Introducing Japanese through Music

Chage & Aska are one of the first Japanese singers who made me interested in learning Japanese. Back in the 1980s the duo were one of the more popular Japanese groups. Their songs could be heard on the radio and I used to listen to them when I was in secondary school. Since then I have moved on and listen to a variety of Japanese singers and am currently more into Korean pop songs.

Next term we will be touching on the theme Japan for one of our English units. I feel that it would be appropriate to give the students an introduction to the country through getting them to list to Japanese music. I could also use the same material which I prepare for the English class for my 8 music classes and it will lessen the time needed to do lesson planning.

Nowadays students are more into listening to pop and rock music then ancient classical music. To be able to capture their attention and interest lessons have to be packaged into byte size packages which have “Ommph”.

Music transcends through language and time barriers. A catchy tune or a melodious instrument stirs more interest then just passively looking at pretty pictures of the various places of interest in Japan.

I have picked out a few different Japanese Artiste to highlight to the students.

Ayumi Hamasaki is one of the leading ladies in J-Pop. I’m sure her pretty face and catchy music will certainly appeal to the older kids in my music class.

SMAP is one of the boy bands which I also loved listening to. Their song ” Lion Heart” is my all time favourite.

Through the introduction of these Japanese Singers to the class I am hoping it will help to stir their interest in Japanese Culture and the learning of Japanese as a foreign language.

If the students are interested we may even dabble into the learning of basic Japanese during the English/music lesson. It sure beats having to get the students attentively listen to Bach or Beethoven when I know that the majority are not inclined to classical music.

How are English/Music lessons conducted in your school?

May 18, 2010

Visit to the Singapore Art Musuem

Dominique Thoughts

At the entrance of the museum

Over the weekend we brought the boys to the Singapore Art Museum . It was the start of their month long Children’s Season exhibition.

The boy enjoyed themselves playing with the interactive displays. The 1st stop we had was at the 1st exhibit on the ground floor. – The Garden

Having fun playing with the enormous “five stones”

Chiling out!!

The light and dark green beanbags were to represent the grass growing in the garden where Walter rabbit lived. I don’t think the boys were able to make the association between the beanbags as they were too preoccupied tossing and throwing the different beanbags at all the kids who were in that room with them.

Floribots

Mechanical flowers called Floribots were featured in one other rooms. The 100 giant robot flowers depicted the plant life-cycle from a seed to a bloom. The boys were intrigued by how the flowers randomly rose and sank.

As we ventured futher into the art garden we entered the Enchanted Forest.

Roy leading the way into the forest

Characters from various stories were entwined together and hidden within the forest. There was an activity book which one could do in conjunction with visiting the Enchanted forest. The book could be purchased from the information counter but we thought against it as we didn’t want the boys to have such a “structured” visit to the museum.

The boys did some colouring of butterflies instead and pasted their masterpieces up within the enchanted forest.

The monster

On the 4th floor of the building we saw this exhibition by Joo Choon Lin. She was on hand at the exhibition to answer questions and Ryan had a field time asking her various questions regarding the reason behind her creations.

Hubs and I found the animated cartoon a big gory and too violent to our liking as there was quite a lot of blood as the monsters were killed. Most of the creatures which were created were made out of copper which was moulded into various shapes and sizes. It must have taken the artist an extremely long time to create each of her masterpieces on show.

The boys were not actually put off by the morbid scene and were happily examining the various exhibits on display. I think they were kinda oblivious to what they were viewing.