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Abstract

Many school-aged children learn music in studio settings, and those lessons often include musical dictation. Nevertheless, we conducted most research about dictation w among collegelevel students. Therefore, we do not know how independent music teachers experience dictation with children. In this paper, we addressed four questions: (1) What are the sociodemographics of teachers who include dictation to their lessons? (2) Why do some teachers choose not to include musical dictation? (3) How often do teachers use strategies when teaching dictation? (4) Are there factors related to the use of those strategies? To get a portrait of the situation, we sent an online questionnaire to studio teachers working with children between 6 and 12 in the Province of Quebec, Canada. We asked them about their instrumental and aural skills teaching habits and their sociodemographic characteristics. Results show that dictation teaching is more common among piano teachers, more experienced teachers, and teachers affiliated with an examination board. We also discovered that the main reason to omit dictation is lack of time. Finally, we found that some strategies are more common among specific categories of teachers. In conclusion, we suggest studio teaching tradition could have a role to play in teachers' decisions.

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