Final Lesson: Chinese songs

Jennifer Wallace, China

Jennifer Wallace was based at Shenyang Normal University, China. E-mail: TEFLChina@yahoogroups.com

I'm leaving the college I work at the end of this semester – and leaving China. I'm 60 this summer, which is standard retirement age for women in Britain, and I'm using that as an excuse to get out of full-time teaching. One thing I want more time for, though, is to carry on learning Chinese. If I come back, I want it to be for more of that – not more teaching. So, for final lessons this week with one class (sophomores, English majors) this is what they're doing for me - and it's such a success I could see it would work with different variations, too.

I explained my plan to carry on learning Chinese back in the UK, and that just as they liked some songs in their English lessons, I'd like some songs in my Chinese lessons (which will mostly be studying on my own). In pairs, they had to choose one for me. I'd asked them all to bring their MP3 players to the lesson – but did then let some go off to the library to download other songs.

So in the penultimate lesson each pair chose a song - and the class spontaneously co-ordinated this so I got 13 different songs. They wrote out the lyrics in characters and pinyin, plus a translation – using me for any translation problems. For homework they've emailed me the recording, and in the final lesson I'm recording them explaining why they chose this song for me, and giving me an introduction to it.

The students - of course - are loving doing this - and loving doing translations which really get over the right feeling to me. They're making careful choices (they know my level of Chinese) but I'm getting a nice selection of the songs they like. I'm getting some different learning material. They're giving me something which costs them nothing. And I'll also end up with a nice personal mini-recording memento of each of them (on my MP3). It's feeling a very nice way to end the course. (I already have photos of each of them.)

This is a first for me in using ‘Chinese’ songs in Oral English lessons, and of course I wish I'd done it before. I can also see how it would have worked well in Listening & Speaking courses I taught last year, in a Writing course I taught in my first semester in a Chinese college, in the Culture course I taught last semester (lovely material for cultural contrasts and similarities) ..... but I'm definitely going to appreciate it most in my own Chinese course!

Please check the Teaching through Art and Music course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Building Positive Group Dynamics course at Pilgrims website.