The effects of training with male and female vocal modeling on melodic singing achievement of grade one children

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of training with two different types of vocal modeling, the male and female, on the melodic singing achievement of grade one students who possess high or low tonal aptitude. Eighty-three children from two schools participated as subjects. After the Tonal subtest of the Primary Measures of Music Audiation was administered to all children, two criterion songs, one each in major and minor tonality, were taught by rote for five weeks. Forty-three children received music instruction with a female vocal model and 40 children received music instruction with a male vocal model. Each child's singing performance was recorded individually and evaluated by three independent judges using a five-point rating scale. To strengthen the reliability of the singing scores, acoustic analysis was performed on 41 selected subjects using an audio processing computer software. Interjudge correlation coefficients ranged from .89 to.94, and reliabilities between human rating and the acoustic analysis were .90 and .80 for the major and minor song respectively. A f -test on the PMMA Tonal scores indicates that the two groups of children were comparable at the outset of the study. Analysis of the singing scores yields the following findings: 1. A significant difference was found in the major song scores between the two types of vocal modeling. 2. An interaction effect of vocal model by tonal aptitude was found in the minor song scores. 3 . Children with high tonal aptitude and trained by the female vocal model performed the best in both songs. 4. A positive relationship between tonal aptitude levels and singing scores existed consistently in children trained by the female vocal model. 5. Tonal aptitude levels seemed to have little effect on the singing scores for children trained by the male vocal model. 6. All children scored higher in the minor song than the major song regardless of the vocal model used in training.Education, Faculty ofCurriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department ofGraduat