Poetry 4 English Learners

As I have pointed out in the previous posts, many authors have advocated for the place of literature in the EFL, ESL, and EAL class, however most text books and teachers opt for prose extracts. Poetry is not a considered a common or easy option for English language learners, therefore its place in the curriculum needs to be justified and emphasized. I’m going to put forward two fundamental reasons for including poetry in the English Language class: poetry appeals both to the heart and the mind, that is to say affective and cognitive strategies interact with poetry in such a way that learning becomes meaningful and pleasurable. Let’s start with affective factors. Poetry is about powerful positive and negative emotions everyone experiences such as love, fear and happiness. It is also about ordinary and extraordinary events which happen to all of us. The language and topics addressed are full of real content and become personal and meaningful to the students. Furthermore, poetry allows subconscious issues to emerge enabling students to discuss their feelings and grow emotionally. It also encourages communication and the sharing of both experiences and feelings, thereby helping both themselves as well as each other. On the other hand, reading and writing poetry is also a cognitive endeavour. Readers will have to decipher and guess the coded or symbolic meaning of the text, whereas the recreation of poetic texts requires the use of intellectual skills such as the synthesis and codification of information. Memory and repetition are essential aspects of poetry which will also reinforce learning. Poetry is an unparalleled way of building awareness of prosodic and suprasegmental features of language learning such as stress, rhythm and intonation, which can only be acquired by the intensive listening and repetition which poetry offers. Poetry also favours skills integration because it should be listened to, read, written and recited. But the greatest value of poetry for teachers is the unlimited amount of poems available of different types, styles, length, epochs, topics, and geographical locations. Learners may not be able to read a whole novel, or even a short story, but they will be able to tackle a poem. They will not be able to write a longer text, but they will be able to write a poem. The variety available to students and teachers is unlimited. There are poems which have survived from Old English literature and twitter poems being written with 140 characters in English speaking countries around the world. One of the greatest challenges is how to integrate poetry in the English class. This blog’s main aim is to offer teachers and learners information and ideas in order to listen to, read, recite, write and enjoy poetry in class.