By Olga Smith
Poetry is an art form that exists since ancient times. Aristotle's Poetics describes the three genres of poetry: epic, comic and tragic. Aesthetics, colourful language, compactness of expression and the use of metaphor make poetry a source of enormous pleasures for us. It helps us to become more human, it enriches our soul, develops our creativity and so much more.
Reciting poetry is crucial in mastering speech, that is why speech tutors often use poetry in their elocution lessons. It is poetry that has undoubtedly contributed to the enormous popularity of our apps, books and elocution lessons.
I will outline six main benefits of reciting poetry for speech mastery.
N1: Reciting poetry helps to make your speech more fluent. You will learn very quickly how to liaise the words in each line, glide from one word to another without pausing. You see poetry is closely related to musical traditions. Each line in a poem is bound by a meter and it has a certain rhythm. The words in each line should be linked like in a song.
N2: Speaking in a connected way will also help you to learn how to “throw away” unimportant words, such as articles and prepositions and use dramatic stress. Learn more about “throwing away”, a term used by actors in our blog about fluency.
N3: Particular poems are wonderful for articulation, such as Major General from W. S. Gilbert for example. You can find Major General in lesson 32 in the app Get Rid of your Accent. Good articulation is crucial for your speech clarity. It makes your speech more energised.
N4: Poetry is fantastic for practising power, pitch, pace and pause of your voice to make your speech interesting to listen to. Many students who take our elocution lessons complain that their speech is boring and monotonous. We created a wonderful app entitled Power, Pitch, Pace, Pause to help you make your speech interesting to listen to.
N5: Speech is a very technical subject. It requires a tremendous effort from both sides of the teachers and the student in order to make good progress. Using poetry makes this process more light-hearted and entertaining. When students have fun they are more likely to enjoy working on their speech.
N6: Reciting poetry will immensely enrich your English vocabulary. We recommend that you memorise new words, phrases and metaphors in the context, then try to use them in your speech.
In our apps and books, we start each elocution lesson with a bit of theory. Then we follow up with practical exercises such as words, phrases, sentences and prose passages. As a rule, we end each lesson with a poem or two as a reward for our hardworking students. In our apps you first listen to an actor reading a poem, then you can read it yourself and record it. Then you can compare your reading with the professional actor’s reading. We recommend that you copy the actor’s pronunciation and intonation.
We also offer one to one sessions on Skype. Read the feedback from our students.
More on www.batcsglobal.com