Intralinguodidactics of English teaching model for tertiary-level music majors

The ongoing internationalisation of higher music education has substantially increased the demand for discipline-specific English proficiency among tertiary-level music majors. Future performers, composers, conductors and musicologists are expected to navigate English-language research, participate in international masterclasses and festivals, construct digital portfolios and collaborate within transnational professional networks. Recent needs-analysis studies in music departments indicate that students explicitly expect English courses to support their participation in music-related communicative situations and access to specialized content rather than merely enhancing general language proficiency [12, 13, 14, 16]. Nevertheless, English curricula at conservatories and music faculties remain predominantly oriented towards general English or broad English for Academic Purposes. As a number of ESP-for-music course design studies demonstrate, existing syllabi and materials are only partially aligned with the authentic tasks and texts that musicians encounter in academic, rehearsal and digital environments. This discrepancy generates a persistent gap between general ESP/ELT approaches and the highly specific linguistic and semiotic needs of music majors, learners may formally attain a B2 level in English, yet continue to experience marked difficulties when interpreting analytical programme notes, engaging in rehearsal interaction in English or preparing artist statements and biographies for international platforms [15]. In order to conceptualize and address this gap, the present article adopts an intralinguodidactic perspective. Recent work in linguodidactics and curriculum reform shows that intralinguodidactics may serve as an effective framework for modelling intra-language variation that is, the differentiation of one language into functionally distinct registers, genres and professional sublanguages and for incorporating this variation into syllabus design. Transferring this logic to the musical domain implies treating “English for music majors” not as a monolithic branch of ESP, but as a structured constellation of music-related discourses [1]. Against this background, the problem addressed in the article can be formulated as follows, there is a lack of empirically grounded, discipline-tailored models of English instruction for music majors that systematically account for intra-language variation across academic, professional and digital music-related contexts [4, 6]. Existing ESP, CLIL and genre-based initiatives in the field of music and music business often remain local and descriptive, without providing a transferable conceptual model suitable for different institutional and linguistic settings [2]. The scientific novelty of the article lies in bringing together intralinguodidactic reasoning, ESP-for-music needs analysis, SFL-based genre pedagogy and CLIL-oriented research within a single model specifically targeted at English for music majors at the tertiary level [8]. Although the term intralinguodidactics has only recently entered academic usage, several studies have already attempted to operationalize it in concrete curriculum reforms. Case studies in STEM English, for instance, describe intralinguodidactic redesigns of reading courses in which different sub-varieties of English research articles, textbook expositions, conference presentations are explicitly modelled and sequenced as distinct yet interconnected curricular units [5, 8]. Similar ideas appear in work on digital linguodidactics, where the proliferation of digital genres and registers is treated as a central challenge for foreign-language pedagogy rather than as a marginal phenomenon [7]. Within this emerging paradigm, intralinguodidactics may be understood as a didactic orientation which: focuses on internal variation within a language (styles, registers, genres, professional sublanguages); treats these varieties as primary pedagogical units to be analyzed, contrasted and sequenced in instruction; conceptualizes learner development as the increasing ability to navigate and switch between such varieties in a context-sensitive manner [6]. This orientation resonates strongly with Systemic Functional Linguistics and genre-based research, where language is conceptualized as a social semiotic and where genres are mapped onto recurrent social activities. Genre-based pedagogy, as described in numerous EFL and ESP studies, demonstrates that explicit work on schematic structure, discourse moves and lexico-grammatical resources can support learners’ progression into new registers and genres. In this sense intralinguodidactics can be regarded as a didactic articulation of genre and register theory, with particular emphasis on planning and supporting transitions between intra-language varieties [16]. Applied to English in the musical domain, an intralinguodidactic perspective presupposes at least three broad subdomains of discourse: academic music discourse (research articles, essays, programme notes, critical reviews); professional rehearsal and performance discourse (instructions, negotiations, feedback, organizational communication); digital and promotional discourse (artist biographies, platform descriptions, social media posts, funding applications) [5]. Available ESP and CLIL publications focusing on music, music education and music business confirm that these subdomains exhibit distinct communicative purposes, stylistic profiles and linguistic