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Laura Fuller

Professor S. Maenhardt

ENG-1010

10/23/2017

Rhetorical Analysis:

The power of music: its impact on the intellectual, social and personal development of

children and young people

Music can dramatically influence someone in all areas of life. It could trigger a memory

you onece had while listening to your favorite song. Its said to help people overcome obstacles

in life and create a moment of peace. It can be a source of motivation to accomplish a certain

task. Susan Hallam explains more in-depth in her article, The power of music: its impact on the

intellectual, social and personal development of children and young people published in 2010.

She argues students or adolescents who participate in music education achieve higher in many

measures academically than their peers (Hallam, 14). Hallam, herself, has much credibility on

this topic for being a Professor of Education and Music Psychology. She is effective at citing

credible facts and statistical studies, while focusing on logic and reasoning and employing

emotional appeals.

In her article, Hallam explains how one can improve their intellectual development. She

implies many statistical scenarios on how it has been proven in young children. She again, builds

credibility for being a professional musician, music educator and academic. Throughout her

education, she has spent her years being a musical adviser in many areas; principal, and teacher.

She has been promoting excellence in music education while supporting aspiring musicians since
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the 1980s (International Society for Music Education). Throughout her piece, Hallam uses many

strong, credible sources that have been reviewed and summarized by others; over one hundred

different sources are cited (Hallam, 22-33). These strengthen her credibility while appealing to

ethos, as well as building her argument.

In addition to her ethos appeals, Hallam uses strong appeals to logos, with many facts and

statistics, logical scenarios, and studies on young children. She expresses Using data relating to

over 13,000 students from the National Centre for Educational Statistics, Morrison reported that

high school students who participated in music reported higher grades in English, math, history,

and science than those who did not participate. (Hallam, 14) These facts introduce and support

the idea Hallam is trying to put across on the development of academic achievement through

music. Hallam continues with the statistics of the children's IQ levels:

All four groups exhibited increases in IQ as would be expected over the time

period but the music groups had reliably larger increases in full scale IQ with an

effect size of .35. Children in the control groups had average increases of 4.3

points while the music groups had increases of 7 points. On all but 2 of the 12

subtests the music group had larger increases than control groups. (Hallam, 13)

These statistics are just a few of many others that logically support her claim that music can

improve on an intellectual level. The details on these statistics build an appeal to logos and lead

the audience to feel that this piece of writing will have credibility.

Hallam uses strong appeals to pathos in the social and personal development sections of

this article. It is full of emotion that creates a sympathetic feeling to the audience. This article

tries to reach the emotion of its target audience, parents, by telling parents that having their

children listen to music or participate in a musical activity will help them communicate better.
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For example, the author stated, students who participated in musical activities talked more with

parents and teachers, and their parents were more likely to talk with friends parents.

(Hallam,14) These social benefits were likely to lead to higher self-esteem in the children in

turn leading to increased motivation and self-efficacy." (Hallam, 17) Most, if not all, parents

long for a good communicating relationship with their children. The message of exposing young

children to music grabs the heart of the parents and increases the chances the author gets their

desired results by parents allowing their children to listen to music. While the main focus of this

article is logical, subtle pathos messages were throughout the article gently convincing the reader

by tipping their emotions in this direction.

This article is an excellent example of how an author can use logos, pathos, ethos, and

kairos. The majority of this article is logos, but the author still uses all techniques, one

complimenting the other. The article is arranged into multiple research studies and statistics on

how music is proven to be beneficial to the intellectual development of young children. The

author explained the research exploring the relation music had on mathematics, language and

literacy, creativity, social development, and physical development of health and wellbeing.

Whether the primary focus is logos, pathos, or ethos, the author can use a little bit of all

three and still have the main idea be the chosen focus, in this case, logos. The article was

intended to be informative, and it achieved its goal. Susan Hallam, being a Professor of

Education and Music Psychology, portrays credibility by citing scientifically proven facts and

statistical studies, while focusing on logical reasoning and employing emotional appeals.

Especially at this time, we can see how Hallams argument is directed mostly to parents and their

children, inspiring them to take part in a musical activity.


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WORKS CITED

Hallam, Susan."The Power of Music: Its Impact On Intellectual, Social and Personal

Development" LA Phill.| Home. Aug 2010. Web. 07 Oct 2017.

<https://dl.icdst.org/pdfs/files/03a9059e1b2dd4701f745e3a3ec2af56.pdf >

Susan Hallam, Professor of Education and Music Psychology UCL Institute of Education The

International Society for Music Education, Web. 07 Oct 2017.

<www.isme.org/member/susan-hallam.https >

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