An Analysis of High School Students’Critical Ability in Their Speeches on Music Appreciation

The purpose of this research is to suggest to the music teachers that they use the new method for training critical ability of music appreciation. Therefore, I taught a music appreciation lesson at a high school; this lesson was based on the new method which focuses on dialogues. After we listened to a piece of music I analyzed the meaning of all the speeches and evaluated whether criticism had been included. I have already clarified the structure of musical criticism in past paper. It is structured through three abilities. One of them is the ability to feel the quality generated by the music elements by perceiving their characteristics. Secondly is the ability to judge the musical value through feeling from perceiving. And the other is the ability to speak concretely to the other people around them. After the analysis, I discovered that most students could feel and perceive the characteristics. But, some of the students couldn' t judge the value and most couldn' t speak concretely about the piece. I thought the cause was that the high school students don' t have enough vocabulary, especially predicative adjectives, for explaining abstract things. Moreover, they can' t use metaphors. For instilling critical ability, it is necessary to practice dialogues in music appreciation lessons. The music teacher should teach their students the various adjectives and metaphors used for explaining musical quality. Plus, they should make students train in using them while they are listening to music