Abstract:

The aim of this work is to describe a method to improve the reading intonation. This method involves both areas of language and music at the stage of Primary Education. The suggested method is based upon two musical instruments: the triangle and the tambourine. Each musical instrument is associated to certain punctuation marks, which should be known by the students along with series of preliminary exercises. Furthermore, students must produce a number of other activities to continue working on reading and reinforce the learning.

This methodology arises because the latest data from PISA and the high rate of school failure in Spain. Note that PISA (Project on International Student Assesment) is one of the most popular projects to measure the quality of education received in different countries. Similarly, the importance of language as a subject area instrumental in the curriculum of primary education, calls for an investigation on how to improve in this area.

In Spain, if we focus in the region of Andalusia, we observe that Andalusia is one of the Autonomous Communities with a higher rate of school failure. Specifically, in the province of Granada, a "program to improve reading fluency and comprehension" is being carried out in all schools in the province.

Existing data indicate that our students fail in the educational system. Also, we emphasize the importance of acquiring linguistic competence as a means to acquire new learning. These observations indicate that a good reader from the beginning of the school could improve the negative results we are seeing now. In fact, the "Program to improve reading fluency and comprehension" (cited above) is not working on this aspect, which implies that the proposed methodology could be an interesting method to improve the reading intonation into this program.

Keywords:

Primary Education, PISA, reading fluency, reading comprehension.