English 104
 

Jazz Chants Assignment

Jazz Chants is a text which consists of "chants" or exercises that you will be using to improve your spoken English. During this quarter, you will be working on the chants in the Instructional Media Center (IMC). Three times during the quarter, you will be asked to record five chants from the text on an audio cassette which your instructor will then collect and evaluate.
 

The chants in Jazz Chants may, at first glance, appear to be simple. They consist of typical American expressions and commonly used vocabulary. Although they seem to be simple, they are useful for improving many characteristics of spoken English: sentence stress and rhythm, syllable and vowel reduction, blending across word boundaries, and the specific intonation patterns used to convey meaning and emotion. The chants may also help you to improve your listening comprehension skills, and your production of certain vowels and consonants. Thus, each chant is actually complex and should be studied carefully at first, then practiced slowly.
 

When you are working on these chants, listen to the tape several times, paying particular attention to vowel and consonant sounds, sentence rhythm and stress, reduced syllables, and blending. You may want to make a photocopy of the chant you are practicing and mark these characteristics on your photocopy. Then practice the chant several times, slowly at first and gradually increasing your rate of speech until it begins to feel more natural.
 

You will find the units in Jazz Chants which contain appropriate chants for each unit of 104 listed on the tape key (preceding page). You should practice all of the chants for each unit. Three times during the quarter, you should record the five assigned chants and submit the tape to your instructor, who will listen to them and give you feedback on your pronunciation. In other words, it is recommended that you practice all of the chants for each unit; however, you will only be evaluated on 15 chants.

#1:
 

#2:
 

#3: