The Effects of Music on Students Engaged in Reader Response Strategies

This study examined the effects of background classical music on silent reading in a sixth grade class, in order to determine the amount and type of influence it would have on the reader's written response to what was read. Thirty-four suburban sixth graders from two history classes were selected for this study. The data was obtained over a period of five weeks consisting of 24 journal responses from eight subjects, two males and two females from each class. One history class (the experimental group) was instructed to read a short selection silently with classical music playing. The other history class (the control group) performed the reading and writing tasks in the absence of music. All students received the same prompt at the beginning of class and allowed 15 minutes to accomplish the task. This study revealed that there was no significant difference between the students' aesthetic written responses and efferent written responses in the classical music setting as compared to the non-music setting. Contains 40 references and 4 tables of data. Appendixes contain reader responses from the non-music and the classical music group. (Author/RS)