Tag Archives: Music in Language Class

How To Use Music To Do Shared Reading

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Music can let children experience foreign language in a pleasurable and natural way. Young children are naturally “wired” for sound and rhythm.  At Chinese with Meggie, music is an indispensable part in the classroom. Besides singing songs with the CD player, we sing catchy tunes while doing shared reading. Below are two examples:

1. 八只猴子（Eight Silly Monkeys)

The recreated lyrics:

五只猴子跳跳跳。    （Five little monkeys jumping on the bed.)
一只猴子掉下来，     (One falls down on the ground.)
妈妈给医生打电话,    (Mother calls the doctor.)
不可以在床上跳跳跳。 (The doctor says, no more monkeys jumping on the bed.)…..

We borrowed the tune from Five Little Monkeys written by A.J. Jenkins.  Children have no difficulty picking up the following vocabularies and phrases when learning the song:
猴子（monkey), 跳 （jump), 医生 （doctor),  床 （bed), 打电话（make phone call),
掉下来 （fall down), 不可以 （not allowed to). And they will also learn to count numbers from 1 to 8.

2. 晚安，大猩猩（Good night, Gorilla)

The recreated lyrics:

猩猩偷走了钥匙，钥匙, 钥匙，猩猩偷走了钥匙，管理员不知道。
(Gorilla stole the key, key, key. Gorilla stole the key. The zookeeper doesn’t know)
猩猩放走了大象，大象，大象，猩猩放走了大象，管理员不知道。
（Gorilla let go the elephant, elephant, elephant. Gorilla let go the elephant. The zookeeper doesn’t know.)…..

The original song is the famous The Wheels On The Bus. The tune repeats the animal vocabularies a lot which makes it easy for children to memorize.

 

Click the following links and right click “save link as” to download the songs:

八只猴子 Eight Silly Monkeys

晚安大猩猩 Goodnight Gorilla

 

Music and Language (II) – How We Use Music?

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We adapt a song for our own use. For example, the song 《十个小印第安人》(“Ten little Indians,”) is a great tool in teaching numbers and objects. We change the word “Indians” to all different objects such as “rabbit,” “oven,” “carrot” etc. Then students are practicing lyrics such as “有一只，有两只，有三只兔子……” (There is one, there is two, there is three rabbits…) They memorize the object as well as the numbers.

We also combine music with different activities. For instance, we may create a song or adapt a song to a picture book. We have a book about a train running all the way down. And we also have a song describing the train running all the way down. When flipping through the book, we simply sing the song. By doing this, the song is visualized without explanation.

We also use a lot of “situation-based” songs in classroom. For example, we have a song for clean-up, and also a song for going outside. When teachers begin to sing these songs, children know instantly that it’s time for clean-up, and it’s time for going out for a walk. With music’s soothing effect, it is easier to attract children’s attention which is also better than merely asking students to “Clean-up the toys.”

Here are songs we sing with our children in class very often. They are also songs sung by almost every child in China:

Two Tigers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEoNuU0conc

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT-3JDRkoWk

Little Donkey: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plPDhwbd5uM

-Chinese with Meggie Language School, Austin, Texas

Music and Language (I) – Why We Use Music?

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We love using music in our Chinese immersion classroom. Therefore, we have written the following two blogs which are about why and how we use music in our classroom.

Music and language interweave with each other and play a profound role in human’s development. For one reason, the music system and the language system share a lot in common. For example, they both have rhythm, tonality, pauses, and stress. For another reason, the combination of the two systems can produce positive effects on both systems. For instance, when we combine music and language to become a song, the language becomes more vivid and easier to express emotions.

For children learning their first language, scientists believe that children’s imitation of the rhythm and musical contours of the language even comes before the speaking of the words. When an infant is listening to a song, he/she does not only learn to discriminate between sounds, but also to acquire the language in a musical context. In other words, music can catalyze children’s language development.

It is not only true for children’s first language acquisition. As we are using music in our Chinese immersion classroom, we notice a lot of advantages in our children’s Chinese acquisition through music, too. In the next blog, we will talk about how we use music creatively in class.

-Chinese with Meggie Language School, Austin, Texas