VOA – Anna Matteo
“Researchers at the University of Edinburgh studied the relationship between music and remembering a foreign language. They found that remembering words in a song was the best way to remember even one of the most difficult languages…A teacher at a Chinese language school in Washington, D.C. relies heavily on songs and chants to teach Chinese. Hua Zhu Ying teaches students who most likely have never spoken Chinese before coming to the school. Ms. Hua says she uses music all the time to teach children Chinese. “For example, for little kids usually we will use English songs but we are teaching them the Chinese lyrics. So it’s easy for them to start because they know the music. They just need to translate into Chinese words.” She adds that not only does it work, but it is fun for the kids.”(more)