Expanding your Chinese vocabulary with music

Building your Chinese vocabulary can be daunting, but I developed a novel and fun way to learn through music.

In my previous post, I talked about measuring my vocabulary count to track my learning progress. There’s no doubt that vocabulary is necessary to develop fluency in any language.

In 2018, I started to listen to more Chinese songs and discovered music by 陳粒 (chén lì), a Chinese singer-songwriter. This song, 走马 (zǒu mǎ) caught my attention.

Live performance of 走马 by 陳粒.

I liked this song so much that I started to study the lyrics. And then I had the idea to write the lyrics by hand while listening to the song to see how many characters I could write. After going through the whole song, I circled the ones I got wrong. I repeated this process until my ability to write the lyrics by hand was nearly error free. Immediately, my ability to recognize new characters improved.

Music has a universal language. The rhythm is memorable and easy to follow along. Think how nursery rhymes help children learn new words and its meaning. When I learn a new word from a Chinese song, I sometimes sing through the song until I reach the word I’m trying to remember as a form of memory recall—neat right?

The benefits of reciting Chinese lyrics

As Olle from Hacking Chinese points out in his article: “Do you have to learn Chinese characters by hand”, writing Chinese characters by hand isn’t necessary to learn Chinese. But in my opinion, it’s helpful to learn the stroke order as it could aid recall. Research suggests that writing by hand boosts memory and learning. I’ve certainly had moments when I’d try to remember a character, I’d default to using my finger to trace it on my palm.

Learning the character strokes helps to distinguish similar characters. For example, I didn’t know the difference between 之(zhī) and 只 (zhǐ) because they sound similar. So I reviewed the two to learn the differences.

Lastly, this is a fun method to learn Chinese. It’s a way to engage with popular Chinese culture. Let’s be honest—would you rather study song lyrics or a vocabulary list? The answer should be obvious after I expressed my distaste of following a Chinese textbook. Traditional methods of learning has not worked for me and frankly, it’s boring. Heritage language learners need intrinsic motivators to keep learning.the difference between 之(zhī) and 只 (zhǐ) because they sound similar. So I reviewed the two to learn the differences.

How to learn Chinese vocabulary through Chinese songs

Before we start, you need to understand how to handwrite Chinese characters. Read this article for a brief introduction to stroke order.

1. Pick a Chinese song you like. Start with this playlist of Chinese songs (funny enough, the first song in this playlist 慢慢喜欢你 by Karen Mok was another song I studied). Go through this playlist until something catches your fancy—it’s important to study a song you like so you’re motivated to learn it!
2. Find the lyrics online and look up characters you don’t recognize. Try to understand the meaning of the song.
3. Once you have a better grasp of the song’s message, it’s time to start reciting. Play the music one verse at a time verse and write the characters by hand. Don’t worry if you don’t get all of them, just do your best.
4. When you reach the end of the song, check how many you got right. Circle the characters you got wrong and review them.
5. Complete step 3-4 one more time to reinforce the vocabulary you just studied.
6. Repeat this entire process in a few days. Go through this as many times as you need until you feel confident recalling about 80% of the characters. And that’s it!

Pick a song and get started

There’s never a better time to learn Chinese than right now. Pick a song and start writing the lyrics. Let me know in the comments if you’ve tried this and how your attempt went.

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