POETRY IN THE

LANGUAGE CLASSROOM 2
 POETIC LANGUAGE AND TERMINOLOGY

Allegory
Characters represent moral
qualities. Pilgrim's Progress,

Assonance Ballad
The repetition of similar A narrative poem written in four-line
vowel sounds in a sentence stanzas, characterized by swift action
or a line of poetry or prose, and narrated in a direct style

Character
An imaginary person that inhabits a
literary work. Literary characters may be
major or minor, static (unchanging) or
dynamic (capable of change).
 POETIC LANGUAGE AND TERMINOLOGY

Complication
An intensification of the Conflict
conflict in a story or play. A struggle between opposing
Complication builds up, forces in a story or play,
accumulates, and develops usually resolved by the end
the primary or central conflict of the work. ,
in a literary work.
Character
An imaginary person that inhabits a
literary work. Literary characters may be
major or minor, static (unchanging) or
dynamic (capable of change).
Connotation
The associations called up by a word
that goes beyond its dictionary meaning.
Poets, especially, tend to use words rich
in connotation.
 POETIC LANGUAGE AND TERMINOLOGY

Couplet
A pair of rhymed lines that
may or may not constitute a
separate stanza in a poem. Dactyl
A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed
ones, as in FLUT-ter-ing or BLUE-ber-ry.

Denotation
The dictionary meaning of a word. Writers
typically play off a word's denotative
meaning against its connotations, or
suggested and implied associational
implications
Denouement
The resolution of the plot of a literary
work.
 POETIC LANGUAGE AND TERMINOLOGY

Dialogue
The conversation of
characters in a literary work..
Diction
The selection of words in a literary work. A work's diction
forms one of its centrally important literary elements, as
writers use words to convey action, reveal character, imply
attitudes, identify themes, and suggest values.

Elegy Elision
A lyric poem that laments the dead The omission of an
unstressed vowel or syllable
to preserve the meter of a
line of poetry. "Flies o'er th'
unbending corn...."
 POETIC LANGUAGE AND TERMINOLOGY

Enjambment
A run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical
sense carries over from one line into the next.

Epic
A long narrative poem that records the adventures of a
hero. Epics typically chronicle the origins of a civilization
and embody its central values.

Epigram Exposition
A brief witty poem, often satirical. The first stage of a fictional
or dramatic plot, in which
necessary background
information is provided.
 POETIC LANGUAGE AND TERMINOLOGY

Falling action
In the plot of a story or play, the action following the climax
of the work that moves it towards its denouement or
resolution

Figurative language
A form of language use in which writers and speakers
convey something other than the literal meaning of their
word

Flashback Foil
An interruption of a work's chronology to A character who contrasts
describe or present an incident that and parallels the main
occurred prior to the main time frame of character in a play or story..
a work's action. .
 POETIC LANGUAGE AND TERMINOLOGY

Foreshadowing
Hints of what is to come in the action of a play or a story

Free verse
Poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme.Modern
and contemporary poets of the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries often employ free verse .
Hyperbole
A figure of speech involving
exaggeration. .
Image
A concrete representation of a sense impression,
a feeling, or an idea. Imagery refers to the
comparative aspects of language, particularly of
images, in a literary work
 POETIC LANGUAGE AND TERMINOLOGY

Irony
A contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what
happens and what is expected to happen in life and in literature.
Verbal irony: characters say the opposite of what they mean. Irony of circumstance or
situation: the opposite of what is expected occurs. Dramatic irony: a character speaks
in ignorance of a situation or event known to the audience or to the other characters.

Lyric poem
A type of poem characterized by brevity,
compression, and the expression of feeling.

Metaphor
A comparison between essentially unlike things
without an explicitly comparative word such
as like or as.
 POETIC LANGUAGE AND TERMINOLOGY

Meter
The measured pattern of rhythmic accents in poems. .

Narrator
The voice and implied speaker of a fictional
work, to be distinguished from the actual living
author
Octave
An eight-line unit, which may constitute
a stanza;or a section of a poem, as in the
octave of
 POETIC LANGUAGE AND TERMINOLOGY

Ode
A long, stately, (usually serious) poem in stanzas of
varied length, meter, and form.

Onomatopoeia
The use of words to imitate
Open form the sounds they describe.
A type of structure or form in poetry
characterized by freedom from regularity and
consistency in such elements as rhyme, line
length, metrical pattern, and overall poetic
structure.

Parody
A humorous, mocking imitation of a literary
work, sometimes sarcastic, but often playful
and even respectful in its playful imitation.
 POETIC LANGUAGE AND TERMINOLOGY

Plot
The unified structure of incidents in a literary work.

Protagonist
The main character of a literary work

Resolution
The sorting out or unraveling of a plot at the
end of a play, novel, or story..
 POETIC LANGUAGE AND TERMINOLOGY

Reversal
The point at which the action of the plot turns in an
unexpected direction for the protagonist.

Rising action
A set of conflicts and crises that constitute the
part of a play's or story's plot leading up to
the climax

Satire
A literary work that criticizes human
Setting misconduct and ridicules vices,
The time and place of a literary work that stupidities, and follies
establish its context..
 POETIC LANGUAGE AND TERMINOLOGY

Simile
A figure of speech involving a comparison between
unlike things using like, as, or as though.

Style
The way an author chooses words, arranges
them in sentences or in lines of dialogue or
verse, and develops ideas and actions with
description, imagery, and other literary
techniques.

Subplot
A subsidiary or subordinate or parallel plot in
a play or story that coexists with the main
plot.
 POETIC LANGUAGE AND TERMINOLOGY

Synecdoche
A figure of speech in which a part is substituted for
the whole. An example: "Lend me a hand.".

Syntax
The grammatical order of words in a sentence
or line of verse or dialogue. The organization
of words and phrases and clauses in
sentences of prose, verse, and dialogue

Theme
The idea of a literary work abstracted from its
details of language, character, and action,
and cast in the form of a generalization
 IN THE CLASSROOM

Poems due to their length can be used in a single classroom

lesson.
Furthermore, they often explore themes of universal concern
and embody:
life experiences
observations
feelings

Creativity is enhanced through poetry in the classroom, as

one of the outcomes is freer, creative written expression.
Their brilliant concision and strong imagery combine to
powerful overall effect.
 IN THE CLASSROOM

When learners are given help with linguistic resources they

will need, they will be able enjoy a poem better. They get to
share the poets created world.

A range of group activities can be used. Before a poem is

read or listened to for the first time, it is necessary to plan a
substantial warm-up activity to arouse the learners curiosity
and involve them in the poems themes.
 POEM

Rope Rhyme, Eloise Greenfield

Get set, ready now, jump right in

Bounce and kick and giggle and spin
Listen to the rope when it hits the ground
Listen to that clappedy-slappedy sound
Jump right up when it tells you to
Come back down, whatever you do
Count to a hundred, count by ten
Start to count all over again
Thats what jumping is all about
Get set, ready now,
jump
right
out!
 IN THE CLASSROOM

Work on pronunciation and spelling.

Look at different letter sounds. /ow/ /ou/

/ea/ /e/

Related activity where students pick out odd one out sound
from series of words.

Pupils paraphrase the poem to appreciate difference

between prose and verse.
 POEM

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10
.
 POEM

The Road Not Taken

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20