Journal of Green Learning Journal of Green Learning, e-ISSN 2807-890X Vol. 2, No. 2, 2022, pp. 100-105. DOI: 10.53889/jgl.v2i2.120 -------------------------------------------------------- Piano Rhythmic Exercise for Preschool Education Major Teaching at Taiyuan Teacher College Wen Jing 1 , Pramote Danprdit 1 1 Department of Music, Faculty of Music, Bangkokthonburi University, Thailand Article Info ABSTRACT Article history: Received May 21, 2022 Revised July 12, 2022 Accepted August 27, 2022 The purpose of this paper is to create piano rhythm exercises and to study the evaluation results after use. The researcher designed the research as experimental research, consisting of a single set of experiments verifying the consistency and effectiveness of the tool. The researchers created and developed piano rhythm exercises with three experts in an experiment with 22 piano beginners majoring in preschool education. The study was conducted from September to December 2021 at Taiyuan Teacher College. Results showed that the creation of the piano rhythm exercises course is effective; it consists of 9 weeks of teaching, 3 weeks of examination, and concludes with 12 weeks of using 9 etudes and 6 children's songs. In the evaluation performance results, the average scores of the 3 tests were 27.45, 28.77, 33.16 respectively and the percentage scores were 68.64, 71.93, 82.9 respectively. However, after the test, the students who participated in the activity felt fun, were willing to practice, and, of course, had higher skills. All students request a practice file for further use. Keywords: Piano Preschool Rhythmic-Exercise Teacher education This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license. Corresponding Author: Pramote Danprdit Department of Music Faculty of Music Bangkokthonburi university Thailand Email: 6350112003mu@gmail.com 1. INTRODUCTION The Taiyuan Preschool Teachers’ College is a full-time public kindergarten normal college approved by the People’s Government of Shanxi Province on March 23, 2018, and registered by the Ministry of Education on May 10, 2018. It is an important base for Shanxi Province and Taiyuan City to train teachers in preschool education and art education. The school has a total of 322 full-time teachers, including 64 full-time teachers with titles of associate senior or above, accounting for 19.9% of the total. There were 197 full-time teachers https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 101 with master's degrees or above, accounting for 61.2%. In the first year of 2018, the enrollment plan has been maintained at about 2,700 students for three consecutive years, covering 16 provinces in China. The Preschool education major at Taiyuan Preschool Teachers College is a high-level key major in Shanxi vocational education. This major is to train "Chong DE, the architect and the relevant" outstanding teachers in pre-school education, namely to build a first-class, domestic advanced preschool teacher training base in the province, as the goal is to cultivate high-quality, theoretically solid, professional skills and professionals in childcare facilities engaged in conservation and interdisciplinary talents education. The piano course is a compulsory professional course for students majoring in preschool education, and it is also a basic teaching skill that students must master. Most of the higher vocational preschools students majoring in education have zero foundation before entering the school (Chang, 2016). How do you lay a solid foundation for students with zero piano foundation to learn the piano in a relatively short period of time? This requires piano teachers to effectively cultivate students in four aspects of music: music reading habits; rhythm cultivation; playing posture; and music cultivation (Xianjun, 2019). Rhythm is the basic factor of music structure, the backbone of melody can be called the first element. One of the most basic training methods in music training is the cultivation of the sense of rhythm, which is also the premise and basis of training students to have a good sense of music. In music teaching, teaching about rhythm is everywhere; for example, in solfeggio training ear lessons, instrumental music lessons, vocal music lessons, and percussion lessons (Ruixue, 2011). Rhythm training is an important part of training music auditory ability. Rhythm is the lifeblood of music. It is the framework of music. Rhythm is the heart of music. It is the cornerstone of music’s flow. Music can be made up of cadences without a pitch, but not only of pitches without rhythm. Therefore, in order to understand music and music, we must start with the rhythmic rhythm, and the rhythmic rhythm is easier to accept by children than the pitch (Xirui, 2017). As Zhao Xiaosheng (Ling & Tian, 2007) mentioned in the article, due to the complex skills of piano playing, we put the training of skills in the most important position in piano teaching, thus ignoring the topic of rhythm training. In fact, rhythm training is not only closely related to the cultivation of students' musical sense but also closely related to the training of piano skills. Many piano educators in the 20th century incorporated rhythm awareness into their skills training. The representative in this aspect is the female piano educator, Abby Wright. Her piano playing and teaching concepts are at the core of rhythm. Whether you play vibrato, continuous octave and dual tone, or arpeggios and scales, you will deviate from the rhythm of the heart (Ling & Tian, 2007). Pre-teacher’s kindergarten music or early childhood educator is the most rapid physical and mental development and the most obvious change period. It is the most important period of education and also the