“Developing Voice by Composing Haiku: A Social-Expressivist Approach for Teaching Haiku in EFL Contexts”: summary

According to Iida (2010) college students find it difficult to put all their English knowledge, which has been acquired in grammar-based lessons, into real world situations. He acknowledges the importance of the Social Expresivist Approach in an EFL writing classroom and claims that this “approach is the key to teaching students how to discover and reveal their unique perspectives on the world” (p.28).

            Haiku is a short Japanese poem composed of three lines and usually referring to nature. Its main aim is to capture what the writer is expressing or feeling at a certain moment. Iida (2010) states that this type of writing motivates students to write in English and helps them “develop voice and sense of audience” (p.29). Several authors (Ivanic, 1998: Matsuda, 2001; Vigotzky, 1986; Bishop, 1991, 2003 & Gradin, 1995 as cited in Iida, 2010) have also noted that it is by means of social construction that people can develop their inner selves. Moreover, the activities that are done in an English writing classroom are useful tools for students to communicate their thoughts and feelings.          

            As a Haiku is a means of expressing one’s perception of the world “there can be multiple interpretations” of it (Iida, 2010, p.30). But, for students to be able to write a Haiku they should be firstly exposed to lots of reading material. Teachers should give students a lot of comprehensible input and activities related to that input if they want them to turn it into comprehensible output. This final output can be published in order to increase the students’ awareness of audience turning the classroom activity into a real world one.

            To sum up, it could be said that haiku writing is a very communicative activity that could help students develop competence in the language.

References

Iida, A. (2010) “Developing Voice by Composing Haiku: A Social-Expressivist Approach for Teaching Haiku in EFL Contexts” English Teaching Forum retrieved from http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=29597