THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS APPLIED ENGLISH CENTER BETUSA Program

LEARNING ENGLISH LANGUAGE THROUGH JAZZ MUSIC AND KANSAS HISTORY

Marcio Boato Ferreira

Instructor: Lynette Hosek Developing EFL Lessons Based on US History and Culture

Lawrence, 2013

BETUSA: Developing EFL Lessons Based on US History & Culture Lynette Hosek, Instructor STUDENT: MARCIO BOATO FERREIRA

Final Project Preparation Assignment

This paper aims at working with an English activity for Brazilian students from high school who have a good knowledge from the vocabulary of the English Language with an American material collected from my experience as a student in Kansas University. These materials were collected from different places that we visited as part of our US History and Culture class, and in this case, specifically a material collected from American Jazz Museum which is a fantastic place to visit and a place where we can learn much from everything in the museum. The material used in this lesson plan was taken from a website (referred below the text) to give information what is a jazz museum, where this museum can be found and the rich content the material has. The main goal is to work with the plural nouns of English words which is very important for a better use of the language, but the four skills of the language can be worked as listening, reading, writing and speaking as well.

MATERIAL USED - Text ORIGINAL TEXT: AMERICAN JAZZ MUSEUM Located in the Historic 18th & Vine Jazz District in Kansas City, MO, the American Jazz Museum showcases the sights and sounds of jazz through interactive exhibits and films, the Changing Gallery exhibit space, Horace M. Peterson III Visitors Center, Blue Room jazz club and Gem Theater. Since its inception in 1997, the Museum has hosted thousands of students, scholars, musicians fans for over 200 performances, education programs, special exhibitions, community events and more each year, providing an opportunity to learn about the legends, honor their legacy, or simply enjoy the sounds of Kansas

City jazz. Our mission is to celebrate and exhibit the experience of jazz as an original American art form through research, exhibition, education and performance at one of the country's greatest jazz crossroads 18th & vine. As the only museum in the world solely focused on the preservation, exhibition and advancement of jazz, the American Jazz Museum is dedicated to public service and collaborative efforts to expand the influence, awareness and appreciation of jazz within Kansas City and to audiences worldwide.

http://www.americanjazzmuseum.com/SiteResources/Data/Templates/t3.asp?docid=683&DocName=ABOUT%20US

ADAPTATION OF THE TEXT: AMERICAN JAZZ MUSEUM American Jazz Museum is located in Kansas City, USA. The museum presents the sights and sounds of Jazz through interactive exhibits and films. There are some galleries that can be visited by visitors just like Changing gallery, Blue Room jazz club and others. The museum was founded in 1997 and has hosted thousands of students, scholars, and musicians fans for over 200 performances, education programs, special exhibitions, and community events. Many events are held each year, giving an

opportunity to learn about the legends or simply enjoy the sounds of Kansas City jazz. The museum goal is to celebrate and exhibit the experience of jazz as an original American art form through research, exhibition, education and performance at one of the countrys greatest jazz crossroads 18 & Vine. The American Jazz Museum is the only museum in the world focused on the preservation, exhibition and advancement of jazz and is dedicated to public service and it does the effort to expand the influence and appreciation of jazz all over the world. My goal here is to use the text to work with plural nouns which are in bold. First, I will introduce the subject with a video about the American jazz museum in order to lead them to reflect about the importance jazz music had to spread the popularity of jazz music all over the USA. The culture is of the music is wrapped up in the fact that many of the musicians were Negros, and that the white people loved their music but did not treat the musicians as equal human beings. The music itself became a way for the Negro people to have their own culture, something that belonged to them, not the white people. They will see the videos at: http://www.youtube.com/watch,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxOaqUEjk_I After the video presentation there will be a brainstorming, in English, about what they saw on the video and I will check their ideas about the topic. I think that will be a good opportunity to introduce a new vocabulary on music, for instance: instruments, songs etc. These are the instruments used on a formal band: Trumpet, acoustic guitar, saxophone, piano, trombone, clarinet, drums, and double bass. They will also be asked to give more examples of other instruments and they will be offered some

websites to search those instruments and get to know more about jazz music on the internet. Here is a list of some websites: http://musiced.about.com, http://jazz.about.com, http://www.ehow.com. Then, starts the text reading by the teacher giving to the students the opportunity to infer meaning which they will do based on some cognate nouns like: sounds, films, galleries, students, musicians, programs, events and others. This activity can be done putting the students in a circle around the classroom and asking them to repeat the word and asking them to give the meaning of the words. According to their rights and wrongs they will accumulate points to help them in their grades. Example of exercise: Students like games, so it would be a good idea to divide the students in two groups which will have to answer the teachers questions. The teacher asks the first question, for example, Whats the plural form of the word gallery? Then group A will have to answer galleries. Of Course there will be some explanation about the rules that form plural nouns before the exercise itself. Students task will be only to give the answers orally and someone of the group can write the words based on previous explanations. If group A give the right answer, they will get one point, for example. If group A give the wrong answer the opportunity to answer the question passes to the other group. Pictures can be shown to the students as well as a kind of visual exercise as the example below. Example of exercise: Whats the plural of gallery? Whats the plural of guitar? group A .. .. group B score .. ..

Whats the plural of program?

..

.....

guitars

guitar

drum

drums

After the class students will be able to: Effectively use plural of nouns in a text or in some spoken sentences; Distinguish between singular and plural forms of a noun; Be capable of selecting and searching other resources to improve their knowledge. Demonstrate how to use plural nouns in short sentences.