I think that the activity that we did in class was very entertaining and mind-challenging.

We were introduced in literature in a pleasant way. In my opinion, the main points of this
activity were: to be reminded the structure of the sonnet, to give it a personal touch without
messing up with grammar and logic and to understand that even the most frightening part in
literature (the lyric part) can be studied in an enjoyable manner.

In what the difficulty is concerned, I believe that students (including me) are reluctant
when it comes to poetry in general. This may cause a high level of anxiety, a certain degree of
aversion and loss of interest. This may happen because students may think that it is possible for
them not to understand this kind of literature, as poetry is full of figurative language. However, if
the teacher can anticipate these problems (as it happened in our class), he/she can give students
hints about what and how they should do certain task in order for things to get easier.

Overall, this activity raised my interest, made me concentrate more even if, at first, I
wasnt sure I got the instructions right. Things got clearer with every clue the teacher gave us and
the level of anxiety lowered in such a way that it became a facilitative anxiety. No one was
criticized about the way the sonnet was rearranged and everyones version was regarded as a
good resolution. This increased every participants level of self-esteem and also prepared the
student for further similar goings-on.

As for other activities, I would ask students to do a similar exercise in order to understand
better this kind of literature and then to create a sonnet following either the Italian or the English
pattern, giving them a certain theme (childhood, friendship, love, etc). Some of the lines of these
new-created sonnets may be scrambled, as in the activity we did in class, for the other to go
deeper in analyzing the given sonnet. The students may also be asked to give these sonnets a
title, according to the feelings or state of mind their reading may stimulate.