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Learning Chinese – Using Songs, Stories and Scenes from Real Life

21 Oct 2008

Learning Chinese with songs and stories

Poems and songs help pupils learn Chinese characters and improve their verbal skills.

This is the fifth article in Schoolbag’s series of 10 features on the primary school Chinese Language curriculum. Read the previous ones here.

An earlier version of this article was published in Lianhe Zaobao on 10 April 08. For a Chinese version of this article, click here.

Chinese is both an ancient and living tongue, but how do we keep the language alive at home when many families now speak mainly English instead of Mandarin or Chinese dialects? With these and other changes in the social environment, many children are growing up unable to understand or communicate in Chinese until they go to school.

With this new challenge to educators, MOE’s new Chinese Language curriculum for primary schools now emphasises the acquisition of oral communication skills as the foundation for subsequent learning. At the lower primary levels, students start by listening to their teachers speak on interesting topics that grab the students’ attention and broaden their views. Next, students imitate the speaker and practise expressing themselves verbally. This allows teachers to gauge if a child has listened attentively and understood a particular topic or passage.

Beyond this, students can build up their verbal skills through four fun teaching activities: role-play, reciting, songs and exercises in public speaking.

Chinese as it is spoken in real life

The new curriculum’s Bridging Module and the “Listen and Speak” section in the Core Module (see earlier article) feature real-life scenarios in which students act or interact with one another. Such sessions help students understand how the language is used everyday to address questions such as “What are those people doing?” and “Where is this place?”.

Learning Chinese with songs and stories

Role-playing scenes from stories encourage creative learning and confidence.

Furthermore, these oral communication sessions arm students with the vocabulary and phrases that will be useful in their daily lives. By learning the social etiquette of common tasks such as making a phone call or thanking a helpful person, students can develop effective and polite speaking habits at home, in school and beyond. Teachers as well as parents can practise such scenarios, so that students will feel prepared and confident to speak in Chinese.

Beyond the textbook, billboard advertisements, television programmes, newspaper articles and even things seen and heard on the bus and in hawker centres or shopping malls can be used to kick-start a class conversation in Chinese.

Learning via stories and songs

Kids love stories, don’t they? Teachers will take advantage of this by telling stories and encouraging students to create or remove dialogue between characters, adapt scenes from the plot or describe their feelings about a particular event. Students can work in small groups to discuss their roles and act out specific scenes.

Learning Chinese with songs and stories

Pupils act out a scene from a story about the life of farmers.

At home, parents can chip in too, by re-enacting in Chinese scenes from popular stories such as “The Tortoise and the Hare”. Besides making it fun to speak the language, this will help stimulate the child’s sense of initiative and creativity.

Music is another great way to develop vocal confidence and fluency. Teachers can engage pupils in lively renditions of catchy songs, ditties, poems, tongue-twisters and nursery rhymes such as “The Little Bee”, “The Trishaw”, “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and “Swan Song”. Using playful gestures and hand movements, children will be motivated to exercise their speaking skills in a cheerful and relaxed setting.

We hope that for our students, speaking in Mandarin will become something that they can do naturally, without fear or being forced to. If parents and teachers adopt an encouraging attitude to promote verbal skills in Chinese, children will learn to speak freely and fluently in different settings without feeling stressed. Like seeds in a garden, children require a gentle and understanding approach, so that their abilities can be nurtured to grow strongly and bloom in life.

How to create a conducive home environment for speaking Mandarin

  • Try to bring up conversation topics relevant to things or events that children see, hear and think about, as well as activities they normally do or hope to experience.
  • Express an interest in their learning of Chinese and encourage them to share their learning experiences.
  • Use everyday objects such as road signs and advertisements to communicate with children in Chinese.
  • Watch quality Chinese television programmes with your children.
  • Use common Chinese phrases in your conversations.
  • Get into the habit of practising every day, even for a short time, which is more effective than having one or two long practice sessions.
  • Encourage, praise and let your children feel that they have achieved something in order to motivate them. Different children come from different language backgrounds; this means that every family’s expectations are also different.

Contributed by:
Lim Loo Hua
Teacher
Nanyang Primary School

Lee Liu Ming
Chinese Language Curriculum Planning Officer
MOE


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Learning Chinese with songs and stories

It’s easy to learn new characters and how to use them through stories and role-play.

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Learning Chinese with songs and stories

Every pupils gets a chance to practice his or her verbal skills.

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