patterns, and that students often experience difficulty in moving between them [15]. An intralinguodidactic model, therefore, must not only acknowledge these differences but also make them explicit and teachable. The literature suggests that teaching English to music majors is shaped by three interrelated characteristics of the domain, high terminological density, multimodality and semiotic hybridity [4, 7, 11, 12]. Needs-analysis studies conducted in various national contexts show that music students struggle particularly with specialized terminology and complex text organization in music theory and music education materials, even when they possess relatively solid general English skills [14]. Research on ESP courses related to music and art music emphasizes that effective course design must reflect the interdisciplinary character of music studies, where musicology, pedagogy, performance practice and technology intersect and generate overlapping sublanguages [13]. The multimodal nature of music-related activity is equally prominent. CLIL and music-education projects demonstrate that music-based language learning requires the simultaneous coordination of audio input, notation, gesture and verbal explanation. In such settings, musical material not only supports motivation and vocabulary acquisition, but also imposes specific cognitive and semiotic demands on learners, who must align listening, reading and speaking in real time. For music majors, this multimodality is not peripheral but constitutive, typical professional scenarios involve following a conductor’s instructions in English while reading a score, verbally describing sound and expressive intention, or delivering spoken introductions before performances [3]. In addition, music itself functions as a semiotic system with its own internal “grammar”. Studies of discourse about music point to recurrent metaphorical, evaluative and narrative patterns which mediate between sonic phenomena and verbal description. Teaching English to music majors thus entails helping learners appropriate a repertoire of expressions for referring to musical texture, timbre, harmonic procedures, structural tensions and interpretative choices. From a pedagogical standpoint, these findings imply that: lexical-grammatical work should prioritize domain-specific collocations and discourse patterns found in authentic texts (e.g. “the movement opens with…”, “the orchestration foregrounds…”, “the conductor requests a lighter articulation”); task design must incorporate multimodal professional situations (rehearsal simulations, commentary on recordings, genre-specific speech before performances); instruction should systematically address the transition between technical intra-disciplinary language, used in interaction with fellow musicians, and semi-technical or lay-oriented explanations required in communication with non-specialist audiences [4]. Recent empirical research provides a sufficiently detailed picture of the communicative needs of tertiary-level music students. Needs-analysis studies from different national settings report that learners expect ESP courses to assist them with reading music-related texts, communicating with international colleagues and presenting themselves professionally [5, 6]. At the same time, they report difficulties with discipline-specific terminology, complex syntax and unfamiliar genre conventions. In the academic domain, music majors require English to read research articles and textbooks, to write essays and programme notes, and to present at student conferences or seminars. The texts encountered in these contexts typically exhibit dense nominalization, specialized terminology and elaborate clause structure. Genre-based investigations into EFL and ESP writing demonstrate that explicit teaching of genre organization and associated linguistic features significantly increases students’ control of expository and analytical genres. Transferring these insights to musicology-related writing suggests the need for targeted work on the rhetorical and linguistic organization of music analyses, critical reviews and programme notes [7, 8]. In the professional domain, communicative situations such as rehearsals, masterclasses and auditions involve rapid interaction, often under time pressure. Although this type of discourse is less thoroughly described in the literature than academic writing, needs-analysis and CLIL-music studies highlight the importance of imperatives, modality, deictic references to specific score locations, evaluative lexis, and context-appropriate pragmatic strategies (e.g. negotiating tempo or dynamics, formulating requests and feedback politely, responding constructively to criticism). In the digital domain, music students rely heavily on English for the construction of a professional identity, writing artist biographies, descriptions for streaming platforms, social media posts, and emails to agents, festivals or institutions. Research on English for music business and on the integration of popular music into CLIL contexts shows that this discourse combines promotional, narrative and interpersonal functions and follows implicit Anglophone conventions of branding and self-presentation [10]. An intralinguodidactic model must therefore map these three domains onto a coherent system of intra-language varieties and design teaching modules which deliberately train students to shift between academic, professional and digital English while remaining within the same disciplinary field. This perspective moves beyond the traditional