Quite a number of high school students do not like poem because they tend to think that poem is boring and this is hard to understand easily. How would you like students to think about learning the poem? As a teacher, we may want students to learn the poem entertainingly. In order to teach successfully, teachers should make students get motivation and they have motivation when they learn about things which are related to them. Therefore, there are four great poems in my hand, but If I have a chance to teach the poem to high school students, I would choose “To A Daughter Leaving Home”. This is suitable for high school students. There are two reasons to explain why.
First of all, the message would be suitable for teenagers. As I referred above, high school students are only interested in learning when they have internal motivation. Besides, they feel internal motivation when they learn about something which are related to them. Through this poem, the reader can have a chance to remind the memory of their early days. Also, a girl in this poem becomes more and more independent physically, emotionally from her parents. High school students are in the same period with her, so they are sympathetic to her feeling. Meanwhile, this poem tell high school students to think about parent’s love and fear. They are in a stormy period of adolescence. They are very sensitive, so they often might have trouble with parents. Feeling parent’s love and fear for them with friends in unusual space is much more effective than in their own house. Lesson from the poem is not heavy to accept and this is related to teenager’s life, so the teacher can achieve amazing message effects in learning poems.
Secondly, the language used in this poem would be suitable for teenagers. According to the input hypothesis, it is good to teach +1 difficult level than student’s level. In this time, students have motivations to learn something. In this case, the words in this poem are neither difficult nor easy to understand. Students could comprehend the contents easily but they might find dictionaries to know the meaning of some words. Meanwhile, the language does not have periodical implications, so students do not have to go through a hard time to understand background knowledge of period. Also, the form of words are simple and repeated so that the teenagers can understand easily.
Poem is not popular for teenagers because they tend to think that poem is boring. This, however, can be broken with interesting teaching method, tools, and realia. Above all, teacher can teach the poem successfully with interesting contents, theme, and message. When we consider the characteristics of high school students: sensitive and emotional, we can teach poem excitingly. In all these ways, the poem “To A Daughter Leaving Home” is suitable to teach for high school students. Giving chance to think about their early days and parent’s love and making motivations to learn are the reasons.
