Song-Stuck-In-My-Head: Acquisition on Adjectival Predicates for Secondary School Students in Hong Kong Learning Chinese as a Second Language Through Mandarin Songs

The necessity of learning Chinese as a second language (CSL) in Hong Kong is increasing as there is an ever-growing population of ethnic minorities. Despite this, there is still no centralised second language Chinese curriculum for these students. As one of the recognised examinations for CSL students in Hong Kong, the IGCSE (0547) examiner reports point out that overuse of 是(is) is one of the most frequently made grammatical mistakes by candidates. Based on Krashen’s (Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Pergamon) five hypotheses, the Song-Stuck-In-My-Head Phenomenon (Murphey, T., Popular Music 8:185–193, 1989), as well as VanPatten’s (Input processing and grammar instruction in second language acquisition. Greenwood Publishing Group) input processing theory, a theoretical framework is generated as the foundation of this study to test whether students who learn CSL can acquire the target grammar point (i.e., the adjectival predicate) by listening to Mandarin songs with structured input activities conducted in classes. A quasi-experimental design was used in this research, with 69 Hong Kong secondary school students participating. After a four-week intervention, students who listened to Mandarin pop songs with structured input activities showed improvement in the usage of the target grammar point. This experimental group outperformed the control group and the other experimental group who listened to Mandarin pop songs without input processing activities. The intervention details and the results will be reported in this chapter.