Exploring Chinese Poetry using Adobe Spark Video

This tutorial offers Chinese learners from lower-intermediate to advanced level a digital approach to exploring Chinese language and culture through poetry, using a free educational tool: Adobe Spark Video. Based on a multimodal (verbal, visual and textual) and transmedia (from abstract text to digital production) approach, it provides learners with a step-by-step guide to synchronising a selected Chinese poem with recorded recitation as well as corresponding images and music. Grounded in the concept of digitally mediated learning, this activity aims to enhance learners’ autonomy, creativity and participation in the process of foreign language acquisition (Hourigan & Murray). In following this process, learners will have the opportunity to improve not only precision in their reading, listening and speaking skills, but also their understanding of the aesthetics of Chinese literature. Such an approach is particularly relevant to the learning of Chinese, given that tone, prosody and melodic movements are considered distinctive and crucial in Chinese speech, notably in literary genres such as poetry, making poetry recitation an important cultural and pedagogical (though not often practised) aspect of studying the language. Furthermore, in producing an audio-visual illustration, learners are engaged in a process of cultural decoding and recoding linguistically and digitally, thus also deepening their understanding of Chinese cultural and historical traditions in which this poetry is embedded.

While this tutorial makes its demonstration through a classical Chinese poem, ‘A Quatrain’ by Du Fu (712–770 ce), the digital tool and method can be applied to other types of Chinese literary text or to the learning of other languages and cultures. This tutorial can be used by learners independently for self-study or by teachers to complement other learning activities. It is adaptable for either university courses or non-accredited lifelong learning. The tutorial will explain the detailed technical process step by step and provides a demo video to showcase the product. It is recommended that the activity is further facilitated by input on the language and background of Chinese poetic traditions where appropriate.