Teaching Imagery Poetry in the EFL Classroom: A Lexical-Syntactic Study of Vocabularies, Phrasal Verbs, and Prepositions

EFL 課堂之意象派詩歌教學：針對字彙、動詞片語、介詞之語彙與句法研究

十年來，在台灣許多大學的EFL 課室中，以英美文學作品來教英文並不廣泛。在其他國家，仍有些學者強調在英語學習的環境中採用英美文學作品來進行教學。然而，在台灣，愈來愈少的英文老師採用英美文學作品來教EFL 課程。本篇研究的目的是要探討在EFL 課程當中運用意象詩歌來教學的成效。本篇研究嘗試驗證這個假設：英文意象詩歌的短句和韻律易於朗誦和熟記，而且這些詩歌的特色有助於增加字彙並熟練句法。透過詩歌教學，進而了解參與本實驗之基本程度和較低程度大學生的英文學習成效。學員的英文水平已假設為同等低程度，並採用前測將學員程度確立為同等級。本篇研究分成兩組，為期四節課。評量方法是後測。控制組以中文教學，採用文法翻譯法的兩個活動。實驗組以英文教學，採用折衷教學法，強調以視聽活動進行教學。前測和後測的題目相同並以三項變數來進行分析：（a）字彙、（b）動詞和動詞片語、（c）介系詞。這三項變數採用獨立雙樣本T 檢定來計算統計結果。結果顯示意象詩歌教學有助於兩組學員學會日常溝通常用到的字彙、動詞片語和介詞並且正確使用這些教過的字，除此之外，採用折衷教學法的實驗組表現比控制組更好。未來仍需要在其它大學應用本研究的方法，進而將英文意象詩歌定位為EFL課程的輔助教材。

English literary texts have not been widely taught in EFL classrooms at many universities in Taiwan for at least one decade. In other countries, some researchers emphasize the topic of using literary texts to teach in English language learning settings. However, less and less English teachers choose literary works to teach EFL courses in Taiwan. An aim of my study was to explore the effectiveness of teaching imagery poetry in EFL classrooms. This study attempted to test the hypothesis that it would be easy and effortless to recite and memorize the song-like, nursery-rhythm, rather short lines in English imagery poems and these poetic characteristics would help enhance lexical and syntactic levels. It compared the effects of grammar-translation method for a control group and eclectic method for a treatment group on the performance of undergraduates who enrolled in English classes. Participants of the control group were taught in Chinese, whereas those of the treatment group were taught fully in English in the eclectic method using audio-visual aids. The posttest was exactly the same as the pretest, and both were calculated by an independent two-sample t-test in SPSS, including three kinds of variables: (a) vocabularies, (b) verbs and phrasal verbs, and (c) prepositions. Results indicated that the teaching of imagery poetry helped the participants learn certain poetic words, phrasal verbs and prepositions that are common in daily communication and use them correctly at the end of this study. Participants taught in the eclectic method performed significant better than those taught in grammar-translation method. The approach outlined in this study needs to be replicated in other universities to determine the role of English imagery poems as supplementary teaching materials in EFL classrooms.