Learning Chinese through Movie Dubbing

By: Haiyan Rong, UICI Intern Chinese Teacher

The Movie “Hero is Back” is very popular with kids. As an intern with a Chinese foreign language class, I made a point of arranging a movie-watching session for the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students. They could view a movie as way to review and practice their Chinese.  The movie chosen was “Hero is back.” To my amazement, the students all liked this movie very much. They kept talking about the characters of the movie.  Motivated by the interest and enthusiasm from the students, I started to formulate a plan: To instruct the students to practice Chinese though imitating the characters’ verbal Chinese, which could be designed as a class to dub a Chinese movie withe their own Chinese.

With the idea in mind, I started to prepare for the dubbing class. I selected an interesting part. Then I typed the Chinese lines of each role with Chinese Pinyin (romanized letters) and English words below the actor’s lines. I then made a copy for every student. The next day, at the beginning of the review class, I said, “It seemed to me that all of you liked the movie ‘Hero is back’.  Do you have an interest in playing the roles of the characters in the movie?” All of the students were excited to practice Chinese dubbing.

I let the students to divide themselves into groups, each group consisting of 3 people. The students were encouraged to be self-instructing and talk amongst themselves to asign each person a role. This was team work, and the students showed good team spirit. Each group was given 20 minutes for practice before they did the formal presentation. As a result, each group did a wonderful performance. Every student tried his/her best to imitate the character’s accent and verbal Chinese. The students’ great concentration and passion for the dubbing class has inspired me to figure out more creative ways to help the students practice their Chinese.