Learning Malay with Poems: From Understanding Stylistics to Blogging Poetic Expressions

We provide a bifocal account on teaching techniques and learning achievements in suggesting that Malay poems, as a resource, are beneficial to foreign language pedagogy. The teaching focus was the Malay poetic-discursive strategies at the stylistic levels. By examining the structures of three poems, the pedagogy positions Malay poems as communicative assembles of Malay linguistic categories for conveying a series of messages. A learning focus is in place toward the production of a poem in the weblogs for developing the confidence to communicate in Malay. The learning results in three submissions from four tertiary learners who produce reflective poetic expressions with visual stimulations. Their creative outputs indicate that poetry offers a cathartic avenue for developing interpersonal intelligence. Writing about sibling relationship, inter-generation gap and conviction for success, the poem project perpetuates intrinsic values thus complementing the pragmatic reasons typically associated with foreign language education. In this respect, language pedagogy using Malay poems is a value-adding practice relevant in foreign language education.