As I mentioned earlier, when I left Yosuke Tuesday night, he still had a limerick and a sonnet to write. I taught him the rules and wished him luck. As I was driving off, it occurred to me that since we had worked so hard on the other poems, it might be okay to "fake" the sonnet. Would the teacher really count the syllables of each line? Of course not! She might not even read them at all! I felt guilty for not thinking of it earlier.
I felt even worse yesterday when I asked him how hard it had been. He said he stayed up until 2:30am! His ESL teacher is also to blame for giving such a ridiculous assignment, but I can't stop feeling guilty for not realizing sooner that he didn't have to try so hard. Hopefully next time we're in a situation like this, I won't let him down.
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Poetry Panic
Yosuke had some bizarre homework tonight. It was for ESL of all things. I think I may have mentioned this, but the ESL program at his high school is a joke. The teacher is almost entirely worthless. He doesn't learn anything. He's never had ESL homework before today.
Well, today's homework assignment reinforced my low opinion of this teacher. Yosuke was given 14 types of poetry and had to write one poem of each type. Fourteen poems! In one day! Can you imagine anything more insane? It was a daunting task, even for a native speaker.
And that's not all. Some types were easy - haiku, free verse, etc - but some were more complex. For example, one was a sonnet. He was supposed to write a sonnet - can you believe that? In case you're not familiar with them, they're fourteen lines long, they have to rhyme, and each line is ten syllables long. They're considered one of the more difficult types of poetry to write, and it's simply insane to ask an ESL II student to write one.
Anyway, Yosuke and I got through the poetry the best we could in two hours. He had a lot of trouble rhyming, so when I left he still had the limerick and sonnet to finish. I hope he managed okay.
His poems were pretty bad (most took complaining about homework in general or the poetry assignment specifically as their topic), but a couple turned out well. One of the poems he had to write was a ballad, which I explained was like a love poem/song. He said, "Like Romeo and Juliet?" and I explained that the whole play wasn't a ballad, but some of the soliloquys are similar to ballads. So we came up with this poem (Yosuke used food as a topic for several of his poems):
Wherefore art thou, food?
Deny thy father, Vending Machine, and refuse thy cost;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my snack,
And I'll no longer be hungry.
You can find the original here for comparison.
So the homework was hard, but we managed to have some fun with it. Darn that ESL teacher, though!
Well, today's homework assignment reinforced my low opinion of this teacher. Yosuke was given 14 types of poetry and had to write one poem of each type. Fourteen poems! In one day! Can you imagine anything more insane? It was a daunting task, even for a native speaker.
And that's not all. Some types were easy - haiku, free verse, etc - but some were more complex. For example, one was a sonnet. He was supposed to write a sonnet - can you believe that? In case you're not familiar with them, they're fourteen lines long, they have to rhyme, and each line is ten syllables long. They're considered one of the more difficult types of poetry to write, and it's simply insane to ask an ESL II student to write one.
Anyway, Yosuke and I got through the poetry the best we could in two hours. He had a lot of trouble rhyming, so when I left he still had the limerick and sonnet to finish. I hope he managed okay.
His poems were pretty bad (most took complaining about homework in general or the poetry assignment specifically as their topic), but a couple turned out well. One of the poems he had to write was a ballad, which I explained was like a love poem/song. He said, "Like Romeo and Juliet?" and I explained that the whole play wasn't a ballad, but some of the soliloquys are similar to ballads. So we came up with this poem (Yosuke used food as a topic for several of his poems):
Wherefore art thou, food?
Deny thy father, Vending Machine, and refuse thy cost;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my snack,
And I'll no longer be hungry.
You can find the original here for comparison.
So the homework was hard, but we managed to have some fun with it. Darn that ESL teacher, though!
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