CREATIVE STRATEGIES TO TEACH LITERATURE (POETRY) IN AN ELT CLASSROOM (Pages 10-15) by Arul Prabaharan Gaspar in THE ENGLISH INDIA / ISSN: 2321-1172 (Online); 2347-2634 (Print)

This article presents a range of strategies from various sources (textual, electronic, media and spoken discourse) to define how certain creative methods or strategies can be used to teach literature especially poetry in an ELT class room. It is clearly argued that the mere textual teaching of poetry sans sensory detail tools, realia (ordinary objects used in a class for teaching purposes) (Hornby) and other real-world based material like paintings, music, past experiences and the internet resource will end up in imparting with just study skills like summarizing, note taking and reading for exam purposes and it won’t develop their creative, critical, logical, interpretative, impressionistic, emotional and relational skills to learn for life itself (Waters). To improve learners’ ability to appreciate and understand poems in a meaningful way, both the language learners and the teachers should look outside the text to show those poems rather than teaching them in a classroom.This article presents a range of strategies from various sources (textual, electronic, media and spoken discourse) to define how certain creative methods or strategies can be used to teach literature especially poetry in an ELT class room. It is clearly argued that the mere textual teaching of poetry sans sensory detail tools, realia (ordinary objects used in a class for teaching purposes) (Hornby) and other real-world based material like paintings, music, past experiences and the internet resource will end up in imparting with just study skills like summarizing, note taking and reading for exam purposes and it won’t develop their creative, critical, logical, interpretative, impressionistic, emotional and relational skills to learn for life itself (Waters). To improve learners’ ability to appreciate and understand poems in a meaningful way, both the language learners and the teachers should look outside the text to show those poems rather than teaching them in a classroom.Keywordsexpeditionary learning, musical intelligence, real-world situations, visualization and visual-spatial intelligence