Episode 7: Rhythm and Embodied Learning feat. Dr. Kim Rockell - Part 2

Episode 7 : Rhythm and Embodied Learning - Part 2

Dr. Rockell’s path moves through ethnomusicology and language teaching in Japan and Taiwan, and back to New Zealand for graduate study supported by a PhD scholarship. Across this movement, a recurring theme emerges: the hidden melody inside speech. Drawing on research showing improvements in vocabulary recall and intonation, he treats rhythm and melody as parallels to stress and pitch in spoken English.

The episode moves between research, biography, and classroom practice. Earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand disrupt his academic life, forcing him to retrieve books to complete his doctorate and instruments to earn a living, and marking a point where returning to Japan no longer meant returning to the same place. Out of this disruption come elective courses linking music and language, an interest in soundscapes—the overall mix of sounds that shape an environment—and research encounters in Taiwan that extend to migrant musical traditions and endangered languages.

These strands converge in teaching practice. Rockell describes using looping software to practice common word patterns, techniques that make repetition enjoyable, and group activities where students mark or trace intonation patterns as they listen. Teachers will come away with concrete ideas, including reinforcing new vocabulary with simple melodies, lyric-based cloze tasks, music-focused interviews, and the use of Nohperformance—rooted in tanka poetry—as a form of embodied language learning. The episode culminates in a Noh chant from Kurama-tengu and an acoustic guitar performance, reinforcing the central claim: language learning begins not with abstraction, but with sound.

ABOUT DR. KIM ROCKELL

Kim Rockell, PhD – Ethnomusicology and music-language research
https://krockell.wordpress.com/ethnomusicology/

Kim Forrester Rockell on Researchmap (publications & projects)
https://researchmap.jp/7000028643?lang=en

RESEARCH & PUBLICATIONS MENTIONED

Teaching Language Through Music: Reflections of a Professional Musician
By Kim Rockell
https://www.mindbrained.org/2025/02/teaching-language-through-music-reflections-of-a-professional-musician/

Migrant Contributions to the Tainan Soundscape: A Preliminary, Online Study of Migrant, Filipino Musicians. In Fiorella Allio & Yen Ting-yu, Art and material culture in the Tainan Area

International Center for Tainan Area Humanities and Social Sciences Research, Cultural Affairs Bureau, Tainan City Government

ISBN: 9789860701524

TAIWAN, SIRAYA, AND SOUNDSCAPES

Edgar L. Macapili and the Siraya language (Taiwan Panorama)

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Transcript

Darren 0:00

Do you want to make your lessons more engaging and meaningful? Then join me on the Podcast with Darren as we explore performance in education with passionate teachers who bring it to life in their classrooms. Welcome to part two of our discussion of music in the classroom with Dr. Kim Rockell, professor, ethnomusicologist, and just overall amazing scholar. And today we're going to talk about the research behind some of the techniques that he uses, what it was like to do his PhD during the earthquake that took place in New Zealand, and how his attitudes changed about using music in the classroom. We'll also touch on soundscapes and techniques that work in the classrooms. And you won't want to miss this. You're actually going to hear Kim do some no chants, and it's uh quite an amazing experience. Okay, Kim, welcome back to the podcast. Thanks very much, Darren. It's great to be back. I'd like to start off with you telling us about some of your research that underpins your teaching approaches.

Kim 1:13

In the papers that that I've written about uh music and language teaching, of course, the first thing I did was to assess to you know to do a literature review. And I found a paper by Eng, then the name is Eng, where he looked at all of the studies and found that the the benefits that they could identify were in terms of memory or vo vocabulary recall and also in terms of improving intonation, intonation curvatures, which I mean which I would expect, you know, from my way of thinking, using music opens the ear to rhythm and melody, which are analogues for stress and contour, stress and intonation. So I try to draw a parallel between uh intonation patterns, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, and and melody. So the I try to to to make the students aware of the of the hidden melody inside speech. And also in terms of the syllable stress, which is you know a very important feature of stress time language, you know, I think when students use stress in in their in their spoken language at an appropriate level where it seems natural to me, they tell me that it feels very, very strange to them. So, you know, I tr I try to extract rhythm patterns from the natural stress-timed uh sentences, the natural stress-timed sentence. You know, when I'm speaking in English, there's a natural pattern. And I, you know, we have these activities where people in a group and one one the teacher would might say, you know, I'm going shopping. I'm going shopping. And then the students have to listen carefully and and try to extract the rhythm from that. I'm going shopping. I mean, if I say something to you to you, Darren, can you try and extract the rhythm from it? So it's a great day to visit Sendai. Yeah, there you go. So you could quite easily take a take a rhythm pattern from from the speech. And by by using rhythm, it it it just draws their attention to the uh the stress time language and to the to the features of stress in the in the language.

