The acquisition process of children's game songs during peer teaching: A semi-structured experiment with pre-school children

A semi-structured experiment was conducted to identify children's acquisition processes when learning playground game songs. Participants in the study were 20 pairs of children aged 4, 5, and 6 years, with each pair consisting of a younger child-learner and a senior child-teacher. The pairs were divided into two groups; Group 1 was observed by a researcher and a video-recorder, while Group 2 was observed using only a video-recorder. All child-teachers were well-acquainted with how to play the games, however the games were unfamiliar to the child-learners. Results suggest that child-teachers change their strategy of teaching depending on the conditions of instruction. Child-teachers in Group 1 used a variety of strategies including: demonstrating; playing and singing with the learner; slowing down; and, instructing. In contrast, child-teachers in Group 2: demonstrated; frequently played with the learner; sang alone; and, increased the tempo and rate of repetition even though the child-learners did not understand. In Group 1 over 50% of the time was devoted to demonstration by child-teachers, 40% to children playing together, and 5% to dialogue. In Group 2, over 90% of the time was devoted to the children playing together, and approximately 10% to demonstration by child-teachers. The article suggests that this latter instruction mode is not only a common feature of child-teachers' teaching in Group 2, it is also reflective of the teaching strategies of the masters of Japanese traditional music.