The Art of Musical Performance in Bilingual/ESL Children's Language Development and Literate Identities

• In Event: 54.049 - Transforming Teacher Preparation Through Arts Integration and Language Learning in a Bilingual Community School

Abstract

1. Objectives
Language is only one symbolic way of encoding and sharing knowledge. To give privilege and sole status to language as the only valid way of communicating is to shut out a world of non-language dialogue and creative possibility that arises from artistic creation, nonverbal expression and musical communication (Lynch, 2007). To integrate multiliteracies (Landay & Wooten, 2012), we created a 4th grade pop choir to foster language learning and personal expression. As bilingual and monolingual children participated in performances in Spanish, English and Navajo, we sought to understand the benefits of such participation.

2. Theoretical Framework
Chappelle and Faltis (2013) assert that the arts are natural avenues for bilinguals to share their “funds of knowledge” (Moll et al., 1992) and that showing others through arts removes boundaries which allow bilinguals to express the complexities of their language skills in public. Cummins (1993) maintains that teaching should require moving beyond functional teaching to include cultural/critical literacies. His idea of critical literacy is similar to that of Freire and Macedo (1987) who believe that that students should learn to not only “read the word,” but also to “read the world.” In our case, the creative mechanism that supported our children’s reading of the world was their participation in the choir to understand what Jones-Diaz & Harvey (2011) refer to as the “interconnections between bilingualism, identity and literacy” of our bilingual children.

3. Data Sources
The pop choir was made up of 115+ students who were children of Mexican, Hispanic, Navajo, White and recently-arrived African refugee homes. They came from five classrooms: Spanish/English bilingual, ESL, and Special Education. The choir was taught by a university professor, two hired musicians, one Navajo teacher, two music education student teachers and three regular student teachers.

Data collection was limited to student surveys, fieldnotes, video performances, small group and individual interviews with fourth grade students, parents and teachers. For data analysis, we focused on qualitative interactions by searching for themes as described by Merriam (2007) and LeCompte and Schensul (1999) to understand the value of musical performance on children’s learning and literate identities through arts expression and language development.

4. Results
In the choir, students learned to read, sing and perform songs with various socially conscious messages. They shared skills in dancing, gymnastics, solo singing and rhythmic hand-clapping. Survey information and interviews revealed similar findings to those of Chorus America (2009), which found that participation in choir had positive social, cognitive, and personal benefits for children. We also found that refugee children who rarely spoke in classrooms showed evidence of singing in choir long before they showed spoke in their English classrooms.

5. Scholarly Significance
Lynch (2007) asserts why arts integration, and in this case, singing in a choir is engaging for students: The arts, including performance, allow students to use their bodies physically and in meaningful and liberating ways. The arts provide a safe environment for taking creative risks and it may be the only way ESL students can attach meaning to content.

Authors

• Leila Flores-Duenas, University of New Mexico

• Karol Ibarra Zetter, University of New Mexico