Educational benefits of using poetry
Poetry could be used as a language teaching medium as it provides a way to teach basic language skills. Some of the educational benefits of using poetry are explained by Sarac:
Different point of view on language:
It broadens the learner’s perspective as they begin to use language in a completely different way. The grammar used in poetry is different (it doesn’t follow typical grammar rules), for example incomplete sentences. The syntax is also different, for example in this verse “Women and men, both small and small; didn’t care about anyone at all” the sentence structure does not follow typical grammatical usage. The vocabulary used is also different, such as a word “nobody” used in a poem is not part of standard English vocabulary, but in the poem there is the meaning that the poet wishes to explain. A poet might use slang and jargon to make his poems more meaningful. In this way, the learner gets a different perspective on the language, going beyond the familiar usages.
Motivates the reader:
Poetry always has hidden meanings that are never clearly expressed, to grasp the original meaning the reader needs to explore more, and poetry prompts the unmotivated reader to find out what’s inside. Reading a single verse, almost 1 in 10 people would find a different interpretation.
Emotional association:
Whenever the reader reads a poem and understands its original idea, he/she begins to find associations between the words and his/her own life, and if the reader is able to do so, he/she will evoke emotional responses. This is how poetry awakens feelings in the heart and mind.
Learn idioms:
Reading poems enables the reader to identify different idioms used in them, e.g. B. Metaphors, personifications, similes, images and irony, etc., as they are part of everyday language
Characteristics of poetry:
Poetry is an enjoyable experience of learning a new language with the qualities of rhythm and rhyme, both of which represent love, affection and appreciation for the power and sound of a language. This will make the reader more familiar with the suprasegmental aspects of speech, i.e. pitch, stress and intonation.
Semiotic elements:
This is the general study of signs and symbols and their functions in a language, and these elements are learned perfectly through poetry. In poetry nothing is as clear as it is said, there are always some deeper meanings and to represent these deeper images requires a signifier and a signified to be used by the poets in poetry.
Thanks to Fizza Syed | #Benefits #poetry #language #learning
