ROBERT FROST’S “THE DEATH OF THE HIRED MAN”: A MATERIAL FOR DEVELOPING STUDENTS’ READING AND WRITING SKILLS

Abstract

This study explores the effectiveness of a literary text as a material for developing students’ reading and writing skills in an ESL/EFL classroom. It explains the reason why teachers should introduce a poem in a language class and also shows how they can extract benefits from it. Robert Frost’s “The Death of the Hired Man” is the literary text explored in this study to demonstrate how different techniques of language teaching can be applied in a tertiary-level language class to develop the subskills of reading and writing. The techniques include guessing meaning from context, answering brief-answer questions, completing sentences, combining sentences, transforming sentences, changing narrative style, applying punctuation correctly, forming words, utilizing deviations, and writing paragraph, dialogue, and critical appreciation. Findings show that a poem – especially a well-selected one – can effectively be used as a material for developing students’ language skills. Sample activities on two of the language skills – reading and writing – are formulated in this study from the aforesaid poem. The activities are set mainly on the basis of the subskills of reading and writing. Further studies on the same poem may focus on developing students’ oral communication skills.