The Application Of Jazz Chant In Junior High School English Phonetic Teaching

As is well-known, phonetic learning plays an important role in language learningand practical communications. So phonetic learning is essential and basic. Although theteaching ideas are constantly updated, students’ phonetic problems especially intonation,tone and rhythm are still existed. And the critical period of laying foundation is junior highperiod. Therefore, how to improve junior high students’ English phonetic competence andtheir ability of practical application by classroom teaching is the research question formany linguists. Jazz chants, proposed by Carolyn Graham--a professor of English in NewYork University, developed in1970s when audio-lingual approach was still prevalent andcommunicative approach just appeared. It shows spoken English by rhythm, in otherwords, by linking rhythmic spoken English with traditional jazz it shows us natural spokenEnglish. What jazz chants show are not overstated verses but dialogues and poems withstrong rhythm. And its rhythm, stress and intonation are just like natural spoken English.In China people call them “rap songs” or “jazz chants”. The paper, by doing a teachingexperiment to60junior high students, aims to discuss whether jazz chant training modelcan promote students’ English phonetic learning and further provides teaching theory forEnglish phonetic teaching.The main methods applied in the study are:1. Documentation method; afterreviewing the history of English phonetic teaching in home and abroad, the author setsforth the basic principles of phonetic teaching, describes the concept of jazz chant and itssuperiorities in phonetic teaching.2. Questionnaire survey; before the teaching experiment,the author does a questionnaire survey to all experimental subjects to know their basicsituation of phonetic learning.3. English pronunciation test; it is the key part of the study and includes pre-test and post-test. By comparative analysis, this part aims to see whetherjazz chant training model is more effectively in beginners’ mastering phonetic knowledgethan the traditional teaching model and whether jazz chant training improves students’pronunciation proficiency in pronunciation learning.4. Classroom observation; thepurpose of classroom observation in EC is to watch experimental students’ performance inclass which is autonomous and indirectly reflects subjects’ attitude to jazz chant teachingmodel.5. Interview; the interview is done between the author and15students randomlychosen from the experimental class with different English levels. The goal of interviews isto know whether students in EC like or dislike the training model and their ideas on thejazz chant training model.The result shows that although being almost at the same level in passage readingbefore and after the experiment, students in experiment class perform much better in wordpronunciation, sentence stress, sentence liaison and dialogue intonation, and what’s more,most students in experimental class have a new understanding on English phoneticlearning and develop much interest in English phonetic learning.It concludes that jazz chant training model is an effective way in English phoneticteaching among junior high students and can arouse students’ interest in phonetic learning;meanwhile, teachers also need to apply other teaching method to comprehensivelyimprove students’ English phonetic competence.