Rap as a Language-Learning Tool

Presented by James Lan and Alex Wiegand.

At the Australian National Community Languages Conference 2023, we held a workshop titled Rap as a Language-Learning Tool. The conference was run by the Community Language Schools Association of South Australia.

At the workshop we presented the story of a project we ran earlier in the year.

In the project, as response to the difficulty children have learning their own community languages, combined with their natural love for rhyme and music, we produced a rap song to encourage participation in the Chinese language weekend school at the Overseas Chinese Association SA.

First we produced it with ourselves performing it, and then we showed the class and asked for volunteers to perform on the song. The response was very good, and five students from the class put their hand up in the new version, which we then produced.

Over the rest of the year, student participation in the class increased.

In the workshop, we shared this story, and then showed the song, available here on Youtube.

Then, we asked the attendees - mostly language teachers for various languages - to write a short piece of equivalent rap lyrics for their own languages.