Listening – the key that unlocks Suzuki learning
Suzuki observed that babies are surrounded by their mother tongue language. They hear it spoken by everyone around them. Babies start to babble language-like sounds in response to what they hear around them. The baby will begin to babble language like sounds, and the caregiver will return a similar sound. Soon this “serve and return” will evolve into baby talk, and then into real words in the mother tongue language.
He realized that this was a natural way for children to learn and build skills, so began to experiment with teaching violin using similar steps.
In Suzuki Method students learn music as a language, and then speak it with their chosen instrument. Children begin by listening to recordings of the pieces they will begin to play, performed by highly skilled performers, so they have the finest examples of the language they will begin to speak.
Listening to the recordings of the pieces they are learning is a key element in the learning process. The more regular and frequent the listening the easier the learning will become.