Jazz Chants(r): Student Book

This version of Jazz Chants has more vocabulary than "Small Talk," and thus is good for false beginners. Chants are wonderfully empowering for students; they make students feel fluent right away, as well as starting them down the road of acquiring the rhythmn and intonation so particular to American English. Great concept!

I have used these chants with Non-native English speakers who are trying to improve their accent. Small Talk Chants helps with linking words, sentence stress and shifting sentence stress for subtle changes in meaning. It is a great way to demonstrate prolonging vowel duration, pause, and pitch to stress a word. The students find the chants very helpful.

I think Carolyn Graham's chants are great for helping ESL/EFL students learn and enjoy English. They really liven up a class and I like using the tape as it's got some background music. However, I wish it were on CD so it would be easier to locate the song you want to do each time you want to do it.

One of the most significant challanges for an ESL instructor is to motivate adult learners to try to speak the language. Jazz Chants has proven to be an excellent tool for me to achieve this goal. The Chants are theme-based and provide sufficient repitition to allow learners to practice the sounds and reach a level of comfort and feel successful. The use of humor adds significantly to the reception the chants receive. The students visibly respond with joy as they recognize the intended joke. Humor breaks down barriers and enhances the learning experience. Choral speaking works particularly well with beginners since they are most reluctant to give voice to their new language. They have a degree of anonymity in this environment, encouraging even the most timid to try out the words. I might think carefully about its value with more advanced students but in my beginner's class I wouldn't be without it.