Chants for grammar lessons are great!

Chants for grammar lessons are great! It helps learners to memorise rules especially the pronouns. If your L1 is like mine which we don’t have gender-specific pronoun, it’s challenging for learners to memorise pronouns what else to put them into use.

I have always wanted to do chants. I even have my lyrics ready but the problem with me is that I am a bit tone-deaf. I have different rhythm in my head yet when I say it out loud, it turns out to be a total disaster.

Can anyone suggest me a simple yet interesting way to chant for a tone-deaf?

Comments

  1. Phil BrownDecember 2, 2017 at 9:03 AM

    Since tone-deaf usually refers to being able to hear/sing in tune, I find chants are a safer bet than songs in that regards.

    For chants, keeping rhythm is the key so if you find this challenging, I would start simple. I think Carolyn Graham usually does this at the beginning of workshops, tapping/clapping to a simple 4/4 beat, i.e. 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4, 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4.

    You might also start with single words, rather than phrases, sentences or chants. For example, 'elephant'. You can say and clap the word at the same time

    Clap: O o O
    Say: E le PHANT

    If students have trouble, you might get them to clap only and/or silently repeat the word in their heads first, before encouraging oral production.

    Once you've done this with the words you want for your chant (e.g. elephant, monkey, giraffe, and snake), you can put these together:

    elephant,
    monkey,
    giraffe, and snake

    Then turn it into a chant, for example, to work on sentence rhythm and stress:

    Elephant, monkey, giraffe, and snake
    Who was on time and who was late?
    Elephant, monkey, giraffe, and snake
    How many animals do we make?

    (Each line is 4 beats)

    I hope this helps and at least somewhat answers your question!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Phil BrownDecember 2, 2017 at 9:05 AM

    One more thing, if you and/or your students need help keeping time, you might try using a metronome app.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Day In Day OutDecember 16, 2017 at 6:09 AM

    Thank you Phil! You’ve been very helpful

    ReplyDelete

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