A LETTER TO THE ENGLISH TEACHERS

Using A Poem ......by Mike Murhpy

Dear English teacher,

Why not use a poem during one of your English lesson next month? Yes, that's right, a poem! Notice I said use a poem, not teach a poem, and it will become clear what I mean by this as you read on.

The first thing you have to do, however, is find a poem which is suitable for the class of students you intend to use it with. This may not be easy, but it is not impossible. Look for a short poem which does not contain too many unknown words and which is on a topic or has a theme that you can easily relate to your students` background knowledge and experience.

Here is a short poem written by a Chinese poet from Singapore. I believe that this poem is suitable for many Hong Kong students because it has a theme to which many of them can relate. I also believe it can be used in classes from P6 to F6 because it has potential depth as well as surface simplicity. What do you think?

ONLY THE MOON*

by May Wong

When I was a child I thought
The new moon was a cradle
The full moon was granny`s round face
The new moon was a banana
The full moon was a big cake.

When I was a child
I never saw the moon
Only saw what I wanted to see.

And now I see the moon
It's the moon,
Only the moon, and nothing but the moon.

Before reading the poem to the students show them a couple of coloured drawings of a full-moon and a new-moon and ask them to tell you what the shapes are and what they could be. As they offer you suggestions write them on the board. You could end up with a list of words as follow: moon, new-moon, full-moon, cake, ball, banana, egg-yolk, circle, face, lantern, cradle, plate, traffic-light, planet, balloon.

Then ask the students to copy these words onto a piece of paper and, as they listen to the poem, to tick those things May thought the full-moon and the new-moon looked like when she was a child.

After the students have listened to the poem being read to them well, maybe more than once, ask them to read the poem to each other in groups and then try to suggest to each other why May only sees the moon now.

Finally, they can be asked to write a short poem of their own beginning

"When I was very small...

and ending

But now I...".

Here is an example by Thomas Tai, a student at Sing Yiu Secondary School,

When I was a child
The sky was clean
The ground was fresh
The sky looked like a blue blanket
The ground was a green carpet.

When I was a child
I always saw the sky and the ground
I was familiar with them.

And now I see the sky and the ground
They're dark and dirty,
I can't believe it, I can't believe it!

This is only one way of using a poem in an English lesson to encourage the students to use their imagination and their own particular command of the English language to express themselves creatively in English.

I hope you have found these suggestions helpful. Why not try using a poem soon?

Good luck.

¡@¡@¡@¡@Yours sincerely,

¡@¡@¡@¡@Mike Murphy


*The poem is taken from "The Second Tongue" edited by G. Thumboo (1976), Heinmann Educational, Singapore.


¡@

Back
Back to : PTU Home Page (English Version)