In the academe it is said that language has three general features and functions: 1. Language transmits curriculum, 2.) Language communicates control and 3.) Language reflects personal identity. The first emphasizes that spoken language is the primary medium of instruction and demonstration of learning in the classroom. It also initiates, monitors, adjusts and evaluates cognitive processes. The second pertains to discourse formation and to some extent, displays a form of power relation. The classroom here is like a miniature of the social order initiated by institutions like the government (lthe teacher) towards its citizenry (the students). The third speaks of language as somewhat demonstrative of the Self as it converses with an ‘alien’ Other. Thus in a class, there are so many dialogues from various selves and others happening at the same time.
Language as primary classroom commodity almost always comes in question form, an initiation (from the teacher) eliciting response from the students. The answers would then be evaluated by the teacher. Thus we have the IRE model.
This somewhat mechanical discourse is critiqued by Joseph Lukinsky, saying that “a student who can provide an acceptable answer has not necessarily mastered the learning—he or she has merely mastered the structure.” Therefore this system caters to lower cognitive processes. Brophy and Good assert that the focus should not be on the questioning process but toward the learning. Cazden suggests that we prolong wait time to make sure that there is student participation. For his part, JT Dillon encourages student initiated questions.
Now looking at it, the classroom discussion model of student-teacher and student-student dialectics may not be a novel idea at all. It is already a natural tendency for us and can be observed in non-formal social interactions like that among group of friends. Thus the classroom setting should aim to simulate this atmosphere in order to effect productive classroom discourse.
Now let us go back to the use of poems in L2 classes. The art of poetry is a dialectics between the author and his milieu. There is also a dialogue between the poem/text and the reader, and likewise the reader and his/her milieu. During the era of oral poetry, bards would recite in ether in front of an audience. He would use metaphors containing images/objects familiar to his people otherwise he would not be understood and there would be no communication. After the introduction of the printing press, poets began to write in the privacy of the page and would spend creative contemplation in some place away from the crowd. But he was still influenced by the reality he was enmeshed in and most often than not, his poems would finish by themselves according to the temperament of his milieu. Thus he may not be conscious of everything about his creation, maintaining the dialectics. Same with the reader’s interrogation of the text for he too is immersed in his own reality that although related is not identical with the author’s. Consequently, the text becomes a phenomenon and he becomes partial, seeing it in a new light.
The art of poetry then becomes just a process for both poet and reader to arrive at certain realizations. And this conversational tone can be brought into the classroom setting by way of discussing a poetic text. And here, the teacher has no monopoly of knowledge and interpretation although he/she can help guide the students in approaching the text and together they can discover new meanings lurking within the layers and folds of poetic language.
-Sta Cruz, Naga City.
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