Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Question for the teachers: grade exams

Nicely put! I say the same thing to many parents who sought me out to teach their kids, but my words often fall on deaf ears.

I don't believe that exams are anti-piano.

In the uk there is an obsession with exams and testing and most students will follow the ABRSM syllabus. Of course there are those who study piano simply to acquire certificates and learning to play is secondary. This attitude is anti-piano and unfortunately is often driven by pushy parents who want their kids to achieve higher grades than their class mates.

It isn't the test that's at fault though. For many these exams provide motivation and recognition of success. I think the syllabus is pretty well balanced on the whole and ensures that students play a varied repertoire as well as working on technique, sight reading and aural skills. You don't have to play nothing but three exam pieces for a whole year. That's down to th teacher and student. There are nine pieces in each book as well as another nine alternatives. Then there is plenty more repertoire out there to play as well. So it's perfectly possible to learn lots of pieces in a short space of time, then take the exam using just three set pieces.

Those students who get stuck on three pieces for a whole year simply don't want to learn piano. If you give them forty other pieces they will still do the square root of bugger all!

Agreed.

The exams themselves are not at fault; it's just that the desire for the exams' marks are often overshadowing the desire to learn more music these days.

There are different types of motivation, and when you use the exam as an endpoint, or reward, then the child will be motivated for the reward itself, and not the music.

Generally, once a piece is played for an exam (i.e. prepped excessively months before), it's 'dead' and the student won't want to touch it for months afterwards. That's extrinsic motivation, and that's not what we want.

There are ways to prevent this, though.

I recently wrote a post about this that you might like to read: How to Be 10% More Motivated in One Step