Oral Poetry in the Foreign Language Classroom

So much of foreign language study has been based on a strictly semantic approach to language. A mastery of the basic building blocks of language—phonemes, words, phrases, clauses—is indeed dependent upon an understanding of dictionary definitions, grammar rules, and syntactic formulas. It is hardly my intention to argue that these lessons are not essential to foreign language study. Rather, I will seek to show that this semantic-oriented view and practice of language must be accompanied with a more pragmatic approach that includes performance criteria in verbal expression. Much of the theoretical, or rather methodological, groundwork for this approach has been laid down by Dell Hymes, especially in his seminal study of ethnopoetics entitled In Vain I Tried to Tell You (1981). Hymes’s interpretation of performance competence allows us to better identify forms of expression as well as performers themselves whom a given community will consider competent. His notion of “breakthrough into performance” opens up the study of verbal art as a full-fledged event, as opposed to a series of sounds and phrases that are to be captured on a page that is studied as an end in itself. Finally, his method of verse analysis provides practical guidelines for making oral texts accessible to scholars of all sorts. In my classroom we begin with an audio or an audio-visual text that has already been analyzed for its verse form and stylistic features. At the outset of an initial observation of the performance, we discuss sound patterns, rhythm, intonations, vocal textures, and any sign of meaning that may be gleaned from the musicality of the text. Unusual pronunciation patterns are explained in the oral reconstruction of the text, and we listen to/ watch the performance again. This second listening allows for a certain satisfaction on the part of the students as they reinforce their initial “intuitions” and discover the learned forms (grammatical, phonetic, rhetorical, and others). Lastly, a written transcription of the text is provided and a more thorough stylistic analysis is undertaken. Reading the text