Academic Major: Music Education
Advisor: Judy Lewis
Title: Hip-hop and Reading: Benefits of Rhythmic Elements on Early Literacy Skills
Language is defined as “the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community” (Merriam Webster). It is the basis of culture, communication, and developing life skills. The skill that follows language development is learning to read, which some children may struggle with. They start by learning to read picture books, which contain a wide variety of literary devices that facilitate developing reading skills. One of the often-overlooked elements incorporated into these books is rhythm and rhyme, even though children learn to speak through observing and mimicing rhythmic elements of speech. This “sing-song” flow of most children’s books mimics the natural inflection and of spoken language. Certain genres of music are strikingly similar in sound to reading. With a supreme focus on rhythm, listening, performing, and creating, hip-hop music is a practice that can enhance reading skills in young learners. Hip-hop, rap, spoken word, and freestyling all incorporate the same elements to their lyrics as reading a book. This type of music is something students can draw connections to in their own lives, so they are intrinsically motivated to learn and keep reading. In addition to rhythm, the lyrics to hip-hop songs often incorporate intense vocabulary words to keep up with the rhyme scheme. Students that actively listen to hip hop music have a distinct way of speaking and can talk in more detail about a subject than students that are not as exposed to hip-hop. To complete this project, I will synthesize scholarly literature related to the topic of hip-hop’s impact on literacy skills, conduct interviews, and analyze data from these interviews. I will also observe teachers’ work happening in the field and analyze this to draw conclusions. I am looking to study this relationship between literacy and hip-hop because I believe that incorporating hip-hop into classroom literacy curriculua can bolster students’ reading skills and allow them to explore new outlets that let them express themselves in more ways than just words. I believe that students also become more well-rounded learners when exposed to new forms of media in their learning.