Improving engagement of non-background beginning learners of Chinese through music in an Australian secondary school

Abstract

This research is about improving the engagement of beginning non-background students in learning Chinese as a foreign language through developing musical pedagogy in Australian schools. In a two-cycle action research, an appropriate musical pedagogy was developed with the teaching goal of singing Chinese songs and a series of musical strategies to teach Chinese language. It was developed in the following steps. First, music was explored to be incorporated in teaching Chinese in listening, speaking, reading, writing, linguistics, and intercultural understanding. Then, the engagement framework from Sawyer, Munns and Cole (2013), which developed the concept of big "Engagement (students' enduring relationship with the learning community), was adapted to examine the improvement of students' engagement with learning. Rich evidence was collected from a class of Year Seven students, showing that the developed musical pedagogy was effective in improving their engagement in learning Chinese. Finally, the effectiveness and uniqueness of the music pedagogy in teaching language was identified and justified by reference to theories including Student Engagement Theory, Social Cognitive Theory, and Constructivist Theory. This research provided suggestions for the types of Chinese songs beginning learners should learn, a series of effective music teaching strategies and the direction for their implementation in teaching Chinese as a foreign language.

Date of Award	2018
Original language	English