An Experimental Study Of Teaching 'Wu Yin Opera' At The Middle School In Zibo City, Shandong Province

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of "Comprehensive Music Teaching" incorporating activities such as singing, playing and performing, to promote the students' preferences for "Wu Yin Opera". Effective ways of inheriting 'Wu Yin Opera' were discussed based on the case study to provide insights of incorporation "Wu Yin Opera" and other folk music formats for general music lessons at the middle school.The static-group comparison design was used for this study. The subjects consisted of a total of 252 students belonging the four classes of Grade 8 at Zhou Cun Middle School in Zi Bo City, Shandong Province. The researcher randomly selected two classes as the experimental group and the other two classes as the control group. The experimental group, including 126 students accepted the lesssons such as "Comprehensive Music Teaching", and the control group accepted the traditional lessons in music appreciation. Two groups participated this research for four weeks. The research tools contained "The Test on Music Knowledge", "The Test on Preference to Wu Yin Opera", and "The test on Achievement of Wu Yin Opera". The expert validity, reliability, and item analysis were analyzed. The descriptive statistics and t-test were applied to analyze the data.The Results indicated as follows:1 .As far as the achievement of Wu Yin Opera, in general, students in the experimental group mastered more knowledge than did the students in the control group. However, on the other hand, according to interviewing, the students of both groups expressed that they all would like to learn the singing, playing, and performing Wu Yin Opera.2.As far as the preference to Wu Yin Opera, there is a statistically significant difference between the students in the experimental group and the control group. However, in the preliminary test before carrying out the experiment, the tested group already showed significantly more preference to Wu Yin Opera. Thus the final test result might not explain the effect of the classes.3.As far as the effects of gender in achievement, there was a statistically significant difference between female and male students in the experimental group. The girls displayed that they mastered more knowledge than male students did. Thus, gender could be one of the factors for mastering the related literature of Wu Yin Opera.4.As far as the effects of gender in preference to Wu Yin Opera, there was a statistically significant difference between female and male students in the experimental group in the pretest and the posttest. The girls displayed higher preference than the boys. However, the significant level slightly decreased in the posttest. Thus, the results indicated that gender should be one of the factors determining the preference to the Wu Yin Opera, and "Comprehensive Music Teaching" seemed to improve the male students' preferences to the Wu Yin Opera.