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From: Paul Rogers <ingleshoy@juno.com>
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Subject: [NIFL-ESL:4982] poetry and songs
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I am forwarding this article from Charles Januzzi's Literacy Across
Cultures for those interested. And I would like tohear from people who
use poetry and songs in their classes.
Paul Rogers
LITERACY ACROSS CULTURES
LAC 6 AUG 2000
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[Pages 31-33 of the print edition of Literacy Across Cultures,
Spring/Summer 2000, Volume 4, Number 1]
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***Ideas in Action***
Expressive Writing Skills Enhanced Through
the Use of Poetry
Prisca Molotsi
Nanzan University
Nagoya, Japan
Introduction
A problem that I have often encountered while teaching both oral
communication and writing classes here in Japan is what I see as a
lack of expression on the part of the students. Students seem to be
inhibited, either for cultural or social reasons, from expressing
their thoughts and feelings. Conversation and written exercises
therefore tend to be dull and void of the "colorings" that add life
to language. Using poetry, I have found, greatly helps enhance the
students' writing and speaking skills. In this paper I will describe
a series of activities I have found useful for using poetry to bring
out students' expressiveness and creativity.
There are many reasons why poetry is beneficial in helping students
develop both their writing and speaking skills:
* poetry is an expression of our personal
feelings which are important in any language,
* the rhythms of a language are easier to
assimilate through poetry,
*ideas and personal ideas can be brought
into play more so than in other types of writing,
* poetry enables us to experience the information
relayed to us. (Perrine 1977,p. 4)
There are two ways in which to approach the utilization of poetry in
language: the technical approach, involving the formal analysis of
poetry and techniques for writing it, and the emotional approach,
which focuses on self-expression. While I believe that concentrating
on the technical approach is beneficial for those aspiring to be
great poets, in the series of exercises described below I concentrate
on the emotional approach, for the aim of this exercise is to enable
students to express themselves freely and in ways in which their
language will be enriched.
Expressing oneself freely is something can be quite alien to Japanese
students. It is often said that Japanese have an inner and an outer
self, the former being symbolized by the heart and the latter by the
face, in particular the mouth (Lebra, 1976, p. 159). Encouraged not
to reveal too much by the outer self and not to believe too much in
it, Japanese tend to think that the inner self is thus the truer
self. It is therefore very difficult to extract comments and opinions
from Japanese students, unlike classes in America or in South Africa
where students are encouraged to be as intellectually vocal as
possible. In Japan, an old saying holds that "mouths are to eat with,
not to speak with" (Kuchi wa motte kuubeshi, motte iu bekarazu).
Aware of the difficulties in getting students to be more expressive,
I use poetry in a series of "loosening" exercises, incorporated into
lessons over several weeks, that target the inner self, or the truer
self, of the students. Regardless of whether the class is an oral
communication class or a writing class, the first step in targeting
the inner self is through writing because, as Takie Sugiyama Lebra
(1976) states, Japanese find their individuality in self-reflection,
and proof of one's introspection is usually in some written form, for
example, a diary (p.159).
Preparing to Write
As I mentioned above, little emphasis is placed on the technical
aspects of poetry. It is important, however, for students to be aware
of certain important features such as rhyme, rhythm, alliteration,
metaphor, onomatopoeia, similes, and personification. These aspects
of language are used more frequently in poetry (of which musical
lyrics are a part) than in any other written genre, and they add a
rich dimension to the written word. Existing poems can be used to
illustrate these resources to the students. Therefore, in the first
class where poetry is used, students are asked to bring in poems
which they enjoy. I encourage them to bring in poems which they
enjoyed in their childhood because I find that this type of enjoyment
is innocent and pure, unbiased by what we learn as we grow older (for
example, "correct" stanzas, "proper" rhyme, etc.). Students write
reasons why they enjoy the poems, this being done to reopen the
students' appreciation of poetry. Poems need not necessarily be in
English, and you will find that the great majority of poems enjoyed
by people in their childhood will be in their native language. The
purpose of this exercise is to rekindle those feelings of enjoyment
in the students.
