When we saw in the seminar the video of a class doing a jazz chant, I was surprised about the “strange” letters in the room, so I want to search about what language is this and why Jazz Chants are there. Finding at home for more Jazz Chants, I discover that this language is Filipino and they are from the Republic of Philippines.
And you can be thinking: “Why Jazz Chants arrive in Philippines?”. Well, I continue finding about it and I found that, from 2008 to 2012, there were the “National English Jazz Chants Festival” supported by the Department of Education of the Government of Philippines, so it shows that the government understand that Jazz Chants are a good methodology to help children to learn English, so they create a festival to develop it.
I think this is a good way to introduce new techniques and new tools to learn English, also in countries where English is the official language. Can you think something like this (a festival) in Spain? Or even in Alcalá, Madrid or Guadalajara?
Maybe you think this is not possible nowadays because children doesn’t have the level required to do it, but this can be a stimulation for them to learn English and understand that learning a new language can be fun. If TV series like “Dora, the Explorer” or the official exams of Cambridge can motivate children to be interested in English and to obtain a good result for them, this “funny” things can be a good thing to increase their motivation.
Is Competition good for kids?
This festival made me think about if competition is good or bad for children. The American author, Alfie Kohn says that “If one child wins, another cannot. Competition leads children to envy winners, to dismiss losers.” so that can make that we think that competition is bad for children because allow them to “put stickers” on their classmates about who is good at something and who is not as good as the others at other things, but he also says that “Co-operation (…) is marvellously successful (…). Children feel better about themselves when they work with others instead of against them”.
Many specialists on children said that healthy competitions are good for children, but all the competitions are “healthy”? What makes a competition “healthy”?. If a healthy competition is about working in groups to not demotivate students, I think we are not doing what we have to do, because in real life, they are going to compete alone, and if we used to our children to be always in groups for everything, maybe we are preparing them for an unreal future.
Link to a video of the winners of 2011 edition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bzhB4MqgEY
Link to their Facebook page (there are information only till the 4th NEJCF in 2011) http://www.facebook.com/pages/National-English-Jazz-Chants-Festival/113346822069127
Link to a webpage where there’s a debate about competition and children: http://www.ineos.com/articles/inch-issue-5-2013/debate-is-competition-good-for-kids/
Hello Jaime
I have to say I’m really impressed with the information you found about the Jazz Chants. Our class about Jazz Chants was something really shocking for me because of two aspects. Firstly I would never figure out that it would be so simple to make a song that would have so many didactic uses, and also because I would never say that someone like me could enjoy singing and producing simple songs as much as I did.
Speaking about “The National English Jazz Chant Festival” I consider it as a great initiative for the children as an opportunity to improve linguistically and also for some parents and teachers as a possibility to learn something really useful for the language development of their children. I strongly agree in the point that maybe it is not a good idea to make a traditional competition in anything related with pupils, maybe a good idea for those competitions would be not just winning or losing, the final idea of those projects could be something like “if you share and enjoy, you win”, this way there won’t be any distinction between children who are better in something and others that aren’t so good in it and we will motivate all of them to participate in those competitions.
Hello Krzysztof, I’m glad you like my post.
I agree with you that the National English Jazz Chants Festival is a good initiative for children but also for parents, because, as you said, it is a possibility of learning something useful from the English development of their children. This reminds me to the Christmas Festival that we make in many Spanish schools that are a way of showing what children learn in English classes.
Thoughtful ideas and interesting insights into the world of jazz chants. I wasn’t aware of the importance of using this resource in the Philippines, thanks a million! I am sure all students try hard to learn, cooperate and try their best in the competition.
Concerning promoting competition in class, if competition is not healthy, should we banned sports? Is losing traumatic? Should we prevent students from feeling as losers? Hmmmm, maybe we can organise a debate on this in class.
I agree with you that we can organise a debate in class about if competitions are good or not with children. I know that we try to create “healthy competitions” in class, because we think that are a way of challenging our students to learn and to work. But maybe, we can stand out the people who are really good and demotivate the people who are not good for this specific task, because when someone is the winner of a competition (and also if we do a “healthy” one), the rest of the participants are the losers, and some of our students can think that we aren’t recognizing their effort and what they did.
Even all that things, I think that competitions are good for children, but maybe we have to “make up” them not to find unexpected results.