Greetings to everyone
Chants and songs have long been recognised as fun and child-friendly tools in learning languages. If you want to have a fun way to practise grammar and vocabulary, stress and rhythm in YL classroom, you can try using chants. In today’s newsletter, you can find some useful tips and resources on how to use chants effectively and help your YL students sound more natural when they speak English.
Grammar chants: benefits and uses (YL)
Chants are repeated rhythmic phrases typically shouted or sung by a crowd. Unlike songs, chants are usually done without and harmony. Most are great sources of vocabulary and help improve pronunciation. As jazz chants are usually built around particular words or structures, you can also use them to revise or even introduce grammar structures. English learning chants use repetition to engage the right side of the brain's 'musical' intelligence’. The use of multiple intelligences can go a long way to helping students speak English 'automatically'. In the following video, you will learn why repetition in music, storytelling and language learning is a powerful activity.
Today we have prepared some tips on using chants with young learners.
How to chant
Using a chant is pretty straight-forward. The teacher usually stands up in front of the class and 'chants' the lines. It's important to be as rhythmical as possible because these rhythms help the brain during the learning process. The main idea is to break up a learning objective into small, bite-sized pieces.
For example, to practice questions forms you can start with a question word, then go on to the simple beginning of a question with the question word, auxiliary verb, followed by the main verb. In this way, students learn to group "chunks" of language that often come together. In this case, the pattern of auxiliary verb + subject + main verb, e.g., do you do, did you go, has she done, etc.
After drilling the chant chorally, divide your students into two groups. One group is responsible for asking questions, the other one is answering. When they feel comfortable enough, you can ask them to perform the chant in pairs.
One more way of drilling the chant is to exaggerate. Make it sound dramatic, allocate roles of an inquisitive colleague or a nosy neighbour. It’ll be fun!
How to create a chant
A grammar chant reinforces a grammatical structure, such as verb tense, a plural form, or the use of an article. These kinds of chants can be used to either to introduce or to review a particular structure. What is important is that the stress pattern coincides with or complements the pattern of the grammar point.
Knowing how to put together a quick chant can be a lifesaver. Here are the tips, taken from a workshop How to Make A Jazz Chant by Carolyn Graham, an undisputed queen of the genre. In this excerpt, she shows how teachers can create Jazz Chants to reinforce any vocabulary or grammar. You can watch it if you follow the link.
Five easy steps to create your own chants:
1. Choose a topic of interest to your students.
2. Use “real” language that’s useful and appropriate for the age of your students. (“What’s your name?” is a real language. “What is your name?” is not real language, because no one really talks like this.)
3. For a vocabulary chant, choose 3 vocabulary words – a 2-syllable word, a 3-syllable word, and a 1-syllable word and put them together with a bit of repetition:
Baseball, basketball, golf.
Baseball, basketball, golf.
Baseball, basketball, baseball, basketball
Baseball, basketball, golf.
4. To reinforce grammar, add a pattern: He plays baseball. She plays basketball. They play golf. They play golf.
5. Have fun and don’t be afraid to play with the language!
Advantages and disadvantages
Like any language teaching technique, chants have their advantages and disadvantages. And it is up to you if you want to use them in your classroom. You will never know unless you give it a go!
If you would like to learn more about other ways of using chants, you can check here:
Carolyn Graham developed the technique of jazz chanting during her twenty-five years of teaching ESL in the American Language Institute of New York University. Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, Graham’s jazz chants spread far and wide along with the ESL teaching methods and techniques. Graham published a number of books, tape recordings and CDs on her method mainly by Oxford University Press. You can watch her teacher training seminar on teaching with chants here:
— Carolyn Graham Part 4 (With Kathleen Kampa Vilina)-- 3-2-2-1, Adding Color Words, From Chant to Song
From Grade Education
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