Critique on “Materials Design and Lesson Planning: Poetry”

Critique on “Materials Design and Lesson Planning: Poetry”

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña Solano

Sunday, June 21, 2015

Twitter: @jonacuso

Post 175

Have language teachers ever been challenged with the teaching of poetry in the language or literature class? Well the answer is a resounding yes! Many an instructor, who has or had to deal with this particular subject matter, has probably endured anxiety, despair, discontent, distress, and even exasperation at the thought of how to go about teaching poetry in the language classroom. Lazar (1993), in her book Literature and Language Teaching has a straightforward answer for any teacher who is about to embark him/herself in the teaching of the art of poetic composition.

Lazar (1993) devised a series of reading tasks to help literature instructors to better design and develop truthful activities within a task-based instruction orientation. Basically, there is no reason why poetic literary pieces cannot be included in a regular language class. Lazar (1993) proposes the following to work with poetry: “exploiting unusual language features” in grammar, pronunciation or word choice; “helping students with figurative meanings,” something that is common for poetry, how to use poetry with low levels, how to use it to “develop oral skills” in a pronunciation class, and how to challenge higher level learners with poetry, too.

The best section of Lazar’s article is her proposal in regards to what kind of activities should be used within a task-based instruction cycle. Lazar (1993) insists on working with poesy in terms of pre-, while-, and post-reading activities, which indeed makes sense when it comes to planning and producing an enjoyment effect in a poetry class. Her suggestions, as the ones included in her article (p. 127) are indeed great departure points when the teacher is clueless and has –basically- no idea whatsoever of what to do with a poem. As a starting point, the instructor can design how a given poetic piece can be taught, then develop the necessary activities for the whole TBI cycle, and then think of a consolidation activity.

Lazar’s suggestions for poetry teaching are worth-while trying in the classroom. They are indeed great help when planning and devising the right strategy for teaching poetry or for using a poem to teach grammar, pronunciation, word choice, dialects, literary devices, collocations, etc.