Jazz Chants

Jazz Chants
By: Taha And Fadwa
Presented by: Mary Beth Worrilow
Date : July 17 ,2006
-Using Jazz Chants in teaching English as a foreign language is the issue we have tackled in today’s workshop.
-The lecturer gave a brief introduction about Jazz Chants using interactive examples. Than she let us know about the Jazz Chants’ history.
The creator of Jazz Chants was Ms Graham. She felt a connection between rhythm of spoken American English and the 1, 2, 3, 4 book of American Jazz. It‘s got a great fame from the 1970’s up till now.
Jazz Chants have a lot of characteristics:-

1- It reduces anxiety.
2- Very motivating.
3- It can be used with students of different levels.
4- It s meaningful communicative and interactive.
5- It also teaches the multiple aspects of language. So why Jazz Chants?
-To develop students’ sensivity to English rhythm.
Problems:
*Natural native language carry over.
*Inability to recognize the difference between stressed and unstressed syllables, words.
*Speech comprehension difficulty.
How?
Through a three step process.
1- Focusing on the nature of English rhythm
*Combination of stressed and unstressed syllables.
For example:-
A- Big black dog chase small white cats.
A big black dog is chasing a little cat.
-In the end of the session, the instructor encouraged us to practise the five step model.
1- Listening to a chant.
2- Simple choral repetition.
3- Group response
4- Role play.
5- Individual response.