DEVELOPING MUSICAL LISTENING SKILLS THROUGH GUIDED LISTENING TASKS
Keywords:
Guided listening, music education, listening strategies, musical understandingAbstract
Listening to music is not just passively taking in sound; it is an active process that involves attention, memory, prediction, and interpretation. Listening is often seen as background noise or only used for short identification tasks in many classrooms. This limits students' ability to understand music and talk about their musical experiences. Guided listening tasks fill this gap by organizing what students pay attention to, how they think about what they hear, and how they share what they learned after listening. This article integrates research and practitioner-focused literature on classroom listening instruction and suggests a cohesive set of design principles for guided listening tasks applicable to general music and ensemble-related settings. We did a narrative review and a thematic synthesis of peer-reviewed studies and reviews that looked at K-12 and introductory tertiary music learning. The results show that effective guided listening relies on intentional attentional cues, repeated listenings with shifting focal points, the combination of descriptive language with experiential response, and formative feedback that appreciates both personal and analytical interpretations. The article ends with suggestions for making music lessons, tests, and participation in music learning more fair.
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