Educational benefits of using poetry.
Poetry could be used as a means of teaching languages as it shows a way to teach basic language skills. Sarac explains some of the educational benefits of using poetry:
Different point of view for language:
It broadens the learner’s visual perspective as they begin to use language in a completely different way. The grammar used in poetry is different (does not follow typical grammar rules), for example incomplete sentences. The syntax is also different, for example, in this verse “women and men, small and small; care of none at all”, the sentence structure does not follow typical grammar usage. The vocabulary used is also different, for example, a word “no one” used in a poem does not belong to the standard English vocabulary, but in the poem it gives the meaning that the poet wants to explain. A poet can use slang and slang to make his poetry more meaningful. In this way, the student captures a different point of view towards the language, going beyond the known uses.
Motivate the reader:
Poetry always has hidden meanings that are never clearly expressed, to grasp the original meaning the reader has to explore further and poetry provokes the unmotivated reader to discover what is inside. Reading a single verse, almost every person in 10 would have a different interpretation.
emotional association:
Every time the reader reads a piece of poetry and gets his brainstorm, he begins to find associations between the words and his own life and when the reader is able to do that, it will generate emotional responses. Thus, poetry evokes feelings in the heart and mind.
Learning figures of speech:
Reading poetry makes the reader able to identify different figures of speech used in it, for example, metaphors, personifications, similes, images and ironies, etc., since they are part of everyday language.
Properties of poetry:
Poetry is an enjoyable experience in learning a new language with the properties of rhythm and rhyme, which represent love, affection, and appreciation for the power and sounds of a language. In this way, the reader becomes more familiar with the suprasegmental aspects of language, that is, tone, stress and intonation.
Semiotic elements:
This is the general study of signs and symbols and their functions in a language and these elements are perfectly learned by poetry. In poetry nothing is as clear as it is said, there are always deeper meanings and to portray those deeper images you need a signifier and a meaning that are what poets use in poetry.