Uzmanlara Sorun

Pedagojik konularda, sınıf tekniklerinde ve materyallerinde EF dil eğitimi uzmanları takımından yardım ve destek alın. Her ay sizin sorularınızdan bir tanesine yıllardır süren dil eğitimi ve öğretmen eğitimi deneyimlerimize dayanarak pratik öneriler yollayacağız. Sorularınızı şuraya yollayın

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Bu ayın sorusu

Dear Teacher Zone Team,

I liked your lecture about using poetry in class but I am worried about using poems because they don’t always have grammatically correct English. Sometimes really well known poems they have old English words like "thy" or "hast" and I don’t want to teach my students language they can’t use. How do you deal with this?

Virginia,
Columbia

Advice from the Teacher Zone Team:

Dear Virginia,

First, choose your poem carefully. If it is a grammar lesson that you want to teach your class, make sure that you choose a poem that shows grammatical structures you want to focus on. One thing to remember is that poems are not usually written in sentences and as sentences are the basic unit of grammar poetry often looks ungrammatical.

If you have chosen a poem that you love, however, in which the grammatical structure is not typical, I explain this to students by saying that in poetry the grammatical structure is often altered to fit in with the cadence of the poem (that is the rhythm and number of beats per line). This might help explain why a poem may seem grammatically incorrect, remind your students that as poetry is best enjoyed spoken or read aloud it is very similar to spoken English. In the spoken English of native speakers are often incomplete. One line of a poem means more because of the lines around it rather than being grammatically perfect on its own. The meaning is also carried along by the rhythm I mentioned above - this is also a great way to introduce rhythm and meter.

For unfamiliar or unused words such as "thy" or "hast" I just touch on the fact that language is always changing and now in speech we use modern English words like "your" and "have" instead. This actually gives a way to teach more grammar rather than less and teaches students more “word attack skills” for unfamiliar words.

All the best,
The Teacher Zone Team