beginning of music education, sowing the seeds of a good opportunity. Children naturally love music and are willing to accept music education, which is good soil for the growth and development of music seeds. Music education should start in kindergarten so that children can learn the basics of music at an early age, because musical hearing can only be successfully developed from an early age. It can be seen that the impression formed in early childhood has an important influence on the development of life, and music education should start in early childhood (Xirui, 2017). The teaching of preschool education aims to train the teachers who educate the children, and also the enlightened teachers of the children. Piano teaches an essential skill for modern kindergarten teachers. Piano teaching ability is of great help to the future employment of students majoring in preschool education. For students majoring in preschool education, their future work in early childhood education and teaching, so when teaching piano, teachers pay more attention to the integration of piano performance and early childhood teaching, 102 requiring students to master and flexibly apply the knowledge they have learned, and they can play and sing children's songs themselves in kindergarten teaching. Preschool education students do not need to have too high or too difficult performance skills, but from the actual situation, pay attention to strengthening the practice skills training, grasping the rhythm of training methods and intensity, and becoming more qualified preschool teachers (Dai, 2020). Teachers need to define what elementary students will study and accomplish. Elementary students can be of any age, from preschool through senior adults. Regardless of age, they all need to learn the same basics, concepts, and skills. Naturally, some students will aquire these skills more quickly than others. Students learn to apply concepts and skills by doing the following: hearing, reading, playing the piano, writing, and analyzing (Jacobson et.al., 2015). Researchers discovered that while teaching piano courses in preschool education from 2004 to 2020, students play fast and slow, the rhythm is not stable, and the rhythm is not accurate. Through literature review, peer interviews, and the researcher's own teaching experience, it is found that "how to solve these rhythm problems in playing?" Not enough attention has been paid to teaching, which leads to the frequent occurrence of inaccurate rhythm. The small number of books or textbooks specialising in piano rhythm practice is also another reason for the development of rhythm practice. This study aims to create piano rhythm exercises in the piano learning of preschool education speciality, and to study the evaluation results after using piano rhythm exercises. 2. METHODOLOGY 2.1 Research setting In this study, the researchers observed that most piano learners in preschool education had the problem of the wrong rhythm when they completed the piano playing homework through teaching. Through literature review, peer interview, and expert discussion, this paper conducts experimental research on the rhythm practice of piano beginners majoring in preschool education, designing, researching, and developing methods. The course of creating rhythm exercises consisted of a single set of experiments, verifying the consistency and effectiveness of the tool, observation, and interviews with trial participants. This study included 22 piano students who volunteered and were between the ages of 18 and 20 years in average. The researchers reviewed that piano rhythm training has many benefits for preschool students learning piano playing well. The references were based on domestic and international research. In addition, the concept of the study design and the teaching content were analyzed by an expert panel. To help researchers provide suggestions or opinions on the creation of exercise manual suggestions, course plans, course duration, examination plans, student satisfaction surveys and other aspects, and to conduct validity, so as to provide feasibility and effectiveness for the research. The researchers interviewed Tan, an associate professor at Shanxi Taiyuan Normal University; Cai, a piano lecturer at Shanxi Taiyuan Jinzhong College; and Xu, a piano lecturer at Shanxi Taiyuan University. They all have been teaching piano for more than 15 years and invited them to form an expert group. After the results of the expert symposium came out, the researchers put forward the following questions worthy of discussion: First, the importance of rhythm practice for preschool students learning the piano. Second, rhythm is an important obstacle for piano learners in preschool education. 2.2 Research tools The research tools were composed of four types: Through studying the teaching literature and related papers, the researchers selected 9 rhythm exercises, 9 repertoire 103 exercises, and 3 tests to construct rhythm exercises. Invite a panel of experts to evaluate the validity of the tracks and practice questions. 1. Rhythm Practice: Based on the advice of experts, rhythm-based exercises were developed for 9 etudes and 6 children's songs, with a mean accuracy of 0.75. 2. Lesson Plan: The researchers studied the literature on the problem of rhythm. We wrote lesson plan numbers for 12 weeks, 9 weeks of practice and use of music, and 3 weeks of exams, and submitted them to a panel of expert’s assessment results for after completing the lesson plans with the expert group, the validity value was 0.8. 3. Evaluation criteria for designing a rhythm based on rhythm accuracy, expression fluency, performance methods, and tonal production a formative test three times and improve the students' ability to play the piano with rhythm accuracy, fluency in expression, performance methods, and tonal production. 