Integration of music and reading may help parents prepare their children for school. On the surface, music and literacy seem opposite of each other both in meaning and delivery. However, the two forms of learning go hand in hand. For example, lyrics and literacy are similar because lyrics are the words sung in a song. Often, they are poetic and can be understood as poetry that sometimes tells a story.
Many singer songwriters are also storytellers, weaving intricate and powerful stories into their songs. If one examines a music soundtrack and a story line/plot, one can see how music is used to help tell the story as much as the narrative itself. As technology advances, music is becoming readily interweaved with reading comprehension. One study examined the use of multimodal e-books that combined text with animation, images, and sounds. Children made academic gains in reading from using multimodal e-books (Morgan, 2013).
Music does not have to be the only way children can learn reading comprehension. Sound serves as the basis for music and can help children improve their reading comprehension through audio-assisted reading. "...the audio-assisted reading group's improvement in reading rates and comprehension levels was substantially higher than for the silent reading group" (Chang & Millett, 2015, p. 91). By using sound along with reading, it may help children understand the linguistics aspect of reading and therefore improve memory and reading comprehension. Moreover, it may help children improve their listening comprehension, a potentially untapped fountain of information researchers has yet to examine in depth.
Listening comprehension is "among the least understood and least researched of language skills. For many years, listening has been neglected as part of language arts curricula" (Podhajski, 2016, p. 43). Having been disregarded compared to reading, writing, and speaking, listening has seen a resurgence an interest in recent years. Instructors wishing to provide listening comprehension curriculum to students have turned to frameworks that incorporate understanding pitch, volume, and tone. This means inclusion of music in order to provide improved listening comprehension to students. Listening comprehension may be a reason why music and reading can work hand in hand to promote reading comprehension in students.
Because language is such a complex and multi-faceted area of learning, music can help deliver a better means of educating a young child. "Language includes phonology, the sound system; morphology, meaningful word parts; semantics, word meanings and relationships; grammar and syntax, the rules governing our use of spoken and written language; discourse, connected language as in stories or conversation; and, pragmatics" (Podhajski, 2016, p. 43). Human language relies on constituent structure as its central feature. "Analogous to how syntax organizes words in sentences, a narrative grammar organizes sequential images into hierarchic constituents" (Cohn, Jackendoff, Holcomb, & Kuperberg, 2014, p. 63). By providing children with a framework that allows learning from a multi-faceted perspective, it has the potential of promoting effective learning practices. Such practices can then be taken into school, where these children can harness what they learn and succeed academically.
This paper aims to understand the effects of integration of music and reading and help answer the question: Does integration of music and reading before entering school make a difference in a child's ability to read versus children who do not receive a combination of integrative music and reading from their parents before entering school? By analyzing previous similar experiments and conducting an experiment, this paper aims to provide evidence supporting or refuting the notion that integration of music and reading can improve a child's reading comprehension.
The experiment will include six children aged 5-7. They will have access to various tools and programs that incorporate music and reading. They will be monitored for a period of 2 weeks. Their progress will be one month after school commences. One group will receive integrative curriculum while the other will receive non-integrative, traditional curriculum. Results will be assessed before entering school and one month after entering school.
The literature review will cover the various similar studies performed and will act as a guide for the formation of the experiment. Several hypotheses will be formulated to provide a framework from which to continue with the experiment. The hypothetical results will allow for a simulated outcome that will help future experiments understand how to perform.
Literature Review
This literature review aims to understand how music and reading integration may help a child improve his or her reading comprehension level. The eight studies are from recent years...
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