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The Poetry
Sausage Machine
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Creative
Writing as a Teaching Strategy
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As teachers of English, we are frequently urged
to use works of literature with students at the intermediate level and above. Apparently,
it is assumed that by simple exposure to works of literary merit, some form of progress in
the target language will be acquired. I have argued often that bringing literature into
the language classroom by itself is of little proven linguistic value. Students may learn
to appreciate good writing if they are introduced to it gradually and as part of a
structured program, but this is essentially a passive acquisition. Much can be gained from
literature if we think of it as a practical resource in the EFL teacher's tool kit.
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The purpose of this paper is to show how the
actual writing of short, descriptive pieces can have a beneficial effect on the use of
adjectives in students' writing. Furthermore, if the method is applied regularly and
often, students will become quite skilled in the production of short, but evocative,
pieces of written English. Once they have attained this skill level, they are much more
likely to be genuinely appreciative of poetry per se , and its place in the
language classroom.
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Students are first introduced to writing these
pieces as a class activity with the teacher in control. A subject is chosen from a
selection of previously successful subject areas, and written on the board. The board
itself is then divided into three equal columns, headed as follows:
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We are now going to encourage responses from individuals. A favorite subject of the past
few years has been "A Fairground at Night." We need, first of all, to list the
various sense impressions that can be recorded under the three headings. These will be
fairly obvious: Under HEAR we'll get the loud and blaring music, the screams of people on
scary rides, perhaps a child's cry, the sound of applause, the crack of guns in the
shooting gallery. From SMELL we'll get the scent of onions and hotdogs, the oily smell of
fairground machinery, the sweet aroma of cotton candy. SEE has the most to offer with the
bright lights; the colorful, garish paint work; the contrast of the brilliant fairground
with the dark of the night sky.
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We now have the ingredients for our
"sausage machine." They must be mixed up and squeezed out into the finished
product.
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The making of a descriptive poem
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I use the analogy of a sausage machine because
we want the students to work with the words to create a poem from their simple
descriptions. But first, the words themselves must be "spiced up."
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I use another analogy here: That of poetry as
being like condensed soup or undiluted fruit cordial. Descriptive poetry is a
"condensed language"; it is so concentrated and intense that it needs our own
interpretations to "dilute" the language and make it intelligible.
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In their first attempts at creating something
out of "A Fairground at Night," I suggest that the students be restricted to
writing a poem that is only nine lines in length (three lines each from HEAR, SMELL, and
SEE). During the first lesson, the items under each should be brief and should be
restricted to nouns. The teacher then asks the class for adjectives to describe these
nouns.
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For example, under SMELL, someone may have given
you machines or engines . You ask the students what these engines smell
like. Will they have nice smells? You will get words like heavy, smoky, oily , and
there's no reason why you can't throw in a couple of exotic ones like acrid, choking
, or pungent .
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When you have enough adjectives for a given
noun, you ask the class to help you make a descriptive phrase to go on the board in place
of the single word. Instead of just engines , we might now get: smoking,
pungent, oily engines or acrid, stinking, choking engines and so on.
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In this first session, the teacher is very much
in control. S/he helps the students build up these phrases until the board is full. Now
comes the hard part. Students must individually choose their own favorites from the ones
on display, and arrange them in any order they like. You can suggest, for example, that
there's no need to have three HEAR phrases, followed by three from SMELL and three from
SEE; the nine lines may be in random order. Once a given time has elapsed, you then get
students to read out their examples to the whole class.
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This will probably be all the time you have to
develop the first lesson. Much will depend on the age and level of the class, but even
with fairly advanced students, there is ample material here for an introductory lesson.
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The success of the idea will now depend on how
you develop the activity. While creating the poem, the teacher should not intrude on the
students' choice of words and phrases. The students can work in pairs or small groups with
the teacher sitting in on each group offering advice if and when it is needed. Finally,
one group member performs the completed poem to the rest of the class.
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To add interest, each group can be given a
different subject area. Subsequently, classes can judge the most successful descriptive
poem of the week, or choose their own subjects for different groups to work on.
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By the time a class is confidently producing
good descriptive poems of this nature, it is time to introduce figurative language. The
class can produce similes without having to explain in detail what they are. As a natural
extension of work done on comparisons, similes can be introduced both as a teacher- or
student- centered lesson.
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In a "sausage-machine" lesson, the
teacher may limit students' choice to descriptions that compare things and encourage the
use of different structures such as: like a is to b , or as y as a z . I
have frequently introduced examples of famous poems here, so that students can see for
themselves how similes are used by great poets. A popular choice of the past has been this
example from Byron's Destruction of Sennacherib .
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The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,
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And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and
gold;
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And the sheen of their spears was like stars on
the sea,
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When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep
Galilee.
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There is no need to restrict students with
concepts like rhyme or rhythm. Once they get used to using language in this way, either
individually or in groups, there is a natural tendency for them to create lines that have
their own rhythm. On a purely practical level, it's a good idea to limit the number of
words they can put in one line (no more than twelve, for example). This prevents the
length and complexity of a line or a phrase becoming convoluted.
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Metaphors can be introduced later and again,
it's a good idea to show "realia" in terms of an actual poem. This example from
Laurie Lea's Field of Autumn has often been used to good effect:
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The sheep, snailbacked against the wall, Lifts
her blind face, but does not know
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The cry her blackened tongue gives forth
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Is the first bleat of snow.
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From this point onwards, whether you introduce
different styles, moods, genres and techniques will depend largely on the class and on how
much time you can or wish to devote to this kind of work. With bright 14- 15 year olds, I
have successfully moved on to areas like allegory and myth; parody, spoof, and pastiche;
as well as attempting original work on sonnets, rhyming couplets, narrative verse, and for
fun, limericks.
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To return to the original premise of the
sausage-machine, here are a few more examples of descriptive scenes which you may wish to
try out in classes of your own: A storm in the desert; a family barbecue in the woods; a
busy marketplace; a birthday party; a trip to the zoo; a circus performance; a day at the
races; a night in a haunted house.
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What you make out of the poetry sausage machine,
is largely up to you. Some teachers may find it's a useful addition at the end of a day
when a period of written work is called for. Others may wish to use it as an introduction
to teaching literature (particularly poetry) in the language class. One of the best ways
of understanding how poets work is to try and produce a poem of your own.
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As a gentle introduction to structured creative
writing it can be very rewarding, while on the syntax level, it has proved useful in
practicing word order in sentences, particularly if you get students to use adverbs as
well as adjectives in their poems.
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Paul
Rogers is an English Language Examiner and Teacher Trainer in the King Abdul Aziz
Air Base, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. |
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Return
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- Daniels, B. and D. Daniels. 1991. Fundamentals of English grammar. Harper- Collins.
- Edge, J. 1993. Essentials of English language teaching. New York: Longman.
- Edge, J. and K. Richards, 1993. Teachers develop, teachers research. Heinemann.
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