Formeaning response approach in the teaching of poetry: a case study/ Siti Fauziana Zakaria

Many previous studies show students’ lack of interest and comprehension when learning poetry, and various approaches to teaching poetry have been introduced to solve this problem. Among the approaches are the Stylistics and the Reader Response Approach. The Formeaning Response Approach is an approach introduced by Harlan Kellem in 2009 to overcome the contradiction that exists between the advocates of Stylistics and Reader Response Approach. Kellem suggested that both the approaches should be intergrated. Kellem believes that using the Formeaning Response approach does not only make students understand poems, it will also allow them to enjoy their learning process. He believes that when both stylistic aspects and students response are being paid attention to, students will not only be able to understand and the linguistic aspects of the poems, but they will also be interested in learning poetry. Since Kellem’s study only suggested the classroom activities to be used in lessons but no evidence of students’ experience using the approach, the current study aims to study students’ experiences using the classroom activities suggested in the Formeaning Response approach. This study opts to use the case study method, and 29 students from Faculty of Creative Multimedia are chosen as the respondents. Researcher’s reflective journals, students’ reflective journals, and interviews are used to collect data. Data collected are then analysed using the case study data analysis proposed by Houghton et al. (2015). The study concludes that by using the Formeaning Response approach, students experience (i) an elevated interest in poetry lessons, (ii)collaborative learning via group work conducted. Other than that, this study reveals that the Formeaning Response Approach can contribute tothe Malaysian higher education students’ learning of poetry because the approach: (i) provides opportunity for them to understand poems and literary devices, (ii) offers an avenue for students to enhance their language proficiency, (iii) allows students to be creative. Finally, this study also divulges that the Formeaning Response Approach is able to change students’ attitude towards poetry. Therefore, the findings of the current study correspond with the notion that Harlan Kellem suggested that integrating both the Stylistics and Reader Response Approach can result in positive learning experience in students. The researcher suggests further studies to be conducted, especially quantitative studies, to investigate the effectiveness of the approach to further increase the Formeaning Response approach’s credibility.