The purpose of the second exercise is to work on the students'
senses, the sense of touch, smell, sound, sight and taste. To do
this, I begin with the sense of sight. I bring a red apple into the
classroom and ask the students to write down the color of the apple
without stating that it is red. Students are encouraged to use their
other senses to help them. Here are two examples of such sentences:
It is the color of blood.
It is the color I feel after drinking too much.
(In the second sentence, the student has used both the senses of
touch and taste.)
The same is done with the sense of taste. Students are given, for
example, a pickled plum to taste and once again they are requested to
write down what it tastes like without actually saying it tastes
salty or sour. Here are two examples:
Tastes of the sea.
It tastes like my tears when my boyfriend said good-bye.
This is done with all of the five senses. The purpose is to encourage
students to start to think poetically and thus to think expressively,
to communicate their ideas not in a static and practical way, but in
a deeper, more intense way, thus giving both the writer and the
reader a greater awareness of the information being communicated.
The third exercise concentrates on feelings. For this, music is
played and students write down what they feel. Initially, responses
are often short or limited to adjectives: I feel sad; I feel happy.
However, as this exercise progresses I have noticed that students,
once comfortable with what they are doing, will write longer phrases.
For example, "I'm in a dark room, and it's raining outside" was
written by one student to describe the melancholic feelings that a
piece of gospel music invoked in her.
Writing the Poem
The final step is for students to write a poem. The aim, once again,
is not to develop a classroom of Wordsworths and Shakespeares, but to
get students to communicate in a sensuous, emotional, and imaginative
way (Perrine, 1977, p. 10), thus enriching their language. In an idea
borrowed from Poem into Poem (Maley and Moulding, 1992), students are
asked to write down memories of their first school, paying particular
attention to color, sound, taste, smell, and feelings. Because the
students are now used to exploring and expressing the sensory parts
of language, this proves to be an easy exercise to do. Depending on
the types of students one has, this exercise can be done individually
or in very small groups. I find the latter works for students who are
still shy about expressing themselves openly. The next step is for
the students to write sentences about each area of feeling, and
finally to collaborate these sentences into a poem. The following is
a result of this exercise. It is an excerpt taken from a poem written
by a group of second-year Japanese students majoring in English:
I remember making a journey
Around the elephant mountain
Surrounded with blooming sunflowers
Under the clear blue sky.
Little flying friends chirping
Calling for us to play.
I remember smashing our hands together
Dancing to the tune, singing a melody
Sounds made by our clever teacher's fingers.
Conclusion
I have found that by doing these exercises, students become more
aware of the different ways in which they can communicate a range of
feelings. Because there is no correct or incorrect way of expressing
these feelings, it becomes very personal and allows often inhibited
students to open up, if not verbally, then through the written
language. This exercise can also be taken one step further, where the
written poems become the objects of discussion, therefore adding an
oral dimension to the exercises. Furthermore, students can be
requested to keep a journal or a log book in which they record their
experiences on a daily or weekly basis. They should be encouraged to
use what they have learned from these exercises to be as expressive
as possible without inhibition.
I have observed that not only do students enjoy working with poetry,
but also, because they are being so expressive, their vocabulary base
broadens immensely. Most important of all, their writing ceases to be
dull and non-captivating and becomes rich and interesting. As Keith
Waterhouse states, writing can either drone or it can sing: "Aim for
the singing kind -- writing that has life, rhythm, harmony, style --
and you will never lose your reader" (1994, p.143). Through these
exercises, I believe that students are taking one step to achieving
this goal.
References
Lebra, T.K. (1976). Japanese Patterns of Behavior. Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press.
Maley, A. and Moulding, S. (1992). Poem into Poem. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Perrine, L. (1977). Sound and Sense. New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, Inc.
Waterhouse, K. (1994). English Our English (And How to Sing It).
London: Penguin Books.
Contact Information
Prisca Molotsi can be contacted at Nanzan University, 18 Banchi,
Yamazato-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya 466-8673, JAPAN.
--------------------------------------------------------
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