Despite of the fact that children's songs are of help to the overall early childhood education in terms of intellectual, emotional and linguistic development, their importance has not been recognized properly. Previous studies related to the words chi...
Despite of the fact that children's songs are of help to the overall early childhood education in terms of intellectual, emotional and linguistic development, their importance has not been recognized properly. Previous studies related to the words children's songs conducted up to the end of the 1990s have been limited to the investigation of themes and some rhetorical expressions and the identification of rhythms in terms of external types including 3·4, 4·4, and 7·5 types. Even recent studies on the children's songs are focused on the musical traits. Results of the previous studies have shown that the words of children's songs are helpful to the language development of children, in addition to helping their intellectual, emotional, psychological and moral growth. Based on the findings,when teachers at preschools select children's songs, the activity theme of the week becomes the most important selection criteria. Also the selection of the songs are made by literary factors(Kim, 1997). In the child education institutions, rephrasing of the words of songs or three-line poem composition are conducted as activities integrating literary approaches. Given the facts, it is necessary to examine the characteristics of the words of children's songs through literary analysis. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to offer a framework to analyze the words of children's songs in consideration of their literary aspects and to identify the characteristics of the words. The findings of the study may be used to facilitate the selection of materials to be used for the activities of speaking, reading, writing, expression, appreciation, creating conducted at early childhood education institutions. The children's songs used in this study include the 138 pieces that are found to be preferred by early childhood education institutions by the research findings of Im (2004). The songs were also studied to have proper characteristics of musical pieces. Research themes include the followings: 1. How are the words in terms of everyday life themes? 2. How are the words in terms of umsuyul, umuiyul, and umboyul according to external types? 3. How are the words in terms of the prose-type description method according to their external types? 4. How are the rhetoric expressions of the words? 5. How are the words in terms of the classification of the songwriters and composers? This study was conducted using the method of literary research through the examination of preceding studies. The examination of previous researches found that the classification of the words of children's songs by researcher was vague and lacked in consistency. As a result, the instruments of research were not systematic and it was difficult to find a certain framework. Therefore, the researcher has created an analysis framework in accordance with literary types and composition and summarized the characteristics of literatures by examining previous studies (Gal, 2000; Goh, 2001; Kim, 1987; Kim, 1993; Kim, 1996; Park, 1999; Ban, 1990; Shin, 1996; Lee and Jang, 1986; Lim, 2004; Hah, 2002; and Hahn, 1999) (Table 2).