An examination of high school choral directors' use of audiation in university interscholastic league sight-reading competition

The purpose of this study was to determine if the use of audiation in the sight-reading process resulted in more successful scores at University Interscholastic League Choral Sight-Reading Contest. Data were collected while observing 82 directors conduct 150 high school choirs in UIL sight-reading competition to determine if there were any trends among those who used audiation. Results indicated that among the 77% of the directors (N=82) that used audiation during their sight-reading study periods, 89% scored a superior composite sight-reading score with at least one of their choirs. A profile of the choirs most likely to use audiation was suburban, 29-40 singers, TBB voicing, conference 5A, and sub-non-varsity. One hundred percent of the choirs who audiated for 211 seconds or more received a Superior rating. The difference in sight-reading superior ratings between the choirs who did and did not use audiation was not significant.