focus on “music vocabulary” and instead proposes the systematic organization of music-related English genres and registers as the central structuring principle of the curriculum. The development of the intralinguodidactic teaching model was carried out through a multi-stage mixed-method design, which ensured that both the theoretical constructs and the pedagogical decisions underlying the model were systematically aligned with empirical evidence gathered from the target learning context. In this design, three complementary strands were integrated: (1) a comparative analysis of contemporary ELT, ESP and CLIL frameworks; (2) an extensive needs analysis of tertiary-level music students; (3) a corpus-based investigation of authentic music-related English discourse. The triangulation of these strands provided the conceptual, empirical and methodological coherence necessary for constructing a robust instructional model. At the first stage, a comparative analysis of published pedagogical models relevant to English for Specific Purposes was conducted. This included genre-based ESP studies focusing on art-oriented and music-related instruction, as well as CLIL implementations in music education which demonstrate how disciplinary content and language learning may be successfully merged into a single pedagogical trajectory. These studies collectively indicate that instruction for music majors becomes significantly more effective when structured around recurrent disciplinary genres, multimodal communicative practices and the explicit modelling of rhetorical and linguistic conventions specific to the musical domain. Furthermore, research on the use of songs and musical materials in EFL/ESP contexts highlights the motivational and cognitive benefits of integrating musical content, thereby reinforcing the rationale for designing a model that embeds verbal language learning within the broader ecology of musical activity. At the second stage, a systematic needs analysis was undertaken in accordance with established ESP methodology. Data collection combined quantitative techniques and qualitative inquiry. Approximately 60 undergraduate music students completed a questionnaire designed to elicit perceived linguistic challenges in academic, rehearsal and digital communication. A sub-sample of 12 students, supplemented by 6 faculty members, participated in semi-structured interviews in which they described authentic communicative situations from their educational experience, such as masterclasses with visiting conductors, ensemble rehearsals conducted in English, and the preparation of programme notes or digital self-presentations for institutional platforms. Additionally, samples of student-produced English texts (including essays, programme notes, reflective commentaries and digital profiles) were collected to observe real instances of performance. The quantitative data revealed recurring clusters of difficulties, especially terminology comprehension, syntactic complexity, pragmatic appropriateness in rehearsals, and challenges in digital self-presentation. Qualitative thematic coding aligned closely with international findings, confirming that the linguistic needs of music students are highly domain-specific and cannot be adequately addressed through general-purpose EFL or EAP instruction. The main results are synthesised in Table 1. Table 1. Summary of music students’ English needs by domain Domain Typical communicative situations Main difficulties Priority instructional targets Academic Reading research texts; writing essays & programme notes; presenting at seminars Dense terminology; complex syntax; unfamiliar genre structure Genre awareness; academic lexis; reading strategies; coherent writing Professional Rehearsals with foreign conductors; masterclasses; auditions Fast speech; imperatives & modality; deictic score references; pragmatic norms Interactional strategies; functional rehearsal lexis; negotiation & feedback skills Digital Artist bios; platform descriptions; social media; email with institutions Tone & style uncertainty; lack of models; difficulty summarizing Self-presentation conventions; concise writing; register management The third stage consisted of constructing a specialized corpus (≈150,000 words) of authentic English texts representing academic, professional and digital discourse within the musical domain. The corpus was deliberately balanced to reflect the real communicative ecology of contemporary musicians, incorporating research articles, programme notes, reviews, rehearsal transcripts, artist biographies, platform blurbs and social media materials. This corpus served as the primary empirical source for identifying recurrent genre structures, lexical-grammatical patterns and evaluation strategies that music students need to acquire. Table 2. Composition of the music-related English corpus Domain Genre type Texts Words (approx.) Example sources Academic Research articles; textbook excerpts 25 ~70,000 Journal of Music Theory, Music Education Research Academic Programme notes 30 ~20,000 Major orchestras and festivals Professional Rehearsal/masterclass transcripts 15 ~15,000 Public rehearsal recordings with captions Professional Reviews 25 ~20,000 Broadsheet newspapers; specialist music magazines Digital Artist biographies; platform blurbs 30 ~15,000 Artist websites; streaming platforms Digital Social media posts 40 ~10,000 Ensemble and artist accounts Through corpus analysis, key discourse features were identified across all domains. These features later informed the model’s genre-based