Humanising Language Teaching
Year 3; Issue 4; July 2001

This Issue's exercise comes from the pen of one of the 20th Century's best known EFL teachers, Ezra Pound and is taken form ABC of Reading, Faber and Faber.

1. Let the pupil write the description of a tree, without mentioning the name of the tree, ( larch, pine, etc…) so that the reader will not mistake it for the description of some other kind of tree. Let them write one full page.
   
   
2. Let the students exchange composition papers and see how many and what useless words have been used- how many words that convey nothing new. Let the students also look for words that obscure the meaning.
   
   
3. Let them communicate their findings to the writer of the composition.
   
   
4. Let them look for words out of their usual place, and whether this alteration makes the statement in anyway more interesting or more energetic.
   
   Whether the sentence is ambiguous: whether it really means more than one thing or more than the writer intended.. Whether it can be so read as to mean something different.
   
   Whether there is something clear on paper, but ambiguous if spoken aloud.
   
   
5. Let them communicate their findings to the writer of the composition.

What follows are 4 very short poetry writing "recipes":

1. Let the pupil write in the metre of any poem he likes.
   
   
2. Let him write new words to a well-known tune in such a way that the words will not be distorted when one sings them.
   
   
3. Let the pupil write a poem in a strophe form he likes.
   
   
4. Let him parody some poem he finds ridiculous, either because of falsity in the statement, falsity on the disposition of the writer, or for pretentiousness.

No teacher has ever failed from ignorance. This is empiric professional knowledge.
Teachers fail because they cannot handle the class.

The inexperienced teacher, fearing his own ignorance, is afraid to admit it. Perhaps that courage only comes when one knows to what extent ignorance is almost universal. Attempts to camouflage it are simply a waste, in the long run, of time.

There is no man who knows so much about, let us say, a passage between lines 100 and 200 of the sixth book of the Odyssey that he can't learn something by re-reading it WITH his students, not merely T0 his students….. I believe the ideal teacher would approach any masterpiece that he was presenting to his class almost as if he had never seen it before.

There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty eight. There are certain divisions and dissociations that I refrain from making because I do not think that, at my age, I should try to force the taste of a middle-aged man on a younger reader. Thank heaven there are books that one enjoys MOST before one is twenty five, and there are other books that one can STILL read at forty five and still hope to be able to read in the sere and the yellow.