Teaching process in poetry courses within the Turkish environment

Abstract

Poetry courses are taught in Foreign Language Teacher Education Departments either independently (the Uludag University case) or within the framework of general literature courses. The relevant sources benefited from in such courses may initially aim to teach how to read poems before such poetry elements as tone, diction etc. (Di Yanni, 2000). In the model recommended, experiencing poems with subjective responses is given priority while interpreting them with intellectual processes seems to be the following step of reading poems (Di Yanni, 2000, pp. 1-2). In foreign language contexts like Turkey, imposing this order has been observed to be problematic as learners and/or teacher trainees inherently tend to do reasoning to understand a poem before subjectively relating it to their own lives mainly because of the elliptical, metaphorical and allusive language of poetry (Brindley, 1980) and cultural vagueness (Zelenkova, 2004). In this regard, the central thesis and pedagogical implication of this discussion paper is that the interpretation section should take precedence when to approach a new poem as that is what would conform with the natural tendency of foreign language learners and the teaching processes to guide the learners should be accordingly planned and implemented.