Dr. Md. Tabish Iqbal

Patna, Bihar, India

Abstract:

This paper is a study about the analysis of teaching poetry in classroom in any form. Poetry has been always a popular form of literature over the world. It is one of the finest forms of language expressing the feelings and ideas in rhythm and lacing words that triggers reader’s emotions. It turns out over brains process and gives us space for self-reflection. This paper probes the techniques and methods used for teaching poetry and also investigate the complexities coming on way to teach poetry in classroom.Poetry is taught from nursery all the way up to university and inculcates the impact of saying a lot in few words. Teaching poetry gives pleasure to the readers and inspires them to follow new models of life. Teaching poetry in classroom also improves their vocabulary, sentence formation, syntax, fluency and creative skills.This paper also presents a basic review of some approaches to teaching poetry in classroom.

Keywords: poetry, meaning, language, triggers, emotions, analysis.

Overview:

Poetry has always been a finest form of literature and simultaneously not easy to comprehend and teachers always do not know how to teach best in classroom. In short, it is always a challenge for both the teacher and the learners. The study of literature is not regularly discussed as a consistent branch of curriculum in relation to teaching and learning of language. However, teachers and scholars feel that language and literature are closely related and can be incorporated together. A very well incorporated curriculum may offer learners to develop their basic abilities and skills. Literature exposes students to substantialcontexts that are sated with universal themes. Literature always appeals to the learners with diverse styles and inspires thoughtful and purposeful learning.

Poetry being the delicate and finest form of literature that expresses a lot in few words is a difficult task to be taught in classroom. The ambiguity of the language and selection of words are difficult to expedite and explore despite having a variety of resources available. Therefore, indicative response is a key feature of teaching poetry. In view of famous 19^th century poet ‘Lord Byron’ “Words as things that provoke thought”. Hence, teachers should think of words as things almost literally and vocabulary development as an acquisition of more and more things or words. In this connection extending the paragraph, Quoting Ezra Pond will be worth connecting who propagated poetry as mathematics-

“Poetry is an inspired mathematics, which gives us equations,

not for  abstract figures, triangles, squares, and the like,

but for the human emotions”

The phenomenon of poetry inspired by mathematics taken readers on aexpedition through the history of mathematics, highlighting along the way mathematical ideas and achievements that inspires both the mathematician and the poet.The teacher teaching poetry must find out ways to decode and solve the ultimate goal of poetry and let it express to the students. Teachers of English are often acquainted with the literary criticism and interpretation of literary works hence literary texts must be used as a gain for them to teach poetry in a way it should be taught.  As “literary texts are representational rather than referential” (J. McRae, 1994). The referential language used in classroom connects and communicates only at the peripheral and basic level that tends to be informational. But the representational language also includes the usage of imagination and improves empathy for others and makes the learners more creative while learning poetry.

In this research paper, referring the Google Scholar database, anuseful information about teaching poetry, poetry writing, poetry reading etc was extracted and propagated. This has engrossed to come up with the whole phenomenon of teaching poetry in classroom and bring upon some techniques of teaching poetry in classroom. Poetry is old, In fact it precedes literacy. Poetry can be about anything and everything that is, nature, animals, people, places etc. It can be short or long, serious or silly. The possibilities of poetry are endless and infinite. The elements of poetry include rhythm, meter, stanza, rhyme, rhyme scheme, alliteration, figure of speech (simile, metaphor etc.), theme, symbolism and imagery. However, not all poems have all these elements. Most of the poets have also written sonnets (Shakespearean or Petrarchan). A sonnet is a poem consisting of fourteen lines and closed with a couplet at the end.  However, there are more forms of poetry than there is space to list them all in this article.In Contemporary most poets are writing a Japanese Haiku (only three lines poetry). So there is a constant change in style and manner of writing poetry.

To fully enjoy poetry, we need to understand it completely. Referring to Lockward (1994:65) some teachers do not know how to teach poetry in the classroom, most never had an English teacher who could effectively taught poetry so that they might follow the footfalls of them. And that is why their incompetence might bore students in teaching poetry. Literally, finding a good initial point is not easy. Many poems contain complex elements and changes variably in tone and mood and make it difficult to understand.In this condition the approach of teaching poetry becomes dull and deters the essence of reading literature. The reader-response approach addresses this problem by making the learner’s active participation in the learning process. The essential connection between the reader and the text is explained by Louise Rosenblatt’s (1978) in his`Theory of literary reading’, which labels the transactional relationship between a reader and a literary work. The incidents that take place in a literary work befall at a particular time and place. Different readers react to these events in diverseways, depending on their unique interests and experiences acquired. Each reader attaches his or her own personalinterests and interpretation to a literary work.

