Developing poetry pedagogy for EAL
learners within inclusive intercultural
practices
Dr. Vicky Obied
Goldsmiths, University of London
Poetry Matters
September 2011
Bombing of Poems
80 poems printed on 100,000 bookmarks (40 Chilean Poets and 40
poets native to the city)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BLsIme-AFY
Santiago, Chile: 2001: Dubrovnik, Croatia: 2002; Guernica, Spain: 2004;
Warsaw, Poland : 2009; Berlin, Germany : 2010; Nagasaki, Japan: ?.
EAL – linguistic diversity
Pupils with English as an Additional Language (EAL)
in Secondary Schools in England
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2005 - 9%
2006 - 9.5%
2007 - 10.6%
2008 - 10.8%
2009 - 11.1%
2010 - 11.6%
EAL learners still have no National Curriculum
entitlement to EAL teaching and learning.
www.naldic.org.uk
Who’s prepared to teach EAL
learners?
The Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT) survey (TDA,
2008)
The survey found that only 37% of NQTs felt that
their preparation to work with children learning
English as an additional language was good or very
good.
Who’s prepared to teach poetry?
With regard to the teaching of poetry,
confidence, capability and familiarity with
the genre was said to have been impeded
by limited prior exposure to poetry in
the trainees’ own earlier schooling and at
degree level, where poetry is reported as
being often avoided by undergraduates
studying Literature (Blake & Shortis, 2010:
26).
Who’s prepared to develop
intercultural practices?
Are national policies, are schools, is teacher
education more oriented towards a
monocultural or intercultural approach (see
table)?
By contrasting monocultural and intercultural
perspectives the table seeks to shed light on
these tensions and to make transparent the
choices facing educators at all levels.
(Anderson & Obied, 2011: 21)
Intercultural communication and
ideology
It is at the level of discourse that individuals are able to
negotiate, make sense of and practise culture; and it is
within this process that imaginations about culture are
generated and ideology is both experienced and
manufactured (Holliday, 2011: 1).
A Recipe for Me!
Take a hearty slab of Yorkshire,
A morsel of Poland,
A pinch of London and
A good dose of humour.
Add a dash of drama,
A huge helping of happiness
A slice of sensitivity and
A tablespoon of tenderness.
Enrich with enthusiasm and
Allow to bubble away before
Sprinkling with
Sparkles to
Serve.
Year 7
Bring lots of humour to the boil with
Some Iranians and Arabs,
A healthy part of China,
A bit of India,
A chunk of France,
A slab of Sri Lanka and a tablespoon of Tanzania.
Add a blend of Harrow, London, England,
Nepal, South Africa and a pinch of Ireland,
Before stirring vigorously.
Fill up the pan with Ecuador.
Sprinkle some pinches of Japan,
Video games and a touch of fun sports.
Before garnishing with chopped up friends,
On top of the dish.
And serve with Dalek bread.
The language of literature
A one-year funded research project that was
carried out in London secondary schools from
2009 – 2010.
The research question looked at how teachers
support bilingual pupils’ academic language
development with a focus on the language of
literature; and how teachers can design
pedagogies that effectively support language
learning for bilingual pupils.
Language, power and pedagogies
The challenge for educators is to open up
‘ideological and implementational space for
multilingualism and social justice’
(Hornberger, 2010: 563) and challenge existing
relationships between language, power and
pedagogies.
Developing poetry pedagogy: Poems for One
World
Complementarios - Octavio Paz (1914-1998)
En mi cuerpo tu buscas al monte,
a su sol enterrado en el bosque.
En tu cuerpo yo busco la barca
en mitad de la noche perdida.
Counterparts
In my body you search the mountain
for the sun buried in its forest.
In your body I search for the boat
adrift in the middle of the night.
http://www.poemsfor.org/publicsite/
Sharing Personal Reading
Half-Caste – John Agard
Them and Uz – Tony Harrison
Ruins of a Great House – Derek Walcott
It Ain’t What You Do, It’s What It Does To You –
Simon Armitage
5. Harlem – Langston Hughes
6. Bearhugs – Roger McGough
7. Ozymandias – Percy Bysshe Shelley
8. Composed Upon Westminster Bridge – William
Wordsworth
9. Sunny Prestatyn – Philip Larkin
10. Digging – Seamus Heaney
11. Worn Out – Lizzie Siddal
12. The Fly – Christopher Reid
1.
