr. Morgan accepts this could have resulted from using English as the language of instruction but raises the possibility the music training itself was responsible.
Mr Morgan discussed acquisition theories: there is increasing evidence that speech and song are initially perceived being the same. The presentation raised questions about the link between speech and music and showed a need for more research.
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