Student Song Preference in the Elementary Music Class

In 1996, the Music Educators National Conference (now MENC—The National Association for Music Education) published a list of 42 songs that “every American should know” as part of a nationwide campaign to promote singing. The purpose of the present study was to determine student preferences for several songs on the list, as well as how familiarity with a song may be related to that preference. In addition, possible interactions of gender, grade level, language spoken at home, rehearsal, and self-evaluations of singing were also examined. Ten songs, all limited to a one-octave range, were selected from the MENC list of songs. Subjects ( N =160) were nine intact classes of third, fourth, and fifth graders (three classes at each grade level) in an urban school. During their regularly scheduled music class, subjects listened to the 10 recorded songs and rated each on a 5-point Likert-type scale for both preference and familiarity. In 10 subsequent classes, each song (one song per class) was rehearsed for 10 minutes, followed by another preference rating and a self-evaluation of performance quality. This investigation examined possible relationships between students' familiarity with a song and their subsequent preference for the song. Correlations for individual songs ranged from .40 to .64 with a mean correlation over all 10 songs at .57. A significant difference ( p < .01) between grade levels was found for both familiarity and preference. The youngest subjects responded most positively. Boys indicated a consistent decline in both song familiarity and preference from Grades 3 to 5. Grade level, gender, and language spoken at home (English or Spanish) interacted significantly ( p < .01) in their effect on song preference for these elementary students. Mean preference ratings were consistently higher after the 10-minute rehearsal with one exception (“De Colores”). The student subjects rated themselves consistently high in self-evaluations of singing.