Appraising composing in secondary-school music lessons

摘要

The aim of this paper is to define music appraisal and to explore the role that talk plays in the process of helping pupils in secondary school music lessons to develop their appraisal skills. This paper offers a definition of appraisal, and traces its developing role in the National Curriculum in England since the early 1990s. The role of appraisal as an evaluative tool is linked to the need to develop the quality of children's talk. The author's own research on pupil talk and the identification of six main types of talk: exploration, description, opinion, affective response, evaluation and problem solving, is briefly described, and suggestions are made to enhance the nature and quality of talk as part of appraisal in the classroom. Appraising as a classroom process is also discussed alongside the current interest in both the importance of 'dialogic teaching' and of 'assessment for learning'.