Darren 3:55

So when you were doing your PhD, what else was going on in your life in terms of your relationship with Japan and making money?

Kim 4:04

Okay, well, you know, when I initially wanted to just do a master's degree and return to Japan. So my master's degree was was focused on looking at all the music in the the Filipino migrant community in New Zealand. And so when I completed that uh master's course, I came immediately back to Japan to s to Saitama. And I was living in a house with a friend of mine from from Okinawa, and and you know, that was that was going to be it for me in terms of higher education. But I got a a call from my father, and he said, you know, you we've just received your results and and you've been awarded this, you know, uh distinction or high high high I got the high high result for for my master's. I couldn't believe it, you know. And so I was actually offered a scholarship after that to keep on studying, and and you know, that's that's why I went back and did my doctorate because I mean it's a long time to to take off several years and and you're out of the the workforce. And you know, while I did my master's, I was also working uh really a lot of hours uh teaching classical guitar and and doing gigs and things as well. But so I had this offer to do to keep going with graduate school and and so I mean it seemed uh crazy not to not to take up that offer, and I went back to New Zealand, but I really did miss Japan, you know. I mean, that's one of the things that kept me going, was that I just wanted to finish it and come back to to Japan. Uh that was all that was in my mind, almost, you know, almost every day for for three years was just, you know, I wanted to complete and and come back to to Japan to to my friends, to the life that I that I had. But you know, of course, you can never step into the same river twice. And and when when I came back, I couldn't end up going, couldn't go to live in the same place that I'd been, and my friends had moved. But so yeah, during the time I was in New Zealand, I was you know focused completing my studies and with the goal of coming back to Japan. I did think about creating a kind of you know a summer school for for Japanese students. And so I had a website set up at that time where where we had a kind of um you know a two-week summer school for people that could learn classical guitar lessons and have language lessons and and tours and pick them up from the airport. So I you know I was I was thinking about setting something like uh that up, but but you know, that never came to pass. So we had a huge earthquake during that time too, you know, uh following on from the from the Fukushima, the earthquake in Fukushima. I remember, you know, I was horrified and set sent a message to friends immediately when when I heard about that in the news. But several months later we had the same thing happen in in New Zealand. So everything was closed down and and you know, we couldn't enter the city or couldn't enter the even the the university. I remember I thought, you know, if if I don't go in and get my books and and my musical instruments now, you know, maybe I'll never be able to get them get them out. So I mean I drove straight to the university. They had some guards, you know, outside and they weren't letting people people into the into the the buildings. You know, uh then, you know, like I spoke to one guy, I said, look, like I really if I don't I need my guitar for for my part-time job, if I if I can't get it now, I won't be able to go to work in. He said, Oh mate, you know, just you know, I'm not looking, I'm I'm looking the other way. So then I kind of ran to the the building and ran up and I stuffed as many books as I could into my uh backpack and took the guitar and uh my computer, you know. But after that, we weren't allowed to to go back into the to the buildings for several months and and or or the city, you know. So there was a long time where I was just kind of driving around in the rural areas, going to to libraries, small libraries in the in outside the city and working on my on my thesis in those kind of places, community centers, small libraries. Hmm, yeah.

Darren 8:26

So did your attitude towards using music as a method of instruction change after you got your PhD?

