Ибрашова А.

Региональный социально-инновационный университет

Psychological peculiarities of learning poems by heart

Poetry is an imaginative awareness of experience expressed through meaning, sound, and rhythmic language choices so as to evoke an emotional response. Poetry has been known to employ meter and rhyme, but this is by no means necessary. What is poetry? A short piece of imaginative writing, of a personal nature and laid out in lines is the usual answer. Will that do? Poetry definitions are difficult, as is aesthetics generally. What is distinctive and important tends to evade the qualified language in which we attempt to cover all considerations. Perhaps we could say that poetry was a responsible attempt to understand the world in human terms through literary composition. The terms beg many questions, of course, but poetry today is commonly an amalgam of three distinct viewpoints. Traditionalist argues that a poem is an expression of a vision that is rendered in a form intelligible and pleasurable to others and so likely to arouse kindred emotions [1, p.87].

As poetry is part and parcel of a nation’s spiritual heritage, there is no doubt that it should also be taught to pupils who study English as their second language. Naturally there are great differences of opinion over how much and what type of poetry should be studied. This depends to a large extent on the particular teacher, as well as on the teacher’s personal preferences and judgment. However, because of the linguistic difficulties inherent in most poems, they are generally only taught in the upper forms, when the pupils are older and their English more advanced. Then their response is usually poor, if not altogether negative. This is very disappointing to the teacher who wants to communicate what is so dear to his heart. We have of course to face the question: Where have we gone wrong?

One reason, and certainly a very important one, is that a taste for poetry has to be cultivated; Robert Frost maintained “Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom”. This spontaneous delight cannot emerge suddenly, and definitely not at an age when the pupils’ approach is predominantly, it should be introduced when intuition has a dominant position in the child’s mental make-up. Furthermore, it is a relief to the young pupil whose analytical abilities are being developed in most other subjects if a different ability of his can be made use of.

Another reason for the negative response is that when poetry is approached from a purely analytical point of view, the pupil is burdened with far too many technical literary terms, without which, it has to be admitted, no adequate appreciation of poetry can be expressed. This in itself suffices to bar the reader from experiencing what is beautiful, let alone from enjoying a poem. A vocabulary of literary terms should be built up very gradually. In English language teaching, many literary texts were used as additional passages. The use of literature in language teaching has given many contributions to increase students’ achievement such as creative thinking, motivation, enjoyment, etc [2, p.55].

Poems offer a rich, varied repertoire and are a source of much enjoyment for teacher and learner alike. There is the initial advantage of length many poems are well-suited to a single classroom lesson. Then again, they often explore themes of universal concern and embody life experiences, observations and the feelings evoked by them. Their brilliant concision and strong imagery combine to powerful overall effect. Moreover, poems are sensitively tuned to what, for language learners, are the vital areas of stress, rhythm and similarities of sound. Reading poetry enables the learner to experience the power of language outside the strait-jacket of more standard written sentence structure and lexis. In the classroom, using poetry can lead naturally on the freer, creative written expression. Indeed, poems are capable of producing strong response from the reader, and this memorable intensity motives further reading of poetry in foreign language.

Poetry broadens the mind - but it appeals to the body with a beat that comes straight from the heart and goes in at the ear, soothing you with its pulsing regularity. We know that attending to your body can do wonders for your mind and, we are encouraged to appreciate the benefits of quiet times. Poetry can do this for you at a fraction of the cost and in impressively space and time-defying ways. The word “verse”, from the Latin versus, originally linked the lines of poetry to the turns taken while ploughing a field. So poetry has long been associated with Nature's rhythms and preparation for a harvest ahead. Just now, at the turning of the year, is exactly the time, in fact, to access those old rhythms and rituals: to invest in your sense of wellbeing by remembering the nourishing patterns of the past. To defeat that enemy “the chill”, then, give yourself a poetic boost by using the rhythm of your day to learn a new poem by heart. By making poetry something that fits with life - rather than stands apart from it - you can learn to know and love its rhythms, and to give it a regular and cherished slot in your time.

