My Experience in Teaching English

Literature  

With Special Reference to Teaching poetry

by

Dr Hana Al-Bayyati

          

      Teaching literature is not an easy task, especially when it is taught in a foreign language. The day I started teaching this important discipline was the most critical day in my life.  That was twenty two years ago.  I was given three literary subjects: (1) An Introduction to English Literature (1^st year), and (2) English poetry from the 16^th –19^th century (2^nd year), (3) Literary Translation (4^th year).  The first problem I encountered was writing the syllabus.  How can I divide that huge literary material into a limited time (two terms). The  second problem was the  teaching methods I had to follow in order to reach different levels of students' minds. I first thought of imitating the method of my British supervisor, by giving the headlines of the topic with a list of relevant sources to be given to the students to fetch from the library and write a research paper on each topic.  Then I asked some students about the method most teachers of our department followed. They all answered: "Dictating, or summarizing". When I compared the British method to the Iraqi one, I found  a big gap between the two.  I decided to follow both in order to see which one the students preferred. I started with the British method.  Unfortunately, I failed to reach the weakest students who complained about the limitation of time and the shortage of the sources in the library. I  tried dictating, and summarizing.  The students were very happy, but I was not. I found dictating the university students the worst method. Then I tried using a text book for each discipline. I found that much better than dictating, yet I was still not satisfied with it, because I like my students to widen their knowledge and participate in the class. So I asked them to write papers on relevant topics to encourage them using the library and the internet.  That was much better than the other methods because it encouraged students to summarize the literary materials and to know how to discuss them in the class.  I used to ask my students to write down some anonymous notes on my lectures referring to the difficulties that hindered their comprehension.  I benefited a lot from those notes. When I read the students' common complaints about the high speed of my English, I slowed down my speed to allow the students to write their notes after me.  When they complained about the amount of the material I always leave in the bookshop, I decided to divide the papers into two groups: the first to be prepared for the exam; the second, for further readings.  When they wrote about  the difficulty in understanding the sound devices in poetry, like rhyme, rhythm and scansion of metrical patterns, I read the verses in two different readings: the normal one and the  poetic one to let them know the difference between the two.  The first reading did not help them to understand English prosody; the second did. Then I asked them to imitate me.  I also used the board to syllabi the verses, and I used my fingers to beat the table to create the sounds of stressed and unstressed syllables. I gave each syllable a certain name, the unstressed (Da) and the stressed (Dum). Then I asked them to guess what metrical patterns are Da Dum, or Dum  Da. They answered the first iambic, the second trochaic. I read a selected verse using the sound symbols and asked a clever student to read a new verse using the same symbols. Following that method, I almost solved the problem of scansion.  In addition, students found it quiet enjoyable.                                                                                        

      When I traveled to Jordan to teach at Jaresh and Al-Hussein bin Talal Universities (2002 -- 2005), I found the Jordanian students even worse than ours. They totally depend on the teacher in summarizing and dictating, not from different sources, but from the textbooks! You can imagine your students depending on you summing up the textbook into a few papers, to be published and left in the bookshop. Of course, I could not break the rule of the university. At the beginning I had to do what the other teachers did.  Later on, I tried to apply another method to make teaching English Literature more interesting. I obliged the students to participate in the class. Examining their comprehension skills, I asked them to listen to me reading a selected short poem in order to state the theme of the poem in a brief statement. If they failed to answer I would ask them to select the most important words that drew their attention.  If they again failed I would reread the poem until they got the idea.  The second step was to go through general meanings of the words and the figures of speech. I asked about the connotations of certain poetic words. When they failed I explained in details with some illustrations (pictures) from the printed sources or from the internet; I also wrote some notes on the board when necessary.                                                                       

     In 2005 I came back to teach in English Department at Basrah University. I was shocked when I saw the level of the Iraqi students less than the Jordanian,  if we exclude 25% of those, who were good enough to either participate in the class or to have very good marks in the exam. I first used the same method I applied to the Jordanian students, adding to it two different procedures: first, listening to a selected poem recorded in a DVD player, and recited by a native speaker.  Then I asked them to imitate the voice and to memorize  the poem, especially when it is short.  I was very happy when I found many students reacted positively towards imitating and memorizing poems. I also discovered some very beautiful voices. That method was helpful because it encouraged students to be fluent in English and to be good at old and modern pronunciations. In addition, they became more courageous and more confident. I even asked my students to translate the poems into Arabic because verse translation would let them concentrate on the meanings of the poems more than usual. Moreover, I asked them to  draw the poetic image. The benefit of that  method was to let the students contemplate the details of the image to enrich their imagination.  That method  motivated me to discover many talented students in paintings. They showed their paintings off in two exhibitions during the departmental  program of April Annual Activities. I encourage students to recite poetry in public competitions to increase their                     fluency in English and to show off their talents in verse recital.

I held three poetry competitions so far.  The poems of the  first two competitions (2011-2012) have been collected in an anthology, called The Tree of Poetry". This year we held a third poetry competition in which we invite the school students of Basrah to compete with the  students of the department.  The total of the  poems in this competition is 25.  I look forward to publish another anthology very shortly.                 

    Another problem I have not mentioned yet is the students literary analysis of poetry. When I found my students weak at critical comments, I encouraged them to be confident enough to present their points of view no matter how weak and silly they might be. The purpose of this method is to increase their ability in literary criticism. I also taught them how to reconcile between their teacher's critical notes and the notes they usually find in the printed sources or in the internet papers. These are not all the  problems I encountered while teaching English Literature because the list is endless.      

    Before I end my paper I would like to draw the department attention to the curricula of literature. We should seriously start updating the traditional curricula into more modern ones and emerge technology in teaching  English literature. To achieve this, the department should build a language laboratory  with the latest technology.