Kim 8:38

Well I mean I would say d definitely, because you know, moving into uh university teaching environment was was a completely different the possibilities and were completely different. And and I mean I was uh asked at the very beginning to create elective subjects, you know, English medium elective subjects, and uh of course I created subjects related to to music. So you know I also applied for jobs as in music departments and you know teaching ethnomusicology as well as language language schools. Even now I'm I teach part-time at at Tokyo College of of Music. I'm I'm doing the graduation thesis. They have a called thesis zemi. So the students in their final year they they do a a year and a half for doing a graduation thesis and music-related thesis. But we so it's the freedom to create elective courses that that made me uh see the possibilities of linking music and teaching language through music.

Darren 9:47

So, Kim, what are soundscapes and do you ever use them in your classes?

Kim 9:52

Soundscapes uh I mean I did refer to that in a in a paper that I did recently about Tainan. And I was very interested in in the way the the different waves of immigration in in and Tainan, different influences, musical and linguistic, led to what we have today. So in in Tainan, for example, the uh the Siraya people, the the uh Aboriginal tribes, had their own Austronesian languages, which have uh the kinds of you know features that we have in Austronesian languages like glottal stops and you know long and short vowels, these kind of sounds. And then the Dutch who came to to Taiwan and were were the first to actually to to write the you know, use a uh a European script to write the language, so they brought their own ideas about the you know phonological systems to the writing of Siraya, and then of course the the um you know the Taiwanese, Chinese and and the Japanese colonial period, you know, that these all these languages and of and the music and songs related to them all uh came to to Tainan in the the south of of Taiwan. And uh so I found this idea of the way the the uh speech patterns and the way the uh the musical culture has kind of evolved and developed in in Tainan very, very evocative. It attracted me a lot. And and I came to to do a paper on that during COVID-19, so that was actually done online, most of the interviews were done online, and uh the idea of a soundscape came up from just reading about the history of Tainan. But I was there earlier this year for field work, and I'm I'm continuing to work with with Edgar Macapili, who's a uh a choral he's a choral conductor, and he has been revitalizing the Saraya language through music. I mean, Aboriginal Taiwanese languages are only spoken by you know less than two percent of the the population, and Syrah was not being being spoken at all, but being one of the first languages to have contact with with Europeans, there are written forms available, and particularly the gospels, you know, the the Christian Gospels. And so Edgar Macapili is is from the Philippines and he has fluency in several Philippine languages, and he married a pianist from Tainan who is actually uh in the the Siraya you know tribe. And so uh he he was astonished when he encountered this old biblical texts in Saraya that he could actually understand them. And and uh so he he's part of a of a of a group of people who are revitalizing Siraya as a as a language and also seeking recognition of the Saraya as a as a um you know a legal entity. They've been fighting for that, and it's fascinating to see what he's the way they're teaching Syrah language uh through music, and that's that's some of the fieldwork that I'm involved in at the moment.

Darren 13:08

How would you define a soundscape?

Kim 13:11

So it's the the culmination or the confluence of all the different sounds that we find in an environment, be they the sounds of nature, the sounds of language, the uh kind of acoustic properties of the environment that people are in, and also the industrial sounds and sounds of technology that that we're we experience today. And these things are people contribute to, but they're also influenced by the environment. So it's it's this overall combination of all these different sonic elements that I would refer to as a soundscape.

Darren 13:51

So, Kim, for the last part of this podcast, I'd like you to talk about some of the techniques that you use and that you found very effective with your students and to what extent there's academic studies to back up these techniques.

Kim 14:06

Sure. Well, I think you know, when we're learning languages, practice and you know repetition of of forms is is important, but that can be quite tedious. So if we want to find ways to be able to re repeat forms, but in an enjoyable way, then I think using different kinds of musical activities can can definitely make them more enjoyable. Now, for example, the idea of a lexical chunk. So there are when we use language, there are often short patterns that are referred to as lexical chunks that we can embed and lead to uh or contribute to fluency. So one of the activities and studies that I did uh focused on lexical chunks was using a looping application. And I and at that time I was at a you know uh university in Aizu, a computer computer science university. A lot of the students were very tech savvy or tech technologically oriented, but not so interested in language. So we used the looping, a looping app called Loopy, which is an inexpensive app, and so students would be taking you know short segments, uh lexical chunks, and recording them using the looping device. We did this uh freely and we also did it using a fixed text. And for my fixed text, I actually interviewed everyone I could could uh get my hands on, I think about 30 people, and asked them how they send an email. And uh people described it in different ways, but but from those various descriptions I was able to to find the most important and the most frequently used and useful instructions for sending an email. And you uh I combined them into a text and had uh students uh use elements from there or short lexical chunks from there to create these these looping patterns. And when they were recorded the the uh language using the looping app, obviously they have to repeat, repeat the language, and also they're listening to the language repeated because because a looping track is going round and round and round. It was very interesting, you know. We we uh we recorded people prior to and after using the looping app, and we used Pratt Pratt software to to examine their you know their speech. I was expecting from that study that there'd be you know an increased intonation curvature, but actually we didn't find that uh but we found an incre increased fluency in terms of you know speed and accuracy, but we but we didn't find an increase in intonation curvature in that study. That was quite interesting. But in terms of engagement, I mean the students definitely were using language in in a very enjoyable way.