Take small steps: try short poems or even just a few lines at first. Print them out in clear type on a bright white page, or hand-write a few lines in rich ink on beautiful, thick cream paper. Ask your children to copy a verse on to colored card. Then keep these nuggets of poetic remedy in your coat pocket, in the glove compartment of the car, in your handbag or next to the dog's lead [3, p.42].

Keep them on you as you go about your day and, every now and then, take a moment to think how you can fit the rhythm to your steps along the pavement or the shuttle of the train. Treat yourself to their brightening, enlivening effect. Make short nursery rhymes or ancient ballad choruses fit with the walk to school; turn off the radio and shout a few verses while you sit in traffic. Follow Wordsworth and feel the pulse of blank verse as it rises in tune with a rousing pace across an open field. Who knows? By the end of this year you could be tackling long swaths of poetry - allowing the rhythm to lull you into a meditative trance and giving you breathing space from the noise of the world. By learning a poem or a favorite passage by heart you make it your own. It becomes a part of you, something you can return to at will, a touchstone of reassurance and resonance when life gets overwhelming. It's a reminder of a world away, ancient and longstanding: an escape from your immediate surroundings and from the confines of the self [4, p. 209].

A simple poem in terms of language, perhaps, but it offers a richness that grows with repeated readings and listening. Even though it seems quiet, you might start to hear the drum and the beat of the hunter's chase. And when you learn it in this way, you can decide for yourself - or even let your body decide - what the poem means to say. Is it melancholy? Or wondrous? Frightened? Or alive? Try learning it on the train, on the bus, in the car. At the end of the day, as you step out into the winter night and complete your walk home, allow yourself to revel as you capture a moment's rest in a vast universe. Poetry is the most portable, and the most democratic, of all arts. A Picasso will cost several millions at auction, but a poem is yours for free: if you learn it, you own it. It saddens me that learning by heart has gone so far out of fashion that anyone who can quote a fair quantity - or even a few lines - is thought a freak. Not so long ago ‘learning by heart’ was part of every child’s educational experience. Learning by rote, too; but there is a difference. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines rote learning thus: Mere habituation, knowledge got by repetition, unintelligent memory. At school I had to do plenty of both: learning poetry by heart in one lesson, in the next memorizing principal parts in Latin or learning by rote the dates of all the Kings and Queens from William the Conqueror to Edward VIII. Our history books had been printed in 1936 and we had to pencil in George V and Elizabeth II for ourselves. Much of this seemed mindless at the time. On reflection, though, the training in memory I got at school served me well; and, with memory becoming more and more vulnerable the older one gets, I think training in memory is both a good thing and a pleasure. This is where I see the difference between learning by rote and learning by heart [5, p. 178]. The one is indeed ‘mere habituation’, the other a source of good. I take no particular pleasure in still being able to recite the complete list of fourth conjugation Latin verbs from Kennedy’s Shorter Latin Primer but I do enjoy being able to recite poetry that I learned at school and have never quite forgotten.

In conclusion it is important to point out the benefits of using poetry in English language teaching.

There are certain advantages of learning English by heart:

1. Develops learner autonomy by indicating that teacher is not the front of all knowledge.

2. Stimulates students to interact with the text creatively.

3. Helps students to become an active agent rather than a passive recipient.

4. Highlights language properties like coherence and text organization in the best way.

5. Can be used for testing different sorts of abilities, the ability to make connections and cross-references.

6. Develops independent thinking skills.

7. Enables learners to appreciate the phonetic features (especially through rhyming in poetry).

8. Makes the learner aware of possibilities of semantic range.

9. Encourages overall development of personality through role plays and others interactive activities.

Literature

1.Ляховицкий М.В. Методика преподавания иностранных языков. – М.:

Высшая школа, 2001. – 365 с.

2.Мильруд Р.П. Методика преподавания английского языка. – М.: Дрофа, 2005. – 254с.

3.Maley A., Mouldíng S. Poem into Poem. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. – 180 p.

4.Зимняя И.А. Психологические аспекты обучения говорению на иностранном языке. – М.: Просвещение, 2002. – 357 с.

5.Панов Е.М. Основы методики обучения иностранным языкам. – М.: Просвещение, 1997. – 324 с.