Content area
Full text
Edwin E. Gordon discusses using audiation and music aptitudes as teaching tools to allow students to reach their full music potential.
The "Grand Master" series offers the opportunity for MEJ readers to learn more from or become acquainted for the first time with those special individuals who have led our profession with distinction during their music careers. It is also an opportunity for senior members of our profession to share their insights relative to what they have seen, experienced, and predicted in music education. The response to this series has been overwhelmingly positive, and it is a pleasure to offer this current installment.
Edwin E. Gordon, a recent inductee into the MENC Hall of Fame, is a distinguished lecturer, author, researcher, and teacher. His four most well known books are The Psychology of Music Teaching; Learning Sequences in
Music; The Nature, Description, Measurement and Evaluation of Music Aptitudes; and A Music Learning Theory for Newborn and Young Children. He is also the author of seven standardized tests, including The Musical Aptitude Profile and the Iowa Tests of Musical Literacy. Before becoming committed to his research, Gordon played string bass with the Gene Krupa Band. He has taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo, the University of Iowa, and Temple University in Pennsylvania, where he held the Carl E. Seashore Chair for Research in Music Education. He is currently a Distinguished Professor in Residence at the University of South Carolina.-Mark Fonder, series editor
Think for a moment about when and how you learned language. The most important time in your life for developing language readiness was probably before you can remember-from birth, if not prenatally, until about age three. Without the background that those formative years provided, you probably would not be able to read this article with comfort and comprehension, nor would you be able to adequately communicate to others your interpretation of the information you have assimilated. To understand the "how," you must view language as a process of acquiring new levels of understanding, one built upon another.
During the first year of life, you listened to everyone around you who spoke. You probably engaged in some vocal sounds, but your primary need was in acquiring a...