A Study on Teaching of Poetry at Higher Secondary Level

Abstract

This thesis report's effort is to present a study of the situation of teaching poetry at Higher Secondary Level. The main purpose of this study is to find out the strategies,problems and the relevance of teaching poetry at Higher Secondary Level.The populations of the study are the forty English language teachers of twenty Higher Secondary Schools of Surkhet district and hundred students from randomly selected ten Higher Secondary Schools of Surkhet district consisting ten students from each school. The questionnairesa read ministered to the teachers and students. Moreover,the face to face interview and class observation process took place in the presence of English language teachers. The obtained data are tabulated and analyzed using the simple statistical tools of percentage.This thesis is divided into four different chapters. The first chapter gives the introduction, the second chapter deals with the methodology;the third chapter presents the analysis and interpretation of the data and the fourth chapter deals with the findings and recommendations. It is found that higher secondary English language teacher sare well known about the strategies of teaching poetry but they are not using them equally in the classroom. They are neither very perfect nor poor but medium. They did not use the post-reading activities properly. The teachers are using the teacher centered methods and students are found very passive in the classroom.Further,it is found that teachers are facing many problems while teaching poetry like cultural background of the poet,problem of features of poetry,problem of deviated language, finding poet's mood or intention. They face the problem of mother tongue interference,trans-culture,lack of teaching materials, problem of teacher's training,giving central ideas and critical appreciation .Although there are many problems,many relevancies are found in teaching poetry in Higher Secondary Level. There levancies are: teaching poem helps in motivating the students, to develop vocabulary power, for didactic purpose and pleasure, for aesthetic purpose, for poetic elements, knowing deviated language, skill of using dictionary;access to cultural background, to know literary language, for intensive and extensive reading power of the students,to develop language skills, and to develop interpretive ability and analytic power.