Reflection for project three -- Music Literacy.

Music seems to be a natural need for people. People start to get into touch with music from when we are newborn baby until we die. When it comes to music, the first thing come into my mind are nursery rhymes since I really get alone well with children. Being born in an “educators’ family,” it seems that there is a “teacher blood” flowing in my veins. It is interesting that the majority of my families are teachers. For example, both of my maternal grandparents are university professors; and my paternal grandfather and my mother are lecturers in university. As a result, I enjoy telling children what I know and help them. From my perspective, nursery rhymes are extremely essential to children as a communication tool and also education tool.

In the essay, I want to tell my readers that there are countless advantages of using nursery rhymes in helping children develop, expressing emotions, and not forget important historical events. There are even other benefits that are still waiting for us to discover. I used three main subtitles in the essay in order to give readers a better understanding of what I am going to talk about.

At first, I begin the essay with an interesting experience with my little cousin. I think I can trigger the audiences’ interest about nursery rhymes by doing this. Next, I briefly introduced the history of nursery rhymes. In the third page of my essay, I argued that the nursery rhyme is more than a simple babyish song which makes children happy. In many cases, these children songs help to teach the children by telling them what's acceptable and what's not, and many nursery rhymes have hidden meanings and origins. Then, I used three nursery rhymes (one is Chinese and the other two are came from England) to support my argument. Also, I use lots of source either from library database or from the reliable website. At last, I illustrate the influences that nursery rhymes may have on children from three aspects: language development, memorization, and raising emotions. In this part, I use plenty of personal opinions and sources to convince readers that how nursery rhymes can affect children. Thanks to the telephone interview with my aunt, who has been a senior kindergarten teacher for about twenty-five years, my point of view was supported by her experiences.

I think the most challenge parts are work citied page and paraphrasing the source. Although I have done the citation for several times, it still cost me tons to time to figure out how to write it correct and complete. I also want to mention that because of different culture, it is hard for me (an international student) to tell the difference between first name and second name. Therefore, I always put the name in wrong order.