2.
3.
4.
A contested educational landscape
At the time, the shocked reaction of his
teacher left him thinking he’d done
something wrong. Of course, he had.
The Red Flag
The people's flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyred dead,
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their hearts' blood dyed its ev'ry fold.
Then raise the scarlet standard high.
Within its shade we'll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We'll keep the red flag flying here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG23JMoskHw
&feature=related
Poetry in schools
The poems and songs which are taught in
school, which we interpret, perform and
commit to memory have always been part
of a contested landscape, one in which
ideological viewpoints are put forward and
reinforced, and in a school which
enthusiastically celebrated Empire Day, a
call to workers’ unity and solidarity was
jarringly off-message.
The poetry anthology in the classroom – an
artefact of an English education
The Dragon Book (Dragon, 1935)
He remembers the name of almost all the
poems in the book (sometimes with
horror), but despite its almost weekly
usage during five years of lessons, there is
not a single annotation on its pages.
A coherent poetry curriculum
A question of relevance:
Does ‘relevant’, with regards to a poem, mean
a text which young students can relate to the
realities of their lived experience, in which they
can see reflected some of their own interests,
expectations and anxieties? This raises
questions about the student-reader’s appetite
for poetry and how far their diet should be
prescribed.
... in the cliché of encouraging inner-city kids to
read and write poems about knife-crime.
The contemporary world’s most
popular poetic form
Concerns about the way poetry is taught in
school … and the disconnection of teaching
practice from contemporary culture.
Could rap open a radical way of teaching
poetry?
… one of the most important contemporary
forms of linguistic art, and certainly the most
popular and commercially viable form of poetic
expression.
… its history in providing a form of cohesion for
socially and economically marginalised groups.
Rap in the poetry curriculum
I do consider that it provided an opportunity for
pupils to discuss their listening interests and
preferences and to sustain collective listening
for pleasure as well as for those who rapped or
performed their own poetry to develop speaking
for pleasure.
The lack of comparative emphasis on
independent speaking and listening for pleasure
(and even for writing) identifies a key weakness
in the national curriculum’s approach to poetry.
Poetry for the C.V.: How does it
solve a problem like Career?
The importance and relevance of poetry teaching
in developing key skills required to compete for
jobs within a modern, hi-tech work environment.
Skills identified as being essential to the future
workforce:
• Critical thinking and problem solving;
• Effective communication;
• Collaboration and team building;
• Creativity and innovation.
American Management Association (2010)
At the forefront of the exploration
and development of language
Through poetry we are continuously developing
language – mainly due to this ‘playfulness’ and
its experimental nature. Without poetry we might
merely be conformists to the rules of language
rather than instruments of change. Poetry writing
allows us the freedom of expression often
denied us by formulaic prose writing and, in
today’s multi-lingual and multi-dialectic
society, it also qualifies and affirms individual’s
voice – regardless of it being ‘correct’ or
standard English.
Language, power, identity and the
plurilingual learner
The student-teachers were engaged in carrying
out research over a period of 5 months into how
theory in the field of multilingualism could inform
policy and professional practice.
Rhyming with reason
The role of poetry from different cultures in
empowering students to use home languages
and promote their own cultural identity within the
English classroom
It seemed to me that for many student teachers
from ethnic minorities, studying poetry from
different cultures had had a profound effect on
their educational journeys and I was fascinated
to find out why this was.
Year 7 students’ views of
poetry
Some of the good things about studying poetry
from different cultures:
 You can find out about how other people live;
 You learn more about their beliefs and lifestyles;
 You can learn about others’ backgrounds;
 Learn new things and cultures;
 Different languages;
 You can hear a different language;
 Learn more about a different country;
 Learn more about the world.
Year 7 students’ views of
poetry
Some of the bad things about studying poetry
from different cultures:
 You don’t understand some things;
 Sometimes I get a little confused;
 Unable to understand the language;
 Different languages;
 We don’t need to know about them, we need to
know about us;
 You might get something wrong, say something
and offend someone;
 I might change religion.
English teachers’ views of poetry
1. The study of poetry from different cultures has
been criticised as being inferior poetry
promoted over greater poetry simply because
it comes from a different culture. What is your
response to this?
2. How important is ‘poetry from different
cultures’ in negotiating students’ identity?
