How might memorizing poetry help to promote deeper student engagement with literary texts?

What the Research Study Is About

This qualitative study examines the experiences of 7 adolescents in a Singapore poetry recitation competition held in 2023, which involved 169 contestants. It explores how memorizing and reciting poetry can prompt students’ creative enactment and ownership of their own learning, contributing directly to their intellectual growth and socio-emotional development.

The findings highlight the pedagogical potential of poetry memorization as a transformative educational practice that remains relevant and applicable for today’s students. Poetry memorization and recitation need not run counter to the spirit of reflexivity and criticality that is at the heart of contemporary pedagogy; rather, they can contribute to it.

Key Findings

Building Emotional Connections

• • • The process of engaging with poems through memorization can deeply engage students on a personal level, creating stronger emotional connections.
    • Poetry memorization can sharpen students’ sensitivity towards language, helping them to understand poems more effectively. One student, for instance, highlighted his hesitation about specific words while memorizing his selected poem – he was obliged to confront this ambiguity only because of the process of memorization, which led him to reflect on the significance of diction in shaping meaning in poetry.
    • Several students even compared poetry recitation to a transcendental experience, in the sense that it was as if they were channelling the poet’s voice, suggesting that this fusion between self and text endowed students with a deeper sense of ownership and expanded imaginative capacity.

Transforming Thinking Processes

• • • Poetry memorization prompted students’ deeper reflection and contemplation compared to mere reading. Students’ responses revealed that the extended time they spent with texts, and the process of internalization that they engaged in, fostered metacognition and self-reflection.
    • The slow, uninterrupted thinking demanded by memorization can lead students to delve more deeply into a poem’s meanings, rather than defaulting to the quick, superficial level of engagement that might be typical when reading from screens and devices.
    • Students transformed the challenges of learning poetry by heart into valuable learning opportunities, demonstrating their understanding of the principle that frustrations are an integral part of the learning process.

Enhancing Perspective-Taking

• • • Students’ experiences with poetry memorization enhanced their ability to understand and appreciate the diverse viewpoints of others.
    • In the process, students not only developed a keener appreciation of historical contexts, global issues and varied personal experiences, but also deepened and broadened their empathy for others, enriching their understanding of multiple perspectives and worldviews.
    • Several students also shifted their focus from results towards the process of learning by heart, recognizing that the journey of discovery and growth that it entailed was more important and meaningful than achieving any specific outcome.

Practical Implementation Strategies

• • • Provide diverse options of poems for students to consider learning by heart – these poems can be from various cultures and time periods, and reflect different perspectives. (A sample list is accessible at https://for.edu.sg/listofpoems.) Encourage students to select personally meaningful poems that resonate with their identities and experiences.
    • Incorporate multiple techniques for effective learning (including retrieval practice, drawing, movement, and writing by hand) which can engage multiple senses, enhance retention and deepen students’ understanding of texts.
    • Promote social collaboration through paired practice and group discussions about poems, which can foster students’ teamwork and camaraderie through shared learning experiences.
    • Focus on the process of learning rather than attempting to achieve a perfect recitation. One helpful warm-up exercise for students is to recollect a few lines of poetry from memory and write them down, while paying full attention to the process rather than the result, observing calmly what happens internally rather than striving for flawless recall.
    • Create opportunities for students to engage in performance-based activities that build confidence and a sense of community. For instance, students could be nominated to become poetry ambassadors in schools or during poetry festivals, and to raise awareness on platforms like social media.

This research summary was generated by Coral AI and has been reviewed by the author.