In our last blog post, we were able to demystify the correct use of drills and their advantages in the ESL and EFL classrooms. Today, we turn our attention to chants, another downgraded and misused tool found in many English classes.
“Adriana”, you may say… “we already know how important chants are, we use them all the time”!
“Sure, I know that. However, there are some important aspects I took from Scott Thornbury’s book “How to teach speaking” that, for sure, will magnify your results when using these resources in your language lessons.
According to this author, first and foremost it is important to remember that chants are different from songs”.
“Well, Adriana, you’re right. They are simpler than songs. Aren’t they”?
“Yes! Chants tend to be much more repetitive, shorter, and usually have a smaller number of words than a song. As you already know, chants are an excellent strategy to teach grammar structure, speaking and pronunciation, and I’m sure you use many in your ESL and EFL lessons”.
Well, the first rule of thumb with chants is to find the most suitable one for your students’ needs. The chant must match your teaching objectives; if it doesn’t perfectly match them, it must, at least, be easily adaptable to them.
Although this is a great chant to teach about clothes, at the same time, it can be adaptable to other structures, topics, or phrases. Let’s suppose that I’m not teaching anything related to clothes but I’m teaching about ordering in a restaurant. “I could adapt this chant in the following way”:
Waiter/ Waitress: Are you ready to order, to order, to order?
Are you ready to order, to order, to order?
Are you ready…
to order right now.
Hurry up. Hurry up. Hurry hurry up!
Customer: I’ll have some pizza, some pizza, some pizza.
I’ll have some pizza, some pizza, some pizza.
I’ll have some pizza.
With lots of cheese.
Hurry up. Hurry up. Hurry hurry up!
This is an easy way in which chants can be modified and adapted to the context or topics needed. Take your time when choosing, and rehearse in advance, as sometimes it’s a bit hard to remember the correct intonation or rhythm that a chant has.
Later on, introduce the chant as a dialog and model it with some of your learners once or twice. Then, divide the class in two big groups and perform it. For instance, half of the class will be the waiter and the other half will be the customer. Then switch parts and rehearse it again. You may repeat this process as many times as you consider necessary.
Besides choosing, adapting, and rehearsing the chant with the whole group, it is extremely necessary to allow each one of the students to sing and perform the chant. This will undoubtedly help them develop to the best of their abilities. Stop just relying on choral singing or group repetition, individual practice is a must if you want to listen, provide feedback, and see advancement in your learners.
After the individual practice, challenge your students to reconstruct the chant in written form and identify the stressed words in each sentence; this can be done individually, in groups, or with the whole class.
“But…Adriana , they are just kids … They don’t know anything about stressed word.
“I know they are young ESL learners and they have no clue about phonics or phonetics. However, you may teach them how to identify content words (words that are essential to the meaning of any sentence and that are usually stressed: nouns, verbs, adjectives etc.). Invite them to help you identify them on the board, circle them, and sing the chant once more with the whole class. After doing so, challenge your kids to sing the chant and stand up or clap every time they listen to a content/stressed word. They will not only love this activity, but they will also understand that speaking involves much more than just the plain act of uttering words.
After having done this, start substituting elements, include target vocabulary, grammatical structures, connected speech, intonation, rhythm etc, etc. Don’t be afraid of challenging your students, you’ll be surprised”.
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