HEROES Teacher's Guide - Book - Page 13
9. Teaching Songs and Chants
Songs and chants are an integral part of the Heroes program. “Music lowers affective
barriers and assists in making students more relaxed, thereby more receptive to language
learning.” (Engh 2013: 117). The use of music in the language learning classroom increases
motivation and engagement, while decreasing stress and apprehension. In addition, songs
and music have been seen to aid significantly in learning vocabulary and language patterns,
specifically in foreign language acquisition. “Songs have a positive outcome on the students’
language acquisition and…lexical patterns stored in long-term musical memory can be
retrieved with ease at a later date for mental rehearsal, memorization, or during oral
interaction.” (118). Learning and reviewing lexical items through songs and chants is an
effective method of entering them into long-term memory (Laufer, Meara, and Nation 2005)
and a step toward advancing from receptive to productive knowledge.
Throughout the units, songs are strategically re-entered in order to review vocabulary and
lexical chunks and to give pupils the opportunity to gain the confidence to be able to chant
and sing independently. It may take several exposures for pupils to reach a level where they
“can recite and sing using appropriate stress, rhythm and intonation.” (English Curriculum
2020: 24).
The teacher can help pupils build this skill:
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Play the song or chant. Demonstrate by singing or by using Max the puppet to sing.
Perform any gestures that may accompany the song.
Sing the first line of the song (include any gestures). Have pupils repeat after you.
Repeat and continue teaching the song.
Gradually and through each exposure, have the pupils sing along with you/Max.
Each time pupils are exposed to a song or chant, they become more confident in it
and are eventually able to sing independently.
A full list of all the song and chant lyrics in the program appears in Appendix II.
10. Total Physical Response (TPR)
Developed by American professor of psychology, James Asher, Total Physical Response (TPR)
introduced movement and motor activities into the young learner’s classroom. After
decades of research, the link between movement and cognition is clear (Lengel and Kuczala
2010). The introduction of kinesthetic learning has been praised by researchers of the
foreign language classroom as a means of language learning. “When TPR is integrated into
routines, the learners will immediately become involved in the language and engaged in
reacting to it.” (Er 2013: 1767). Furthermore, "use of these multisensory inputs provides
deeper processing, resulting in stronger memory in the brain." (Fink 2015: 139). By engaging
pupils through movement, the target language becomes easier to recall.
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