structure and the linguistic focus of each instructional module. The proposed teaching model is grounded in four interdependent methodological principles, each of which contributes to the coherence of the model and its suitability for the educational environment of tertiary-level music programmes. (1) System-functional orientation. Drawing on the system-functional understanding of language as a social semiotic, the model presupposes that English varies systematically across registers and genres, and that this variation must be made explicit in instruction. This orientation provides the theoretical rationale for distinguishing academic, professional and digital sub-varieties of English used by musicians and for designing pedagogical tasks that highlight their formal and functional differences. (2) CEFR-aligned outcomes adapted to disciplinary needs. While the model adheres to CEFR B2–C1 descriptors for reception, production and interaction, these descriptors are recast into music-specific learning outcomes. Thus, global standards are preserved, yet situated within the particular communicative contexts music students encounter (e.g., understanding analytical lectures, preparing programme notes, participating in bilingual rehearsals). (3) Genre-based pedagogy as the organizational backbone. Genres serve as the central structuring unit of the course. Instruction proceeds through cycles of modelling, joint construction and independent production, allowing students to internalize the rhetorical organization and linguistic resources characteristic of each target genre. This approach has demonstrated strong effectiveness in ESP and academic writing research, particularly in contexts where learners must master new disciplinary literacies. (4) Development of multimodal competencies. Because musical communication inherently involves the coordination of auditory, visual and gestural modes, the model integrates tasks that require learners to interpret and produce language alongside notation, conductorial gestures and audio-visual materials. This multimodal perspective reflects the real communicative environments in which musicians operate and ensures the ecological validity of instruction. The selection of linguistic material was guided by the twofold objective of ensuring disciplinary authenticity and supporting gradual, manageable progression. 1.A bilingual terminology taxonomy (Russian–English) was developed for key domains such as harmony, form, texture, orchestration and evaluation, facilitating conscious translanguaging and conceptual precision. 2.A set of seven core verbal genres central to the professional practice of musicians was identified, analytical commentary, rehearsal instruction, feedback, programme note, review, artist biography and application-style digital post. 3.The authentic corpus served as the principal source of texts for classroom use, enabling learners to engage with real examples of linguistic and rhetorical practice across all domains. Figure 1. Mapping of modules, target genres and corpus sources The model is organized as a pedagogically coherent three-phase cycle Input → Processing → Output which operates consistently across all modules. This structure ensures a gradual shift from exposure and analysis to guided practice and culminating communicative performance. Each of the five modules builds a distinct yet interconnected cluster of competencies. Collectively, they enable students to navigate the entire spectrum of English-mediated musical communication. Figure 2. Structure of the English-language curriculum for music majors A key feature of the model is the recursive use of shared musical repertoire across modules, allowing students to observe how a single musical work or performance scenario is reframed in academic, professional and digital discourses. The model employs three groups of pedagogical tools, each contributing to the development of discipline-specific literacy: 1.Multimodal tasks combining textual, auditory, gestural and notational modes; 2.Translanguaging strategies enabling reflection on cross-linguistic differences in terminology and discourse organization; 3.Scaffolded genre transformation, allowing students to practice flexible movement between different registers. ICT serves not only as a rich source of authentic multimodal input but also as an environment for meaningful student output. The proposed intralinguodidactic model was introduced in the form of a pilot course at a medium-sized state university housing a well-established faculty of music, where bachelor-level programmes in instrumental and vocal performance, composition and music education represent a substantial proportion of the student body. Although English is formally included in the curriculum during the first three years of study, instruction had previously relied almost exclusively on a general EFL/EAP syllabus, offering music majors limited opportunities to engage with genres, communicative situations or discourse conventions genuinely characteristic of their professional domain. To evaluate the practicality and pedagogical validity of the intralinguodidactic model under real institutional conditions, it was implemented as an elective, yet credit-bearing, course integrated into the official timetable. The sample consisted of 48 students across the 1st, 2nd and 3rd years (17, 18 and 13 students respectively), representing a balanced combination of instrumentalists, vocalists, composers and future music educators. Although participation was voluntary, all students who enrolled completed the entire sequence of instructional modules and assessment tasks, which made it possible to trace developmental trajectories with a reasonable degree of reliability. The course extended over one academic semester (16 weeks), with two 90-minute sessions per week, totaling 48 contact hours. The five modules forming the conceptual architecture of the model were delivered in a spiral progression, whereby introductory exposure in the early weeks was followed by increasingly complex tasks engaging students in analysis, transformation and production of discipline-specific discourse. Supplementary tasks on the university’s learning platform (approximately 2–3 hours weekly) ensured that students maintained continuous contact with authentic texts, multimodal materials and reflective writing exercises beyond the classroom environment. In order to assess the pedagogical impact of the model, a set of analytic and genre-sensitive assessment parameters was developed. These parameters were operationalized within pre- and post-course testing and allowed for the systematic evaluation of learning outcomes not merely in terms of general linguistic proficiency, but in relation to the distinctive intra-language varieties that music students are expected to command. Four principal parameters were used: 1.Terminological accuracy, capturing the precision, contextual appropriateness and flexibility with which students recognized and employed discipline-specific terminology and recurrent collocations in both written and oral genres (0–10 scale). 2.Genre conformity, assessing students’ ability to conform to the rhetorical organization, communicative purpose and textual staging characteristic of prototypical target genres such as programme notes, performance reviews, academic paragraphs or digital biographies. 3.Communicative fluency in professional contexts, measured through structured rehearsal simulations and performance-related role-plays, and encompassing speech rate, interactional appropriateness, pragmatic strategies, and the ability to initiate and maintain collaborative meaning-making under time constraints. 4.Students’ reflective evaluations, obtained through post-course questionnaires and reflective essays, capturing not only perceived learning gains, but also shifts in metalinguistic awareness, confidence and perceived relevance of genre differentiation. The pre-course diagnostic tasks included analytical reading, a short mini-essay, a rehearsal simulation and a digital-profile exercise, comparable post-course tasks enabled direct measurement of change. A comparison of pre- and post-course performance demonstrates consistent upward movement across all quantitative parameters. These improvements, which are summarized in Table 3, are substantial enough to indicate that the model facilitated not only vocabulary growth or skill-specific enhancement, but also a broader restructuring of students’ disciplinary literacy. Table 3. Pre- and post-course results on key parameters (N = 48) Parameter Pre-course mean (SD) Post-course mean (SD) Mean gain Terminological accuracy 5.3 (1.4) 7.8 (1.1) +2.5 Genre conformity 4.9 (1.6) 7.6 (1.2) +2.7 Communicative fluency 5.1 (1.5) 7.4 (1.3) +2.3 The reduction in standard deviations at the post-course stage suggests that the course helped weaker performers converge towards the more advanced, thereby reducing intragroup variability a desirable effect in heterogeneous music cohorts. Qualitative evidence reinforces these quantitative trends. In academic and analytical writing, students’ programme notes and short analytical essays gradually acquired more stable rhetorical shape, introductions became more concise and purposeful, descriptions of form, harmony and texture followed recognizable schematic sequences, and references to musical examples were integrated more coherently. The frequent L1-based calques observable in pre-course texts became less prevalent, replaced by idiomatic formulations drawn from the corpus-based instructional materials. In practice-oriented communication, rehearsal simulations clearly demonstrated an expanded repertoire of functional expressions. Students shifted from single-word or fragmentary requests (“louder”, “not fast”, “softer”) to syntactically complete and pragmatically well-modulated utterances (“let’s try a lighter articulation in the violins from bar 32”, “could we aim for a more transparent balance in the woodwinds here?”). They also displayed improved interactional competence, including turn-taking, mitigation, self-repair and clarification strategies, which are crucial for successful participation in multilingual rehearsal settings. In the digital domain, post-course biographies and platform blurbs showed notable progress in both macro-organization and micro-linguistic control. Students learned to structure texts around prototypical moves profile overview, artistic orientation, repertoire, achievements and adapted tone and register to imagined audiences such as festival curators or streaming-platform subscribers. Students’ reflective feedback provides further support for these observations presented on a Figure 3. Figure 3. Students’ reflective evaluations of the course (N = 48) In combination, the quantitative improvements, qualitative analyses and reflective data indicate a tangible expansion of students’ genre awareness, terminological precision, communicative fluency and linguistic autonomy the core competencies that an intralinguodidactic model is designed to cultivate. Placed against the broader landscape of ESP-Music and