3. What is the usual reaction of white British
students towards studying or writing poems
relating to culture? How does it differ (if at all)
from ethnic minority students?
4. To what extent do you feel home and
community languages should be promoted
within the mainstream classroom? Why?
Who am I?
Who am I?
I am Asian
Ma Nepali ho
I am proud
Who am I?
Ma momo, choicho ra bhatt khancho
I hate mice
But I love rice
Who am I?
This is me
That’s my name
Javeria
That’s my name,
Live in London
Life’s not lame.
Family religion,
It’s all there,
In my values,
That I share.
Eid Ramadan,
Don’t forget New Year,
Fun and Fasting,
But unclear.
I am just me
My name is Sydney,
I live in Thamesmead
London
Some may say I’m a bit blonde
But really I am just me
First name Sydney
Like Sydney Australia
Of which mum’s mate called me
Middle name Georgina
My nan’s name
Rest in peace nan
Last name
Runs in the family
Coz that’s me!
Bilingual Poetry
After I had distributed the poems and was
expecting to hear a chorus of other languages,
the class was struck with a sudden silence.
Approaching one of the bilingual students, I
asked what was wrong and was told that she
couldn’t read the Punjabi script as she could
only speak it. Another student raised her hand
and said the same for Vietnamese, Nepalese,
and so on. Before long I was left with just one
student who could confidently read in Albanian
and who had confided in me that she found
speaking her home language ‘embarrassing’.
Exploring classroom discussion of
poetry
What contribution do multilingual pupils make to
the classroom discussion of idiom and
metaphorical language in poetry and literature
written in English?
It will explore whether pupils do indeed make
more responses that are more original and
elaborate (Garcia, 2009) than their monolingual
colleagues when discussing literature … it will
evaluate the creative and divergent thinking
abilities of multilingual pupils to see if it can
indeed be applied to the creation of meaning
and understanding from literary texts.
What is poetry for?
In exploring pupils’ contributions regarding
idiom and metaphorical language, it is
necessary to study pupils’ ability to see and
understand that texts are representational rather
than seeing them as evidence of language in
use. It is this ability to seek out representation
and to then apply creative and divergent thinking
that allows pupils to develop their meaning
creation skills. The suspension of belief and the
activation of imagination are key skills in building
meaning.
Chart 1: Vocal Contributions: case study
participants versus other class members
49%
51%
Case study
participants
Other class
members
Innocent candles shine wailing
goodbyes
EAL learners and poetry
Interpretation of results:
 EAL pupils are more likely to seek clarification
of context and contextual use of language.
 EAL pupils are more likely ‘to play’ with words
than their monolingual counterparts.
 EAL pupils are more likely to be able to infer
meaning from texts, if they have experienced
an active meaning creation event.
Professional Development for staff
working in multilingual schools
1.
2.
3.
Supporting language acquisition and development.
Linking language and learning.
Language policy and social justice.
The Resources:
This section collates existing resources which can be used to
support teachers and managers working in multilingual schools.
Jim Anderson, Christine Hélot, Joanna McPake and Vicky Obied
Presented at the forum in Geneva (2 - 4 November 2010)
http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/ListDocs_Geneva2010.asp#Top
OfPage
References
Anderson, J., Hélot, C., McPake, J., Obied, V. (2010) Professional
development for staff working in multilingual schools. In Council of
Europe (Language Policy Division) The linguistic and educational
integration of children and adolescents from a migrant background.
Studies and resources: Number 5. Strasbourg: Council of Europe.
Anderson, J. and Obied, V. 2011. Languages, literacies and learning:
from monocultural to intercultural perspectives. NALDIC Quarterly,
8:3.
Blake, J & Shortis, T. 2010. Who’s prepared to teach school English?
Garcia, O. 2009. Bilingual Education in the 21st Century – A Global
Perspective.Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Holliday, A. (2011). Intercultural Communication and Ideology. London:
Sage.
Hornberger, N. (2010). Language and Education: A Limpopo Lens. In N.
Hornberger & S. McKay (Eds), Sociolinguistics and Education, (pp.
549-564). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Obied, V. 2011. The crossroads between language and literature:
developing an EAL pedagogy and intercultural learning. In 43rd
British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL) Conference
Proceedings: http://www.baal.org.uk/confprocs.html