Chapter 6 BLOG

This chapter focuses on the two main components of oral language: listening and speaking. There are a variety of strategies that teachers can use to assist students in developing their listening and speaking skills in their secondary language. Primarily, teachers used to use repetition of phrases and chants to aid language learners in acquiring listening and speaking skills. The chapter refers to Carol Graham as having interesting chants to use with students. There are three books out there: Small Talk; Jazz Chant Fairy Tales; and Singing, chanting, telling tales. You can find a printed version of Jazz Chant Fairy Tales at http://www.scribd.com/doc/20570495/Carolyn-Graham-Jazz-Chants-Fairy-Tales. Apparently, “jazz chants provide rhythmic presentations of the sentence intonation patterns of English” (Diaz-Rico, p. 147). This book, specifically, is better for younger students working with longer texts. When looking at this text, I am impressed at the fun quality of the chant without being too young for my students. We use Into English for EL1 and EL2 in school. There are chants embedded within the text but the topics are very young, making my students feel like they are doing work for babies.

Additionally, I loved the games listed in Table 6.4 (Diaz-Rico, p. 162). They appeared fun and simple, allowing for groups to work and compete with each other. After reading some reviews online, I discovered that this book contains some redundancies in activities; they are, for the most part, fun and useful as language building tools.


Response to Peers:
Michelle Greco stated that she felt that her EL students have a difficult time trying to figure out what to say and when to say it. Like Michelle, I forget that some of my students do not have the support at home. Their parents may not know English and may only converse with them in Spanish. With my students, I am always reinforcing their language and restating what they have said. It is sad to think that the reinforcement of English language use ends when they walk out the door of my classroom. After reading Michelle’s BLOG, I looked at Amanda Wright’s. She addressed the learning of BICS through listening to students. She says, “Sometimes we tend to forget that in order to help the students we really need to take time to listen to them.” I wonder if I am doing enough listening to my students. It is easy to get bogged down in the day to day stress and activity of teaching. We all need to take the time to listen, really listen, to our students.