Academic Summary of an Article

In the article “Developing Voice by Composing Haiku: A Social-Expressivist Approach for Teaching Haiku Writing in EFL Contexts”, Iida (2010) discusses how teaching haiku writing in EFL contexts using a social-expressivist approach can help students learn to express their voice and develop audience awareness, as well as helping them to improve their foreign language skills. He also presents some activities for use in the university EFL writing classroom.

According to Iida (2010) the social-expressivist approach “structures learning around communicative contexts where students learn to express their voice –the articulation of their personal needs, interests and ideas- in a social context that presumes an audience –the teacher, classmates, and even the community at large” (p. 28). He states that this approach not only helps students to “discover and reveal their unique perspectives of the world” (Iida, 2010, p. 28) and to improve their English, but that it also “makes EFL composition more focused, relevant, and meaningful” (Iida, 2010, p.28).

Iida (2010) claims that although writing poetry can be a challenging task for students, haiku is a kind of poem that can be used in the EFL classroom without much difficulty, as it is “a short, three-line Japanese poem with a specific number of syllables in each line”, and that haiku “encourages students to express their inner feelings to others” (Iida, 2010, p.28).

Iida (2010) suggests having students learn to read haiku before they begin to write it, and then, simplifying the writing stage by following some five steps, which include explaining students what haiku is and what the goals of writing it are, getting students to gather impressions for haiku, writing the haiku, reading it to their peers for the students to see their audience’s interpretations and reactions to what they have written, and finally publishing it.

In conclusion, Iida (2010) shows through his article how using a social-expressivist approach to teaching haiku in the EFL university classroom allows students to develop their own voice and express it, acquiring awareness of the audience through the interaction between readers and writers. This practice also makes students develop their fluency and vocabulary, besides enabling them to work with their classmates and engage in relevant and profitable discussions, thus developing their communication skills in the foreign language.

References

Iida, A. (2010).  Developing Voice by Composing Haiku: A Social-Expressivist Approach for Teaching Haiku Writing in EFL Contexts. English Teaching Forum, Nbr. 1. DOI: EJ914886