Date of Award
12-2007
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Departmental Honors
Department
English
Abstract
Utah is seeing a rapid increase in K-12 students whose native language is not English. With this increase, teachers face the challenge of finding new and effective teaching methods to reach their ESL (English as a Second Language) students. This research explores the study of poetry as an instrument to improve ESL students' pronunciation of English. When read out loud, poetry can be an exercise in pronouncing consonant sounds (from alliteration), decoding vowel sounds (from rhyme), and acquiring the natural speech rhythm of the English language (from meter). Poetry was selected not only because of its exaggerated sound elements (alliteration, rhyme, and meter) but also because of it is a comfortable and approachable text for ESL students to study. During a six-week study with an ESL student, I found to be very beneficial in my subject's pronunciation of English. This case study has shown poetry to be successful for this individual; therefore, there is a need for further research in this subject.
Recommended Citation
Gleason, Kimberly Call, "Rhyme and Reason in Language Acquisition: Incorporating Poetry into the ESL Classroom" (2007). Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects. 704.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/honors/704
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Faculty Mentor
Kathryn Fitzgerald
Departmental Honors Advisor
John McLaughlin
Capstone Committee Member
Joyce Kinkead