Therefore, we need to walk around a wide variety of allegorical material and methods that invites them to respond and take keen interests.  All the above mentioned methods are tasted and outcome base (sources). As poetry is a thing to be felt and used as a therapy in human life, the various layers of meanings provide opportunities for evolvingand emerging their “interpretational and inferential skills”.So how teacher teaches poetry in a way that both allow for independent creativity and engagement, but that also ensures the skills. I think that ‘skills’ here is the key. Teachers should be teaching the ‘skills’ learners required in order to respond to poetry, rather than simply teaching individual poems. This is the second major aspect of this paper to ponder over the skills for a better understanding of poetry in classroom. For thisa variety of resources are available for English teachers to enrich the skills and quality of their language with the study of literature. Carter and Long (1991) quoted that “both literature and language teaching involves the amplification of a feeling for language of responses to ‘texts’ in the widest sense of the word in written and spoken discourses” (pp. 2–3).Therefore, suggestive response is considered to be a key feature of both literature and language teaching and learning. Carter and Long (1991) also suggested and propagated the following three models to justify the use of literature-

(i) The cultural model: It shows how literature helps in understanding and appreciating different values and principles together to develop one’s insight of feelings and artistic forms.

(ii) The language model: It stresses the opinion that language is the literary medium and that literature could be seen as atool to teach many aspects of language.

(iii)The personal growth model:This emphasizes that a student understands his/her own society and culture by reading the literary texts.

All these models and observations conclude that for understanding of poetry one must have the impression of artistic form, aspect of language and cultural background/society. This encourages the skills of teacher and reader to read and understand poetry in aimproved way. In this regardthe reader-response approach, as a matter of fact, makes a noteworthy contribution to language learning by interpreting literature and connecting it to individual experience (readers). Distinguished researchers and teachers of language learning supported making literature more reachable by triggering students’ background knowledge so that they may have better foresee and decode the language and themes of literary texts.

Emotional responses from reading a poem or a play can be harnessed for classroom instruction (Bleich, 1975). Eliciting students’ schemata while reading literature is important and personalizing the learning experience upsurges student participation and motivation.  However, using language for literature teaching is not a simple task. Teachers of English face a lot of challenges and complexities in Indian multicultural classrooms.Teachers must be very careful while choosing texts that should be ready for language learning. There are numerous points to ponder over in this connection. First comes difficulty of the vocabulary and syntax of the chosen text. So, teachers should look for works that compete the level and competence of the poetry learners. Other factors that make literature tough are the historical, social, and political references that add to the complexity for the poetry learners. The students’ cultural exoticism with texts causingcomplications and makes them dependent on the teacher’s use of language as well as his or her interpretation. Subsequently, students often have to study language via literature by listening to the teacher’s analysis.

The teacher, who states mostly in the students’ native language, consumes a larger part of the class timing, which is completelyan unproductive way to teach and learn English Poetry. This finding can also be supported by Robert Frost statement-

“Poetry is what gets lost in translation”

Recommendations of the Study:

On the basis of literature review and resources gone through to write this paper, researcher can lay down some recommendations and methods of teaching poetry in classroom-

1. Teachers should introduce poetry with poems that students can relate to (Objective Correlative).
2. A prior idea and understanding of poet as well poetry must be there before reading out a poem in classroom.
3. Read each poem aloud to students more than once for better articulation of words.
4. Spending more time in analysing poetry to understand the author’s purpose.
5. One should use figurative language to help students better understanding the poem’s meaning.
6. It is possible to teach the poetry through flipped classroom and can measure the effectiveness.
7. Setting up a poetry corner in classroom can be a good initiative to understand poetry and its meaning.
8. One must avoid paraphrasing as it may have negative effects. The form of poetry is important to its meaning and so the paraphrase fleeces the poem of an essential aspect of its being.
9. Learners should be encouraged to explore computer-based activities on their own.
10. Software developers must be contacted to join hands with English teachers and create new platforms for learning and teaching poetry.
11. Instead of lecturing, interactive communication, in class activity, discussion about the topics should be encouraged.
12. Student-centric classroom should be arranged with a provision of pre-test and post-test. Pre-test and post-test positions need to be recorded by teachers to motivate students.

Conclusion:

In this paper the researcher first tried to find out the difficulties of teaching of poetry and learners understanding levels. Secondly, how language plays a vital role in expediting and explaining poetry written in complex and monotonous/repetitive sentence structure. In this paper the researcher’s objective has been to encourage teachers to use different form of literature and using emerging technologies and also tried to find out what extent teachers and students could use them more effectively and efficiently. It was also attempted to figure out that students’ motivation in the learning process is often determined by their interest and for the material used in class by teachers. This type of interest and involvement cannot be enacted; it must come out from the resources and lessons that are administered and used in the classroom.

References:

1. Barnett, A. M. (1989). More than meets the eye: Foreign language reading. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
2. Lockward, D (1994). Poets on teaching poetry, English Journal, 83. 65-70. (Google scholar).
3. Carter, R. (1997). Investigating English discourse. London, United Kingdom: Routledge.
4. Bleich, D. (1975). Readings and feelings: An introduction to subjective criticism. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
5. Deepak Nallaswamy V, Saravana Pandian.S and Subha M (2019), “Effects of flipped class based teaching in orthodontics & dentofacial orthopedics – A prospective study”, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332817416_Effects_of_flipped_class_based_teaching_in_orthodontics_dentofacial_orthopedics_-_A_prospective_study.
6. Rosenblatt, M. Louis (1978), Theoretical Models and Process of Literacy, Rutledge (89).
7. Kothari, C.R. (1986). Research methodology. New Delhi: Wiley Eastern Ltd
8. McRae, J (1994). Literature with a small ‘I’, Macmillan Education.