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I am a linguist and trained teacher who has worked in these areas and also tried various things in language teaching and learning. Since I also study music, eventually I began thinking about these things. No, experimenting with sound and language in stages is not different from music learning, and that was my point. The only thing that I was pointing out is that the model of language acquisition that is put forth is not how language is actually acquired. By the same token, the kinds of things that AZN put forth do remind me of how language is acquired. My thought is that many Suzuki teachers will do more than just have imitation happening. I know a few who use a mixture of things that work for them, according to their background and the particular student that they have.

Given that I was asked if I'm a linguist, I'd like to ask how many people here
have seen a Suzuki piano lesson of a beginner student who is young (aged 3 or 4)?
Or any age at all?

P2, we are talking past each other. I spoke about how language is learned. That has nothing to do with whether Suzuki is good or bad for young students. I also suspect that when students do Suzuki at a young age, some of these other things are going on. You seem to have said so yourself.

I fail to see the relevance of these questions. There are several programs geared toward that age group. I am not familiar with them, but I don't want to get involved in them, either. Lots of kids skip preschool and kindergarten and go straight to first grade with no problem.

What is there to "deprive"?

Oh, please. Calling pieces in other method books "exercises" while calling Suzuki pieces "music" really shows the true colors of the Suzuki mindset.

AZN - you are so very hostile towards Suzuki, yet you specifically write that you aren't interested in programs directed towards young children. If that's the case, fine, but why put something down that you have no interest in?
It's hard to understand your hostility.
Look at the first 10-15 pieces in most primer books compared to the pieces in volume 1 of Suzuki.
What is the Suzuki mindset that you're speaking of? If it is believing that it is a good program, most of us believe that what we are teaching is a good idea, regardless of what it is.
Isn't that human nature?

piano2--

I apologize for coming across as hostile towards Suzuki. Like I have written in several posts, there are some pedagogical ideas that I have borrowed from Suzuki and used in my own teaching. I have two close friends who are Suzuki-certified teachers (a very successful violin teacher and a piano teacher), so I definitely know that there are good Suzuki teachers out there.

The "Suzuki mindset" I alluded to refers to some bad personal experiences, which probably are not enough for me to make a broad statement against Suzuki. If I've overstepped my bounds in that regard, I apologize as well.

I realize that the method is not the problem; the teacher is. There are good methods and lousy methods. Even the "best" method books, the ones I love and use, have their own limitations. And that borrowing ideas from across different methods and approaches--adapting, personalizing, cross-referencing--is a hallmark of a good teacher in any field.

Thus, I sincerely hope you see the limitations of the Suzuki method and try not to make it sound like it's better than the other methods. To me, that comparison alone would be off-putting to most people, especially teachers who prefer to use other methods of teaching.

I appreciate your efforts at communicating and discussing this matter.

Perhaps deprive was the wrong word... I just think that if kids at a very early age express a burning want to take music lessons then what is stopping them? There are several programs geared towards that age group and Suzuki is one of them. Anyway, your later post sort of says what I wanted to say (in the sense that Suzuki is not completely bad as a method, that there are good teachers who practice that method).

Children do not need correcting on the 'runned' front. All they need is a good model to hear frequently, and they will work it out. Language acquisition is natural.

There is nothing natural about violin or piano. That's why we need teachers.

I think I found a link between what I know about language acquisition of a child, and music. I didn't have lessons until I was close to 50, and almost nothing was taught in school. When I was a child I was given a little electric organ, a recorder, a mouth organ and later as a teen I had a piano. I did not just try to reproduce melodies with them. I explored. I might play two notes and they took off to become more notes until there was a melody. I got absorbed by how the mouth organ vibrated, and the link between a pleasant sound and a vibration. I remember getting absorbed in playing major 6ths all over the organ, and blasting out major 2nds because they were funny. If I was feeling sad there there minor thirds and minor chords. Sometimes these all came together as music. Sometimes I recognized them IN existing music.

So years later when I got together with my friend who had started with Suzuki, she had learned a lot of things by rote, and at an advanced stage discovered that she couldn't do anything with the music by herself. I was seeing all these elements in it, before having studied anything. I think it was from all the experimenting with things. That's not too different from the child learning language, who gets obsessed with chanting "babababa", varying rhythms and pitches. Those are the things that make for a native accept or a foreign accent. It has also struck me that a few people who began in a looser manner where they could explore seem to be especially comfortable with music.

I wrote about theory: thirds, intervals, creating melodic phrases, which came to me in experimentation as a young child. I don't think this automatically means that some traditional method that teaches formal things right away is "better". I think that any approach can ruin things, and it depends on the teacher. If those same intervals are taught as rigid workbook theory, or things to be memorized on the piano, then they become dead and empty. In fact, they could prevent the student from getting a natural feel for them, because it's dead and unpleasant. The whole thing has to do with the teacher who has a good understanding of music, playing, and teaching. Maybe the best learning includes a kind of guided exploration.

View from another linguist...

The comparison of native language learning (L1) to music learning falls apart for me when we consider the amount of input received.

L1 learners hear their native language all around them pretty much all the time accompanied by a meaningful context.

I'm not aware of any situation where anything even approaching that happens for music.

Yes, but all children say 'babababa' and not all experiment with a mouth organ.

My problem is with the Suzuki rhetoric, or what I have come across so far. If they were to say, 'look we can learn from natural language acquisition, and apply it to early instrument learning,' then I would have no problem.

It's when they equate instrument learning with language learning (can't find a quite just now, but I've definitely read that) that I get suspicious.

