But if you are able to use poetry in your lessons, you can give your students not only an increased awareness and understanding of English-speaking cultures, but also great sensual, emotional, and intellectual pleasure. Poetry is a special type of English, just as scientific and newspaper English are also special in different ways. It deserves study as much as they do-perhaps more, since poetry is the type of English that touches our personal feelings most closely. And personal feelings are as important in a foreign language as they are in our own language. Poetry can help us to assimilate the typical rhythms of a language.
Poems are often very easy to remember.
They stick in our minds without conscious effort. One reason for this is that they frequently repeat words or patterns of sound. The topics that poems talk about are in themselves interesting-and important. When we are learning a foreign language as an adult we need to have significant things to think and talk about. Poems offer this.