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Integrated holistic approach to poetry instruction.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

The use of poetry in EFL/ESL instruction can provide learners with an opportunity for meaning-filled engagement with English language texts along with integrated development of all four language skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Such a holistic and integrated instructional approach has a strongly grounded rationale for support. An instructional unit with specific texts and a teaching guide offers an illustration of the practicality and advantages of this kind of English language pedagogy in the EFL/ESL classroom for students from low intermediate level.

Introduction

Current theoretical and pedagogical approaches see reading as a meaning-centered process relative to different texts, social contexts, and purposes. Instructionally, reading should be integrated with speaking, listening, and writing, along with critical thinking, and involve students in actively creating and using meaning for particular purposes. Within such an instructional approach, "students become intellectually/ cognitively engaged in language and content" (Blanton, 1992, p. 291). It is essential for students to have opportunities to formulate and express their thoughts, opinions, and feelings, and to relate knowledge and information on matters within their life-experiences and in the society around them. In this way they may enhance their awareness of themselves as well as their own society and culture, and thus be able to widen and deepen their understanding of other peoples, cultures and issues on a global scale.

A focus on meaning within reading texts promotes language acquisition (Krashen, 1982). But more: "As language teachers, we are fundamentally educationalists and not just instructors, and it is our duty to contribute to the emotional, imaginative, and intellectual development of our learners" (Tomlinson, 1986, p. 34). This article will explore the role of poetry to advance such a holistic and integrated instructional approach for college students of English as a foreign language or second language (EFL/ESL). The rationale underpinning the use of poetry will be presented, with supporting references to several scholar-teachers who have very cogently made the case, along with the outline of a specific unit of instruction developed by the author for illustration.

The rationale for poetry

Poetry is universal among all societies and deals with themes that are common to all cultures and human experiences, such as love, death, nature, despair, and hope. Poetry texts can be excellent material for promoting the integration of skills for language learners. As Maley & Duff (1989) succinctly note: "Poetry offers a rich resource for input to language learning" (p. 7). In poetry, all the resources of language are used as in no other...

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