Humanising Language Teaching
Year 4; Issue 6; November 02

by Caty Duykaerts, piano student, Auderghem Academy, Brussels
(and also English teacher, IESPCF-Uccle, Belgium)

Five years ago, I decided (at last !) to take piano lessons. In Belgium, it means (unless you choose private lessons) that you attend Music Academy classes, with a requirement in “solfège” – the theory of music.
I was a real beginner : I had never read a score and I had never put my fingers on a piano keyboard.
The main source of my motivation was that both of my daughters were involved in the process (music theory, piano, flute, singing) and I wanted to be able to “follow” them, at least to understand what they were going through. But in fact, I soon realised that my daughters and I were progressing at very different paces – to speak with a metaphor, they move forward as if on board a “high speed” train whereas I move as if on a bike !
And I wish to share with you some reflections about this learning experience…

There are obvious links between learning how to play a musical instrument and how to speak a foreign language.

Just to mention a few : concentrating, listening (identifying sounds), reading, perceiving and (re)producing rhythm and intonation, getting one's body involved, memorising, maintaining a dialogue, using different strategies to achieve tasks, revealing or refusing to reveal oneself…
I'm lucky to have an excellent piano teacher (and I also appreciated the teacher of music theory for her holistic approach of a subject that can be perceived as highly intellectual and logical). Monique, who has been teaching children as well as adults for over 20 years, has clearly understood that the quality of the relationship between her and her student is of paramount importance. She respects everyone's learning rhythm and gives positive feedback and encouragement.

As most adult learners do, I want to understand the learning processes. For example, we talked about memory and she explained to me how a piece of music can be memorised : “Use your visual memory (you see your keyboard and remember where to put your fingers), your auditory memory (remember the tune of the piece), your digital memory (which fingers and in which order), your gesture memory (remember which movement your hands, arms and even body make while playing the piece), your notes memory (sing the tune by naming the notes) or even your analytical memory (the knowledge of music theory helps remember…)”. As a matter of fact, I wasn't really aware of this wide range of strategies to help build up memory (as I tend to use the first two ones only). Another rather painful aspect is to experience the mind/body duality :
I know with my brain, but my fingers don't follow ! It rings a bell for me : students may know a grammatical rule and carry on making recurring mistakes ! How to reconcile these paradoxes ? There's no easy answer to this question.
Hopefully, the idea of pleasure is a powerful source of motivation. “Adults come to piano classes because they want to please themselves. For children, it's a challenge, it's a game “ says Monique.
But for all ages, patience, regularity and rigorous work are indispensable – even talented, young, pianists need to work regularly if they don't want to lose what they've acquired.
In conclusion, if it's well-known that being a student helps a teacher understand his/her students better, the fact of “learning by doing” has enabled me to experience in myself some of their expectations and difficulties and in the process I have sharpened my awareness of what may be going on for them.