engleski

Music and early literacy development

Literacy can be defined as autonomous set of skills, and it represents one of the basic requirements of modern society. The running question of improving literacy skills is one of the major concerns for many educators and scholars. The discoveries of contemporary cognitive neurosciences offer us some light in finding new ways of addressing this issue. In recent years, various research showed a strong connection between the development of musical competencies and literacy among young school aged children. Treating music in schools as an embellishment has become a regular practice in Croatian schools, and the aim of this paper is to point out the reasons why music should be treated differently, by listing evidences of benefits music can have on early literacy development. This paper also brings an analysis of the primary schooling system in Croatia, with regard to the vast number of lessons devoted to acquiring literacy skills and the poor representation of music in teaching. The paper suggests an alternative approach to acquiring literacy skills – adding to the music lessons instead of bulking curricula with numerous language lessons. Music activities could be incorporated in everyday teaching in order to help in improving literacy skills, and this is backed with a few concrete examples.

cognitive neuroscience ; music competence ; literacy development ; speech development ; music activities in primary school teaching

Rad sadrži i sažetak na srpskom jeziku.