Abstract:
This PhD research explored a music-language link for the teaching and learning of writing. A design-based study was used to explore a music and rhythm-inspired framework for writing. A framework informed by music pedagogies and shared principles common to English and Music curricula, was used in three Australian primary school settings in NSW and the ACT. Each iteration featured connections between music and English classrooms where a framework was developed for listening, interpreting, rehearsing, improvising and composing (LIRIC). The final iteration brought together music and English teachers working with a Year 1 cohort. The teachers planned and taught lessons together using the framework throughout a school term where an emphasis on rhythm, speech and sound was shown to lift expressive literary writing and metalinguistic creativity.
The study is based on evidence founded in semiotics, explored through a range of aesthetic, literary and cognitive science research perspectives. Roland Barthes (1985) declared that no language exists without rhythm, underpinned by the 'oscillating sign' and that the 'grain of the voice' (1977) through song reveals the ways that language and music are materially entwined in the body. Music and language, especially rhythm and grammar, also share cognitive resources (Patel, 2007, 2008), and music, gesture and language are entwined from birth (Malloch & Trevarthen, 2009). Given that notions of 'text' have also been expanded to include music, sound and speech through a social semiotic multimodal framing (Kress, 2010; van Leeuwen, 1999), an emphasis on music, sound and speech in the writing classroom is firmly founded.
This session explores a sonic or acoustic turn for the writing classroom and proposes that the aesthetic qualities of rhythm - through sound, speech, gesture and movement - has value, perhaps even plays a vital role, in drawing out the creative and expressive voice of young writers in the creative process of textual and linguistic work.
The study is based on evidence founded in semiotics, explored through a range of aesthetic, literary and cognitive science research perspectives. Roland Barthes (1985) declared that no language exists without rhythm, underpinned by the 'oscillating sign' and that the 'grain of the voice' (1977) through song reveals the ways that language and music are materially entwined in the body. Music and language, especially rhythm and grammar, also share cognitive resources (Patel, 2007, 2008), and music, gesture and language are entwined from birth (Malloch & Trevarthen, 2009). Given that notions of 'text' have also been expanded to include music, sound and speech through a social semiotic multimodal framing (Kress, 2010; van Leeuwen, 1999), an emphasis on music, sound and speech in the writing classroom is firmly founded.
This session explores a sonic or acoustic turn for the writing classroom and proposes that the aesthetic qualities of rhythm - through sound, speech, gesture and movement - has value, perhaps even plays a vital role, in drawing out the creative and expressive voice of young writers in the creative process of textual and linguistic work.