The Research For Promoting Primary School Students' Learning Motivation And Social Skills By Musical Extra-Curriculum Activities

The 21st century is a reformatory century. Facing the recent curriculum reform advocating the concept of quality education in China, music education plays an important role in cultivating comprehensive talents, especially in promoting non-intelligence factors of students.This study probes into related issues for the music activities to promote students' non-intelligence factors including learning motivation and social skills. Based on education psychology research and learning measurement theories, the author employed the social skills measuring tool, the CS4 , and a motivation measuring questionnaire developed by Dr. Liang-Baohua from the Hong Kong Institute of Education to examine the social skills and learning motivation of grade 4-6 students. A total of 335 questionnaires were distributed to the participating students who took part in the music extra-curricular activities, while 128 questionnaires were distributed to those who never took part in the music extra-curricular activities. A series of independent sample t-test was employed to test if there were significant differences between students who took part in music activities and those who didn't do so.Research results show that the participation of music extra-curricular activities plays an important role in developing students'non-intelligent factors. In comparison with students who never took part in the music extra-curricular activities, students who took part in the musical extracurricular activity had reported significantly higher scores in intrinsic motivation, cost, utility value and self efficacy. In social skills, students who took part in the music extra-curricular activities had reported significantly higher scores than those who never took part in the musical extra-curricular activities. Based on these results, the author provides recommendations from three dimensions - teachers, parents and schools to suggest how to develop music education for developing students' learning motivation and social skills. Based on the present study, it is hoped that the complexity of the functions of music education and the importance of the extra-curricular activities can be apparently shown to the public. As a consequence, it may bring changes to the concept of music education and the function of music teachers.