Tales from
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Session 5
February 13
BACK TO HOME
Today’s class is a perfect example of the potential value of using poetry with mixed ability classes.
“The learners find poetry difficult and boring in their own language, never mind in a foreign language.” (Tomlinson, 1986) And that is absolutely true. If we were told at the beginning of class that we were going to do poetry in a 3-hours-class, my affective filter would go way too high to receive any input.
Harold really knew how to get us, last class’ assignment was to read Tomlinson’s article “Using poetry with mixed ability language classes”. I was expecting some really boring activities such as read the poem aloud, discuss with your partner about your feelings, etc. Every activity that we did today was perfectly planned because I barely noticed the transitions between them.
At one point, the sharing exercise went to a very deep level that our classmates started to share intimate things with us, things that we were not expecting at all.
Tomlinson once said: “We (teachers) are aiming to increase the communicative competence of our learners, not produce poets.” He was right, students are eager to use language when their emotions, feelings and attitudes are engaged.