Poems as Alternative Media in Teaching Grammar

Abstract

This article discusses how poems as literary text can be used for teaching grammar in an interactive and communicative atmosphere. Literary texts have long been proposed as alternative media in teaching grammar due totheir complex use of language and grammatical patterns. However, not many teachers feel confident in exploiting literary texts. This article axplores how language teachers canuse poems interactively to present illustrations or provide contexts in which certain grammatical items are used. For example, teachers can use poems to illustrate how the simple past tense is used to describe past experience. The interactive tasks and activities suggested in this article aim to help teachers extend not only the students grammatical knowledge but also their lexical knowledge.