Thursday, March 11, 2010

Japanese Summer Institute: Movies, Museums, and Karaoke

Okay, so the title sounds kinda crazy. Karaoke? Haha. I'll do anything to get my students to actually vocalize Japanese--whether they understand it or not.

The action of voicing new and unfamiliar words--its pronunciation, intonations, and rhythms--help a language learner become more familiar and hence more comfortable with speaking Japanese. So if they're going to voice Japanese, why just limit it to the dialogue and exercises in a textbook? Why not sing along with J-pop?

Not that I should be the model of a perfect student (long story), but I sang Japanese songs a lot in my early years of learning Japanese and it helped me a lot.

Anyway, I felt compelled to write this post when I read this article published in the CCAS Newsletter. It's nice to get a write up in the school newsletter, but I'm sure the word karaoke will raise a few eyebrows, so I wanted to elucidate just a bit.

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