Hi everyone, I hope you’ve all had a wonderful week! As usual, I’ve been busy observing classes and reading research papers, but I've also been brainstorming strategies for how non-music specialists could implement music into their second language classes. One strategy that I think could be particularly promising is training language teachers on the principles of the Orff-Schulwerk.
For those of you who might not be familiar with the Orff-Schulwerk, let me tell you a little about it, or better yet, let me quote the Carl Orff Calgary Chapter’s website (http://www.calgaryorff.com/)
“Orff Schulwerk, an approach to music education developed by Carl Orff, is experiential and holistic and is for all types of learners, aural, visual and kinesthetic. In Orff Schulwerk, children learn in an active way, where imitation and exploration lead to improvisation and music literacy. Speech, song, movement and instruments are the vehicles used to teach rhythm, melody, form, harmony and timbre. Carl Orff defined the ideal music for children as “never music alone, but music connected with movement, dance, and speech – not to be [merely] listened to, meaningful only in active participation.” Orff Schulwek is built on the idea that a child must be able to feel and make rhythms and melodies before being called on to read and write music. Orff believed that a child internalized and developed ownership of a concept by experiencing the concept before it is put into words. “Experience first, intellectualize second.” In the same way that a child learns to speak before learning to read and write, he or she must have a musical language in which to feel at home before technical knowledge is introduced.”
-Calgary Orff Chapter (2019)
As you can see, the Orff Schulwerk incorporates elements of speech so one could argue that it is already being used to aid in language acquisition and thus could be easily adapted to foreign language classrooms. Furthermore, similar to the neurolinguistic approach which uses the modeling, repetition, and adaptation of authentic sentences to develop speech before reading and writing, the Orff-Schulwerk uses imitation and exploration to foster the awareness and creation of rhythms and melodies before reading or writing them. Moreover, both methods recognize the value of student-centred learning by incorporating student ideas and modifying concepts to suit their individual needs.
As much as I would like to pretend that this was all my idea, Annamaria Paolino and Geoffrey W. Lummis of the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations conducted a study on this very idea in 2015. Here’s some information about what they did and what they found!
Their study consisted of two phases. During phase 1, they contacted primary teachers of Italian to ask if, how, and why they used music as a pedagogical tool. During phase 2, six non-music specialist Italian teachers attended a four-hour professional learning (PL) session. In the PL session, they learned the basic principles of the Orff Schulwerk as well as some activities that could be used to “isolate language patterns in vocabulary, reinforce intonation and pronunciation, and to allow for discovery of language and creativity. Actions (gestures) were also learned to further reinforce the importance of movement when learning a language.” (Paolino & Lummis p.10). After this PL session, the six teachers were asked to use elements of the Orff-Schulwerk approach for 10 minutes in one of their lessons each day for eight weeks. Although the results are still being analyzed, here are some of the preliminary findings: Phase 1: -94 per cent of all teachers who responded to the initial survey said they used music in the classroom -Many of the teachers feel that there are not enough adequate, age appropriate, and easy-to-use resources available
-Students seem to respond well to the use of music and singing seems to be the preferred activity.
-The teachers are currently using music as a motivational tool, to teach sections of text, and to reinforce language, particularly vocabulary. Phase 2:
-The teachers had a positive experience and think the Orff-Schulwerk method could be a useful pedagogical tool for teaching Italian.
-The teachers plan to continue to use the Orff-Schulwerk strategies in their Italian classes and hope to share them with their colleagues, however, they would like more PL in order to feel more confident using it
-Teachers noticed that the activities helped the students remember various aspects of the language.
-Teachers liked how the activities could be easily adapted to any topic, how it seemed to engage more students than other musical activities, and how it allowed for students to contribute and invent their own melodic and rhythmic ideas.
In short, although this study represents a small sample size, the preliminary results have been quite promising so I definitely think it is worth pursuing in both my research and future teaching endeavours. Until next time music and language lovers!
Paolino, A. & Lummis, G. W. (2014). Orff-Schulwerk as a pedagogical tool for the effective teaching of Italian to upper primary students in Western Australia. Babel. Vol.50(1), 12-23