ABSTRACT
While we know it is important, the issue of children’s verbal output when improvising and composing has been less studied thus far, perhaps due to an emphasis on exploring their musical output instead. While of interest in its own right, we suggest that the study of children’s musical output alone cannot be used as a sole contributor to understanding children’ meaning-making and creative thinking during music-making. As I discussed in Chapter 2, young children engage in music-making more often than not spontaneously and with little thought to the intricate processes involved or the actual outcome. Encouraging verbal communication can strengthen children’s musical intent, as it develops appraising skills or critical thinking in music, encourages the exploration of ideas and feelings about music and, in essence, creates greater awareness of and meaningful engagement in music-making processes, such as improvising and composing (Major, 2007; Bolden, 2009). Despite some of the research referenced here, studies which investigate children’s ‘musical talk’ during creative music-making in the primary classroom are scarce in the literature.
