Contributions from Musical Education to the development of Linguistic Communication Skills in Primary Education

Abstract

The skill-based curriculum model involves the interaction of all areas of knowledge to transfer learning to different social and educational settings. Specifically, musical education works on content that can serve to develop key skills in linguistic communication through the creation of situations involving language as an expressive means, among others. Accordingly, this article assesses the acquisition of this skill as from the introduction of a musical teaching programme in primary education. 129 students – 69 males (53.5%) and 60 females (46.5%) – took part in the programme, divided into a control group (63 students – 48.8%) and an experimental group (66 students – 51.2%), studying the sixth year of primary education at three public and subsidised private schools in the city of Madrid. To carry this out, an ad hoc programme of musical activities was designed and that was introduced in the music room over the course of an academic year. The results obtained in the post-test phase indicated an improvement in the marks obtained by the experimental group in Linguistic Communication Skills in terms of group presentations, the correct use of verbal and musical language in different contexts, and in the selection and organisation of relevant information. These points to the suitability of musical education for the development of oral expression, written expression, oral comprehension and written comprehension defined by the structural union of both languages.