Using Chants to Teach

Podcasts – ESL Teacher Talk – ESL Podcasts for Teachers

Listen to the show.

Matt has a few new songs on Dream English for younger children (shapes and more.)Â There’s also a little discussion on the benefits of using children’s songs .

Dream English has 40+ free downloadable chants. They are very popular for teaching languages and Matt and Mark go over teaching with chants. The main points of the podcast are:

• what are chants, why use them, and what are the benefits
• differences between chants and songs in teaching
• how chants are used in class
• an example of a chant – ‘Days of the Week‘
• ideas you can use to add to chants sections of the lesson
• ideas for adding chants to different sections of your existing lesson plans

Matt added a free simple background beat clip for ETT listeners! You can use the file to create your chants for anything.

Later in the show, Mark discusses sentence reduction and incresing student fluency. He explains in adult classes how teachers can use some chanting to increase speed, fluency and pronounciation.
If you have some ideas to add or questions about the show, please post your questions and comments here or at the ESL Teacher Talk Forums.

Game of the Week: the Chanting Game

Matt brings the game of the week this week. It can be very simple or use more complicated language structures. It can be used with classes of 6 and up and is a whole lot of fun. Many variations of the activity are discussed as well. Give it a try and let us know how it goes!

A challenge for listeners. What’s a better end to this sentence than Mark’s off-the-cuff response:

“I have a bird and her name is …”

Thanks for listening!