Rhythmic Activities Used In The Instructional Designs Of Children Mandarin Teaching In New Zealand

Nowadays, teaching mandarin overseas for kids are developing rapidly, but researches based on the uniqueness of each countries are not so many, especially for the primary stage. During my teaching experience in New Zealand,I found that, there exist many problems in Mandarin teaching,such as desirable teaching results, inaccurate pronunciation and poor attention of children,inactive classroom atmosphere so on. After thinking and practice,I found that rhythmic activities which used regularly in pre-school education can be used in children Mandarin teaching and help solve these problems if we change a little bit.Rhythmic Activities refers to activities with body movements and music. This thesis combine the children Mandarin teaching in New Zealand and defines it as: Expressive activities which contains a group of contiguous body movements used to practice Mandarin to the accompaniment of music or drumbeats. The thesis is based on the theories of Instructional Design,Rhythm teaching,Total Physical Response as well as the experiences of one year Mandarin teaching in three intermediate schools of Dunedin,New Zealand. I analyze the situation of Mandarin teaching there and design different rhythmic activities to active Mandarin class and help teaching. It shows that Rhythmic Activities can help students memorize words, cultivate their Mandarin sense and improve teaching effects.This paper includes five parts:The first part introduces the purpose,contents and methods of this study.The second part introduces related theories and research situation. The third part tells the Pre-analysis of the design, including teaching demand, learners, teaching content and teaching objective. The fourth part is the main part of the thesis. First, it tells the general principles of the design under theory guidance, then shows the design of Rhythmic Activities following three steps of language, rhythm and movement. Next, it shows several Rhythmic Activities design cases. The last part shows the effect of Rhythmic activities according to a detailed teaching case. Moreover,it analyzes the effect by different kinds of evaluation such as observation, questionnaire and personal inquiry. At last, I have got the conclusion that Rhythmic Activities can be used in oversea kids Mandarin classes and can receive good effects.