The signs you pass in the street are in English, the books that your teachers give you are in English; everything we do is surrounded by some kind of English. In music, the same goes for staves: every musical thing you do is linked to the treble or bass clefs. If we need to read English to walk down the right street, so should the need to read music staves to be able to play an instrument correctly. English is required in all American schools but reading staves, although essential, is not. If music teachers demanded as strict a musical culture as English was required from English teachers, our musicians would be greatly improved. Musical literacy should be a goal that all music teachers have for their students. Musical cultivation can occur in several ways, the most common being when a musician begins writing the notes on the staves and slowly removing them as they learn. where they are. This can become a problem when you start relying on written letters instead of original notes and end up ignoring scope altogether (Jacobi, 2012). The further you go, the more notes you are expected to know and your chart becomes too long to reasonably manage. It becomes a waste of time to sit for thirty minutes with a huge chart to name your notes when you could be sight-reading the article and learning new skills (Saxon, 2009). Knowing where a note is on your instrument but not on the staff means that you are almost reading music but you have to make the final connection between the staff and the instrument (Hansen, Bernstorf, 2002). Playing a musical instrument should be more than just an auditory act. experience; eyes should also be at work reading the...... middle of paper...... 11-18. Premier Academic Research. Internet. November 19, 2013Rayner, Keith and Alexander Pollatsek. “Eye movements, eye-hand span, and perceptual span during sight-reading music.” Current Directions in Psychological Science (Wiley-Blackwell) 6.2 (1997): 49-53. Premier Academic Research. Internet. November 19, 2013.Salem, Jeff. "Read it! Play it!." Canadian Musician 22.4 (2000): 28. Academic Research Premier. Internet. November 19, 2013. Saxon, Kenneth. “The Science of Sight Reading.” American Music Teacher 58.6 (2009): 22-25. Premier Academic Research. Internet. Nov. 19, 2013Simoens, Veerle L. and Mari Tervaniemi. “Activation of auditory short-term memory during sheet music reading.” Plos ONE 8.1 (2013): 1-10. Premier Academic Research. Internet. November 19, 2013 Waller, David. “Music Jumble for Music Literacy.” Journal of Music Educators 94.3 (2008): 14-15. Premier Academic Research. Internet. November 19. 2013.