ESL teachers need a toolkit of workable teaching strategies when approaching poetry. Here are five surefire ways to make your next ESL poetry lesson a success. Use these five tips and watch poetry anxiety fade away!
Those who teach English as a Second Language (ESL) understand firsthand how teaching English to speakers of other languages presents many unique challenges. Some of those difficulties include a limited vocabulary range, anxiety in students who struggle to communicate or explain their confusion and very limited literacy in their second language, time constraints, and obviously, culture shock.
But poetry is hard, right? So, wouldn’t It be easier to skip teaching it in an ESL classroom?
Given that poetry is hard for most students. It is no surprise that our ESL students struggle deeply with the nuances of poetic content, meter, and structure. Let’s face it, a lot of poetry is just plain difficult to understand and a large portion of it is intentionally complicated.
The attitude of many may be to shy away from even teaching poetry in ESL classrooms, but that is doing our students a disservice. Poetry helps us understand different perspectives. Teaching and learning from poetry can help students respect and understand the viewpoints of people across the globe. Given that, I would argue that poetry has a place in all ESL classrooms!
So, how can teachers help ESL students not only understand but appreciate poetry? It might be easier than you think.
5 Tips for Teaching ESL Poetry:
1. Incorporate poetry into the curriculum. Students learning a new language while in school are facing many other challenges. An entire unit focused on poetry could create confusion and dislike for the genre. An easy way to incorporate poetry into a literary unit is to use thematic-based poetry to link seamlessly with a standardized curriculum. This will reduce stress on both the student and the teacher. Try to select poetry that is approachable and relevant. Once students can easily see connections, they can then relate the importance of the poetry to their overall learning objectives.
2. Share the culture. ESL classrooms often have students from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds and traditions. Not only are there language barriers to overcome, but also a wide variety of educational backgrounds and culture-specific learning styles. Gaining knowledge about the different cultures in one’s room increases a teacher’s effectiveness when making lesson plans that incorporate poetry and can foster better interactions with ESL students.
Having students research poets online from their native countries is a good place to start. I like the idea of students picking poems to examine. They can discuss what facts and features their poet chose to use and figure out the poem’s overall message, tone, and mood. When students can break a poem down into certain elements— line length, word choice, use of rhyme, students can discuss with confidence why the poem matters.
3. Read poems aloud. Most ESL students are reluctant to read aloud. But encouraging ESL learners to communicate verbally in class helps them practice the language and detect verbal cues. Reading aloud helps ESL students develop language and cultural awareness. By adding verbal response elements to poetry lessons, teachers can help ESL students become comfortable speaking a new language in front of others, even if it is a short poem.
4. Make it visual. Pictures are great for presenting many poems. Think about visual cues for nouns, adjectives, and even simple line or stanza patterns. Look for pictures that are simple, yet effective. With younger students, solicit words by asking “What do you see?” Be sure to call on many students and meet all their suggestions with positive feedback. With older students, you can have them predict a poem’s topic based upon related pictures or even visualizing the poem’s title. But what if you do not have access to online pictures? Well, when all else fails, or you need a quick solution, use simple drawings, or stick figures. Stick figures take only a second to draw, can be used to teach just about anything, and are guaranteed to get a laugh or two.
5. Pair and share. When analyzing poetry, working in pairs is more effective than in large groups because both students are actively involved. Oftentimes, large groups can be intimidating and tend the silence ESL students who often fall behind those who are more eager and skillful and tend to dominate larger groups.
This student-centered learning reduces the amount of teacher-talking time which is one of the great reasons to use pair and share work in the ESL classroom. It gives students more opportunities to speak and practice what they’ve learned and shared in a safe, non-intimidating way. It teaches students to share ideas and builds oral communication skills. And lastly, it helps focus attention and engage students in comprehending the poetic material.
Teaching poetry to non-English speaking students is challenging, but the effort can be very rewarding. If you want to learn additional teaching strategies that improve your effectiveness as an educator, you should read Eudtopia’s “Do’s and Dont’s for Teaching English-Language Learner” and our 8 Tips for Teaching Poetry Effectively.