Teaching+English+through+rhythmic+poetry

Improving English language learners through rhythmic poetry is something that captured my mind since I attended a TESOL session for Dr. O. Hafez. She introduced limericks and how we can use limericks to work on our learners' pronunciation.

A limerick: "is a five-line poem written with one couplet and one triplet. If a couplet is a two-line rhymed poem, then a triplet would be a three-line rhymed poem. The rhyme pattern is a a b b a with lines 1, 2 and 5 containing 3 beats and rhyming, and lines 3 and 4 having two beats and rhyming. Some people say that the limerick was invented by soldiers returning from France to the Irish town of Limerick in the 1700's".

"Limericks are meant to be funny. They often contain hyperbole, onomatopoeia, idioms, puns, and other figurative devices. The last line of a good limerick contains the PUNCH LINE or "heart of the joke." As you work with limericks, remember to have pun, I mean FUN!" [|The resource]



Limericks have a rhythm and a beat and learning it can improve students pronunciation in terms of sentences stress.

 There are two types of words: content words and structure words

 Content words: are words that carry the meaning of a sentence.

 Structure words: are the words that make the sentence grammatically correct.

 Note: we can compare content words and structure words to bricks and cement. You can build a building with bricks, but you need the cement to hold the bricks. This is the relation between content and structure words.

 You can give the example of mobile message texting. When people text each other they just write the content words what carry the meaning.  For example: exam next week

 The correct grammatical version of this sentence is : there is an exam next week.

 Content words are : Nouns, main verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. While structure words are: <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">auxiliary verbs, pronouns, articles, and prepositions

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Elicit from students content words giving them various sentences that have these parts of speech. <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">For example: //this is a girl// compared to //this is a beautiful girl//. Does beautiful add anything to the meaning? <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">An example of adverb is //Ahmed writes// compared to //Ahmed writes slowly.// Does slowly add anything to the meaning? Etc...

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">[|This is a very good site for limericks and many resources for English teachers]

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">[|This website is specifically related to limericks]

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">[|The Internet TESL journal] is an amazing resource to refer to to get articles about the use of songs in teaching. It's like a storage area for teachers for lesson plans, activities, and games.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">[|This is the link I get my limericks from]

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">[|This link gives guide lines of how to use music in a lesson.] I had a virus detection when I opened it, but I opened it and browsed the link.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">My favorite limerick that I usually start with is:

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">There was an Old Man with a nose, <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> Who said, 'If you choose to suppose, <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> That my nose is too long, <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> You are certainly wrong!' <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> That remarkable Man with a nose.