Using poems to develop the higher-level English language Skills of the Junior-Secondary Students in Sri Lanka

Abstract

This paper presents how poetry can be used in the English language classroom in Sri Lanka to develop the higher-level language skills of the junior secondary students. The study applied the qualitative dominant mixed method design to collect data from a sample of 250 Grade Eight students and 61 teachers by using questionnaires, classroom observations, interviews, and text analysis. The key findings of the study were that a majority of the teachers considered that the poems were not suitable to develop the higher-level language skills of the students because they were unfamiliar with using poems for language development. Poems were used in the classroom for loud reading and meanings were explained in the Mother Tongue. When the teachers were provided with strategies as a scaffold, students were actively engaged in the poems and higher-level language skills were developed. Therefore, by applying appropriate strategies poems can be used successfully to develop the higher-level language skills of the students.