Teaching English through Jazz Chants at SMP Pembangunan Padang: A PDS Project

Abstract

This essay explores our efforts to add meanings into our work as English teachers in Padang. Having been given the opportunity to build partnership (kemitraan) between school teacher and university lecturer under the Universitas Negeri Padang PDS project (Lecturers Teaching at School), we decided to teach English that was not heavily steered by exam orientation. This is the way we believe we can enable the young people in our hands to relate their English education with their everyday lives and therefore, to make meaning of their English education. One of the ways we chose to reach the goal of our PDS project was by conducting a classroom action research through Jazz Chants methods employed by Carolyn Graham to teach English to non-native speakers in a fun way (2006). The sample of the research were the students of the VIII/C Class of SMP Pembangunan Padang. This research required students to watch over the samples of Jazz Chants being modelled by the teacher, after that the students were involved to try out the chants in unison, next the students were put in small groups and were asked to practice the chants and at the end the students came up with their own chants derived from the original texts. Due to the nature of the singing activity enforced in Jazz Chants, the students studied within a low-anxiety environment and thus, motivated them to try their best. The result shows that in the first cycle, 60% of the students were able to carry out the chants taught very well and remake the chants by themselves. In the second cycle there was an increase of 15% where 75% students were able to do the chants and remake the texts. This evinced that the implementation of Jazz Chants at class VIII/C of SMP Pembangunan was accepted because it could improve the students’ speaking ability and motivation to study English