Multilingual Memories: Sakinah’s singing

Singing – who doesn’t like it? But is it also useful for language learning? Children memorise songs really fast – do you remember how quickly everyone learned “Let it go”? As a former preschool teacher, I noticed children learn and remember new words the most through singing.

As a madrasah* student, I learnt three different languages in school: English, Malay and Arabic. One feature of Arabic that is hard to learn is the different endings for verbs. For instance, in the Arabic language ‘I went’ is Zahabtu and ‘she went’ is Zahabat. To make our learning experience interesting, our Arabic language teacher incorporated singing in class. I remember vividly how my classmates and I sang at the top of our lungs, and got excited when our teachers pointed to the different verb suffixes on the board. I also found it extremely helpful during exams! I still remember humming to myself the tune while answering my examination questions as a primary 3 student. 

Did you have any interesting or fun experiences learning language while you were young?

*A Madrasah is an Islamic school where besides having secular subjects such as English, Maths, and Science, we also have religious studies! We used to study those subjects in Arabic, but kids nowadays learn them in English and/or Malay.

This post was written by our Research Assistant, Sakinah. She used to go to a Madrasah located somewhere along Bugis, where she enjoyed spending her school years.

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