Exploring students' and teachers' perceptions of the use of poems in junior secondary CMI English classrooms

Abstract

With the implementation of the new three-year senior secondary curriculum in September 2009 which stipulated that Language Arts would become a compulsory component in the English curriculum, literature plays a more prominent role in the teaching of English in Hong Kong. The incorporation of literature into language education, as Carter and Long (1991) illustrate, enhances the linguistic competence and enriches the cultural knowledge as well as stimulates the personal growth of learners.

Among various literary genres, the use of poetry is worth researching into given that students in Hong Kong tend to have reservations about using it as a tool to learn English despite its value. Poetry, as Tomlinson (1986) argues, is able to strengthen the skills of learners to infer and interpret from the linguistic and situational contexts of texts. Its value also lies in the fact that learners of different abilities can make use of poems in different ways. Therefore, there is a pressing need to investigate how the use of poems in English classes can be enhanced.

English translations of popular Chinese poems were used alongside classic poems from the West in this study to see whether the cultural familiarity and linguistic support embodied in translated poems could enhance the use of poems among students and teachers. This study found that while most students remained negative to learning English through poems, the use of translated poems was positively received among the high achievers and teachers. Based on the findings, some suggestions were derived to help schools incorporate poems into the English curriculum.