CLIL research, the results of the pilot implementation illustrate that while earlier studies have demonstrated the motivational advantages of integrating musical material into language education, the present model advances this line of inquiry by offering a structured, genre-based and corpus-informed architecture that targets not only learner engagement, but the systematic development of disciplinary literacy across academic, professional and digital domains. ESP syllabi for music departments often concentrate on terminology enrichment or general communicative practice, however, they seldom provide an explicit pathway for navigating the internal variation of English as a cluster of music-related sublanguages, which is precisely where the intralinguodidactic approach exhibits its added value. From a theoretical perspective, the study underscores the potential of intralinguodidactics to recalibrate discipline-specific ELT by shifting the focus from language as a unified system of grammar and vocabulary to language as a stratified ensemble of genres and functional registers. Such a shift allows the pedagogical emphasis to move from the teaching of isolated linguistic items to the systematic orchestration of language resources that enable learners to transition fluidly between academic argumentation, rehearsal communication and digital professional self-presentation. In this sense, the model reframes proficiency not as a static level but as a capacity for genre mobility. Among the strengths of the model, several are particularly salient. First, its conceptual integration of needs analysis, corpus methodology and intralinguodidactic principles provides a coherent foundation for curriculum design. Second, the model’s disciplinary authenticity expressed through the centrality of musical repertoire, rehearsal practices and real-world textual genres ensures that instruction corresponds closely to the communicative demands faced by contemporary musicians. Third, the deliberate use of multimodality and controlled translanguaging addresses cognitive and semiotic aspects of musical communication often neglected in conventional ESP courses. Finally, the model encourages the progressive development of linguistic autonomy, enabling learners to take increasing responsibility for text production, genre adaptation and audience orientation. Nevertheless, several limitations warrant acknowledgment. The most notable concerns the limited scale of the pilot, both in terms of participant numbers and institutional context, which constrains the generalizability of the results. The single-semester timeframe captures only short-term development, leaving open the question of long-term retention and transfer of skills into authentic professional environments. The heterogeneity of student specializations, while pedagogically enriching, may mask more nuanced differences in discourse needs among, for example, composers and vocal performers. Moreover, the absence of control-group comparisons and inferential statistics restricts the interpretation of observed gains as indicative rather than conclusively causal. Future research should therefore pursue several complementary directions. Expanding the specialized corpus and incorporating multimodal annotation tools would enable more precise mapping of relationships between verbal, musical and gestural resources. Longitudinal and quasi-experimental studies could illuminate developmental trajectories and test the durability of gains observed in the pilot. Finally, comparative and cross-linguistic investigations examining, for instance, how English interacts with other disciplinary languages of musical discourse (German, Italian, Russian, Chinese) could help refine the model into a flexible, globally adaptable framework for discipline-specific language instruction. The study provides a theoretically grounded and empirically validated argument for the relevance and effectiveness of an intralinguodidactic approach to English-language instruction for tertiary-level music majors, demonstrating that a model explicitly oriented towards the internal stratification of English into academic, professional and digital music-related sublanguages can substantially enhance students’ disciplinary literacy, communicative fluency and genre awareness. By integrating insights from genre-based pedagogy, systemic-functional linguistics, CLIL-informed multimodal practices and corpus-driven analysis, the proposed model offers a coherent framework capable of addressing long-standing gaps between general ESP instruction and the highly specialized communicative demands of contemporary musical education. The pilot implementation confirmed not only measurable gains in terminological precision, genre conformity and rehearsal-communication fluency, but also a deeper shift in learners’ metalinguistic awareness and autonomy, thus validating the pedagogical feasibility of the model in a real institutional setting. These findings carry significant implications for curriculum design in music faculties, suggesting that English instruction should be systematically aligned with disciplinary genres and professional scenarios rather than treated as an ancillary general-language component. Taken together, the theoretical, methodological and practical contributions of this study indicate that intralinguodidactics can serve as a robust and adaptable foundation for redefining how English is taught in higher music education, while opening promising directions for future empirical research and cross-institutional collaboration.