2.3 Data collection and analysis The researchers created a rhythm exercise course based on the expert meeting and invited a group of experts to evaluate the effectiveness of the course plan. Researchers first by researchers found problems in the teaching practice for many years, consulted the related literature at home and abroad, and communicated with the teacher interviews, found in preschool education major students’ piano learning, common wrong notes, using the wrong finger, playing the problem of inaccurate rhythm, and especially the rhythm of playing in the most serious mistakes. According to the problems found, the researchers and the expert group discussed the main reasons for the rhythm problems in piano playing among the students of preschool education majors in our school in the course of piano learning through the network teleconference: 1. Piano learners in preschool education have a weak enrolment foundation and most of them have not been exposed to piano learning before enrolment. 2. The piano lessons in pre-school education in our school lack targeted rhythm training courses. After consulting relevant literature, researchers developed rhythm practice courses and invited experts to put forward suggestions and opinions to evaluate rhythm practice courses. Relevant contents included teaching curriculum arrangement, examination courses, textbook selection, and the feasibility of a student satisfaction questionnaire. Experiments and practice in the classroom, the researchers used the piano rhythm practice course to teach 22 piano students in the experimental group, evaluated the teaching results, collected the teaching results data, and analyzed the data. 3. RESULT AND DISCUSSION The course is effective; it consists of 9 weeks of teaching, 3 weeks of examination, and concludes with 12 weeks of using 9 etudes and 6 children's songs. In the evaluation performance results, the average scores of the 3 tests were 27.45, 28.77, 33.16 respectively and the percentage scores were 68.64, 71.93, 82.9 respectively. Creating the piano rhythm exercises is an effective 12- week course, using 9 etudes and 6 children's songs. The results of such research are consistent with Donald and David (2011) that rhythm patterns are so important in the perception of music that it is sometimes possible to identify a melody from just the rhythmic pattern. In addition, Levitin (2006) Xianjun (2019) suggest that the teacher trains students to beat and sing different beats with the metronome so that students can really feel the beat uniformity and speed stability of the music so that their rhythm perception and expression can develop. According to Baoqing (2011), there is pitch and rhythm. There are some forms of rhythm, free rhythm, and so on. Like the pulse and breathing of living things, rhythm is the embodiment of musical life, and the significance of rhythm training in the process of learning 104 music is self-evident (Meige & Meiyu, 1990). Therefore, as reported by Ling & Tian (2007) and Deyue (2001), many piano educators in the 20th century neglected rhythm awareness in their skills training, the complex skills of piano playing, and the training of skills in the most important position in piano teaching, thus ignoring the topic of rhythm training. Related to the report, as reported by Jacobson et.al. (2015) Lin & Danpradit (2021), rhythm is a natural part of the human experience. Humans walk with a regular gait, and the rhythms are naturally tapped, clapped, or drummed, many times unconsciously, as a part of daily living. Young children respond physically first to the rhythm of the music and later to the pitches. Francesco (2015) pointed that a good sign was the classroom for playing the rhythms. They also displayed certain rhythmic traits in the simplest meters; they tended to use just a few rhythmic stereotypes and seemed to be under the impression that the rhythmic dimension derived indirectly from the choice of pitches, instead of being truly integrated with the melodic thinking or playing in the invention. Therefore, Lily & Esther (2008) said, pitch and rhythm are important elements in both music and language. Pitch and rhythm discrimination are required not only for learning music, but also for language acquisition as children learn the nuances of the language in their environment. Pitch-contour processing is an important perceptual organizational device for infants, in processing not only musical but also speech sequences (Trehub, 2006). According to the report, as reported by Ruixue (2011), the most important aspect of African rhythm is "beat sense", the first beat of the downbeat. According to this characteristic, the students are trained. Specific steps include: 1) rhythm training without stress; 2) rhythm practice with regular stress; and 3) irregular stress with regular stress. Cross-rhythm is one of the training methods in cross-rhythm. Students can initially feel the charm of African music's cross-rhythm (Fan, 2015). However, the number of exercises too high, resulting in the student having less practice time or speeding up the practice time too much. Music teachers or anyone interested in this innovation to use or develop further should study more deeply or more complexly, adjust the content of the exercises accordingly, and possibly change or expand the audience of the experiment more. 4. CONCLUSION The creation of the piano rhythm exercises course is effective; it consists of 9 weeks of teaching, 3 weeks of examination, and concludes with 12 weeks of using 9 etudes and 6 children's songs. 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