Pedagogical Stylistics as a Tool in the Classroom: An Investigation of EFL Undergraduate Students' Ability in Analyzing Poetic Language

Abstract

This research paper draws on applying the tools of pedagogical stylistics in teaching literature in particular poetry to English as a foreign language (EFL) undergraduate Iraqi students. The language of literature is rich with social context, exquisite deviant forms, and vocabulary. This paper aims at examining to what extent pedagogical stylistics can be helpful in increasing students' literary awareness. In addition, to examine how it can help them to interpret and analyze selected poems that have been chosen for them to achieve this goal. For the purpose of gathering the required data a pre-test and a post-test are conducted. Verdonk's (2013) approach is adopted in teaching stylistic tools to the students. The participants were (40) second-year students of the academic year 2018-2017 from University of Baghdad, Iraq. Moreover, a questionnaire is distributed to know students' opinions about studying stylistics. The final results proved that pedagogical stylistics tools are of great significance to pay heed to the language of poetry or literary language in general, the questionnaire shows that most agreed on studying stylistics in the classroom. Thus, this study highly recommends that teachers of literary subjects should focus on stylistic tools in teaching literary texts.