Darren 17:22

Sorry, could could you just explain to everyone what an intonation curvature is?

Kim 17:26

So i if individual sounds have pitches from high to low, and if we combine them in a sequence, and imagine tracing a line from these points, that that is what we'd call a curvature, okay? So if if I had three fixed points, let's say of two points here hello, hello, or hello, how about that one? Hello, we have the first sound ha and the second sound low, low, hello. Imagine if you you you drew a mark at a at a higher point for the ha, and then you drew a mark at the lower point for the low, hello, and then between those two points you you drew a a line. That would be the simplest idea for a curvature, an intonation curvature.

Darren 18:16

Okay, thank you. Are there any activities that you use that you could just explain very quickly that teachers could start using in their classrooms right away?

Kim 18:26

For intonation curvature. But I'll just just uh briefly I will uh since we've been talking about that, so so we do do that. So if the student has a has a short verse, they in groups can speak the text and try to to establish what are the highest points and what are the lowest points in the text and mark those onto the onto the text. Also, the teacher can speak and in real time can have the students use their hand to move into a higher or lower position and trace trace the pitch of the voice as the teacher speaks. That's a more of a a warming up activity, just so that after the teacher speaking and the student tracing the pitch with the hand, they can then do it in pairs where one student is speaking and the other student is trying to trace the rise and fall of the voice using their hand.

Darren 19:28

And is this done to increase awareness of tone? Yes, exactly.

Kim 19:32

To increase uh awareness of the the pitch, which is which is uh the the foundation of the contour, because if if the student's voice isn't uh taking low or higher positions in the flow of speech, then there will be no no contour of speech.

Darren 19:51

Are there any other activities that you could recommend to teachers? Goodness me.

Kim 19:57

Well it's just there are there's just uh I think there are an endless number of activities that uh can be used to teach language. Um we can use purely text where students can choose songs and you can have a close activity where you remove vocabulary items from the lyrics and have students listen and fill them in. You can have something related to just purely the topic of music, so that students might uh choose the their favorite artist like Bob Marley or or you know Bob Dylan and then just uh research a brief biography of of the the life of the artist and describe it to the students. Or you can have students doing interviews, mock interviews, where they take the role of an artist that they that they admire and ask them them questions. So in in that sense, music is being used as a more of a of a topic and and one that that is is quite stimulating. Um I've been I've been in situations where people have said to me, you know, how have have questioned whether students you know really find music an engaging topic and and have asked me what is the uh what is the you know data proving that students are interested in music. But I I'm sorry I can't provide that right now, but I can tell you from my decade of experience that that all you know almost all students find music an engaging topic to to talk about, to uh talk about artists, to talk about you know their favorite songs and so forth. Yeah, there's no there's no it's an engaging topic. So I think then we get to the idea of musical techniques, as I as I talked about before, focusing on the stress and the intonation aspects and uh using the technology. Uh so we had this this uh looping apps that that I use. Melodic reinforcement. So while I'm teaching If there comes a vocabulary item that people are unfamiliar with or needs to be needs to be reinforced, then I get them to sing the just the one word to a short melody, usually the same melody. And you know, I do that frequently, so so it helps to draw attention to and embed the the vocabulary item. You know, moving I mean I think when I'm using music in the the classroom, it's moving beyond music but also including performing arts. So, you know, one of the main things that that I do in my classes is getting students to create a uh performance of Japanese no or based on Japanese no, kind of an educational no style uh play. And those plays can include music, they include uh chanting, they include singing, they include, you know, just animated speech.

