How many of us use poetry in the classroom? Wordsworth? Haiku? How do we exploit poems for EFL learners? Do students appreciate this, or not? It's an area I'm interested in, so I hope some other tender souls are too, and a discussion can develop.
To start off, here's a poem I like to use with some of my groups:
HAD I the heavens� embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B. Yeats
Language points here are modals, conditionals etc., but students seem to respond very well to discussions based on the theme - i.e. dreams and hopes for the future, relationships. Only a few words need pre-teaching, 'embroidered'; 'enwrought'. Funnily enough, nobody seems to see the poem's rhyme is very simple, yet effective - 'light' rhymes with... 'light'! Feet with feet etc.
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