When Dr. Suzuki conceived of his method, his realization was that all children could speak their mother tongue successfully. He believed, then, that all children could learn to play music as well. This is why it is called the mother tongue approach. In Japan, Suzuki would teach any child that came to him for lessons - there were no auditions or screening of children. He wanted to challenge this idea of inborn talent and show that all children could be successful in the right environment.
While there are similarities between learning language and learning music, I don't think anyone can say they are EXACTLY the same processes.
Suzuki families are encouraged to immerse themselves in music - listening to the cd a lot, practicing daily, going to concerts, enjoying music together.

Some children taking piano lessons will naturally explore and compose on their instruments. Others will not.
But if children didn't take music lessons, and were left only to explore the instruments in their home, how many would actually do that exploration? Especially nowadays, when kids aren't home as much as they used to be.

I agree.
But instead of suspicious, I get dismissive because their understanding of language learning may be somewhat incomplete.

Yes, I am aware of that. This was a very good thing. Now I am interested in what you wrote about "there were no auditions or screening of children", because it suggests that in the past (in Japan, maybe?) only children who passed some kind of screening were taught to play? Well, if so, then that was wrong. It would be like only letting people learn to read and write if they could pass a screening. Of course it is easy to teach someone who has a natural knack for something. It takes teaching methodology and skill to teach others - the first essentially teaches himself. So Suzuki was quite right about this.

He then looked at some aspects of how adults teach children. Every culture has nursery rhymes and pat-a-cake clapping games. We could probably do a study on how these create interaction between children and adults, and what kinds of things they teach. This is one place where children do precise imitation, and they have to listen to words, rhymes, rhythms, while using their bodies. It is excellent for teaching and social interaction.

Because Suzuki called this "mother tongue", people tend to believe that this is (the total of) how children learn their first language. That is the only thing I would like to break through. Because a fuller picture of how language is actually acquired gives us greater possibilities of how to learn or teach music. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the notions that I described in my first paragraph. I would like to open the door to additional notions. Is that more clear?

The "babababa" was my idea, and I think it's not thought of in Suzuki. The idea of instrument and language learning intrigues me, but not along the Suzuki lines.

Back to "bababa". My language strength is especially in the oral part. I think my newest languages are no. 6 and 7. I taught one student a foreign language, who wanted to speak fluently and without an accent. I helped another person informally who had to attend lectures given in a French Canadian accent, and had studied the international Parisian accent - she was lost. The ideas I applied came from music, and probably wouldn't be accepted by most students or mainstream teaching. It begins with "babababa". When you listen to children at that stage, there is a rhythm that starts resembling the cadences of our language. You will also observe small children experiment with what sounds they can produce, getting totally absorbed with what their bodies can do and what sounds come out. Is there anything closer to good instrument practice?

So this challenge with these two students forced me to take a closer look at how young children acquire their mother tongue. For the woman struggling with understanding Canadian French, she was given a recording of Vigneault (singer) plus lyrics, and told to immerse herself in the rhythm of his speech. Then at the next lecture, not try to understand anything, but simply become part of that rhythm and let the words come when they would. In 5 minutes she went from a wash of sound to being able to follow everything being said. My theory was that if babies babble rhythmically with inflection, they're listening for it and try to reproduce or become part of it.

With the student who wanted to learn a new language and speak it fluently and without an accent he was forbidden to read things first. He would stick his own accent into what he read. (That is also Suzuki's "listen first" idea, btw.) Sometimes I would hum the cadence of a sentence, he hummed it back, and then he inserted the words to the same cadence. The effect was remarkable. As far as he could pronounce the letters, it became accent-free. A lot of "foreign accent" comes from rhythm and inflection. --- The other part was classic: learning to hear the sound, rather than interpret what you think you should be hearing. This is also an aspect of music. Then there was physically reproducing the sound, getting muscles and breath to work in new ways. The small child delights in blowing bubbles while adults are inhibited.

I also do things with music and have friends who are studying it, so these observations went back into music too. The listening for and reproducing inflections is also part of music. Listening for details of sound, ditto. In both language and music we don't just imitate. The child doesn't just repeat things: he crafts his own sentences, and has to have analyzed details on some level to do so. That's why we have "I runned." Similarly in music at some point we have to be able to come to a new piece of music and decide how we want it to sound, and we get into phrasing and interpretation. Surely that comes out of these detailed things, rather than imitation.

If this doesn't make sense - the shorter version is that the things we do in languages also seem to be things we do in music, and the other way around. The idea of "mother tongue" is exciting if we can expand it beyond imitation, and explore it to the hilt. This is a thought I've had for a number of years.

Ok, that was way too long. Note to self - don't post before morning coffee. Can't edit anymore.

Don't do anything before morning coffee.

Hi. Myself, I think that there is a great deal of natural about violin and piano ... when there is a violin and a piano in the house.

On the other hand language is taught too ... isn't it? Gently at first, systematically later on by a trained and certified teacher ... and occasionally with a growl!

Suzuki was a violin expert ... a violin score is easy to read, being a single note outline. Suzuki was able to teach his students to anticipate the next violin note ... however the system came unstuck when trying to switch to the keyboard.

With two staves to negotiate multiple chord combinations by two hands, Suzuki is also stumped ...
just like those sight-reading traditional notation.

There are no shortcuts to playing the piano well ...
The hard reality involves hours of dedicated practice.

PS Don’t let anybody bluff you that a violin is easy to PLAY ... that’s why (in cat gut defeat) I stick to the piano.