Darren 23:04

Do you find that you know more s you know more about no than your students know?

Kim 23:09

Yeah, that that that comes up definitely. Uh knowing no is something that I've come to know a lot about. Students have often encountered no in their high school classes, you know, so they most have have had some basic instruction about the history of no in their you know compulsory education, but but actually trying to create their own their own performance is another thing altogether.

Darren 23:40

So we'd love to hear some of your no chants. So this is your chance for some no chant. Goodness me.

Kim 23:49

Yeah. I wonder if I can I can remember the the the the no scripts or no are often based on tunker poetry, this idea of a of a tanka, five, seven, five, seven, seven. So five syllables, seven syllables, five, seven, seven. And yeah. Students once they become aware of this, I get them to try and create their own verses with that number of syllables. And it's quite challenging, but they definitely manage to to do it.

Darren 24:23

Okay, Kim, we're ready for some of your no chance. Take it away.

Kim 24:34

Kim performs Noh chants in Japanese So it's the opening of Kurama Tengu, and uh the the wandering Buddhist priest or kyakuso is introducing himself and is going to go on to to visit the mountains to look at the cherry blossoms. This is one that I'm studying at the moment with my teacher, so uh I gave a a short sample from the beginning of the script.

Darren 25:45

So what's your teacher's reaction when you sing these songs in his classes?

Kim 25:50

The style is a traditional rote learning style, so I mean the teacher chants and then then I repeat. I think he's he's pretty pretty kind to to me, I think more so than he would be with other other students. But but he does focus on on the when I get the intonation wrong, definitely.

Darren 26:10

Yeah. So what's next on the horizon for you? What are you working on?

Kim 26:15

Next year is is sabbatical. So I'm I'm going to be very busy writing a lot, you know. And so what I'm planning to do is to revisit the work that I did on the Filipino migrant music in in Australia, New Zealand. I'm thinking of combining the Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, and also the what I'm doing in in Tokyo, where I'm I've been joining in with uh a rondalia or a plucked plucked uh instrument group of Filipinos and and talking to them a lot. And also I've been in contact with other people who have been who have been writing about music in the Filipino migrant community. So I'll be I'll be revisiting that work. And also I'll be I'll be able to do a lot more of no, my own practice of no during the year. And and this new work that I'm doing about this uh Siraya Siraya language in in Taiwan is I'm really excited to be able to follow up with that. You know it's it's it's hard to to find a a clear path ahead, but definitely I'm going to have a lot more time for writing in this year ahead, and so I want to really use that time well and and focus a lot on my writing.

Darren 27:44

And this music you were talking about that's found in the Philippines, does this have its origin in Spanish music?

Kim 27:54

Sure, that that's right. I mean the rondalia or plucked string on ensemble definitely has its uh roots in uh Spain and the Hispanic world. And you know, the the journey, the galleon journey from from Europe to to the Philippines is a fascinating, fascinating journey. I mean I was very interested to read about the the way the musical instruments traveled, how they transformed on that uh on that uh journey, and also how the Rondalia Ensemble came to blossom in in the Philippines today.

Darren 28:33

Okay, Kim. So if anyone wants to learn more about you and some of your work and research, where can they go?

Kim 28:40

Check out the research map, which has details of current projects, and also WordPress site that I'm planning to update as soon as I have a chance. Please check out the the PIE SIG website as well about the exciting stuff that we've got going on.

Darren 28:57

Okay, just to end the podcast on a really nice note, Kim's gonna play a very small selection and then talk about it for a moment. Kim, take it aw ay.

Kim 30:26

So, the piece is called Yana. My dear friend Trevor Tanner, from the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, Australia, wrote it for his girlfriend, called Yana, who is from Mykonos. She was Greek. When she went back to Mykonos, he wrote this ballad for her.

Darren 30:32

Kim, it's been a great pleasure having you with us, and thank you very much for coming in all the way from Aizu today.

Kim 30:39

You're very welcome. It's it's been a been a pleasure.

Darren 30:44

Thank you for listening. Until next time, stay focused and keep performing.