MELODY: IMPORTANCE IN LEARNING ORAL AND BOOK LANGUAGE

Abstract

This paper reviews the concept that the melodic features of language play a major role in the child's acquisition of both oral and book language. The first linguistic features learned by children when acquiring oral language are the melodic or rhythmic structures (stress, intonation and juncture) and these features are learned before the phonemic. Therefore, it is feasible to claim that the melodic features of book language are learned before awareness of print. Exposure to text language read aloud and instructional methods, such as, repeated readings may supply the necessary experiential background needed to learn the rhythmic rule system of the text.