Distance Learning in the Shadow of War: Poetry, songs and digital games in Hebrew as a teaching method and as a content in the Hebrew language textbooks intended for students of an early childhood age in Arab schools strengthen their skills and make Hebrew accessible to them as a second language. (Published)
The Iron Swords War between Israel and Hamas Organization, which began on October 7th, 2023, caused sudden changes in the teaching curriculum. The students have had to experience an emergency situation and a state of uncertainty similar to that during the Corona epidemic. The Ministry of Education decided to apply the method of Distance Learning as an emergency teaching method in all towns and villages that are located in risk areas. Distance Learning also gave an opportunity to creative teachers to enhance their students’ group learning and individual self-learning by listening to Hebrew poetry and songs, and play digital games that use spoken Hebrew. Teachers applied their innovative methods on early childhood students, who study Hebrew in Arab schools. This study was conducted with a specific purpose: to investigate the effectiveness of listening to poems, songs and digital games on the early childhood Arab students who study Hebrew as a first foreign language through their Distance Learning meetings and self-learning in their free time. The study found that listening to Hebrew poetry, songs and digital games have positive effect on the early childhood students and enriched their vocabulary, improved their grammatical skills, and their state of mind. The contents of poetry, songs and digital games provided the students with positive values of peace, understanding, hope, tolerance and acceptance of the other.
Keywords: Grammar, Poetry, Values, digital games, songs, spoken Hebrew, state of mind, vocabulary
Stylo-Rhetorical Analysis of Lenrie Peters’ Poem: The Fence (Published)
Many scholars have observed the general reservation/aversion most students nurse against poetry as an arm of literary studies. Some of the reasons cited for this, among others, include employment of difficult, remote and archaic words as well as complex and evasive constructions and terms. This study examines some of the prominent stylo-rhetorical devices employed by Lenrie Peters in his Poetic Piece: the Fence. The rationale is to foreground the poet’s ingenuity in exploring both linguistic and rhetorical resources in driving home his message to the conviction and admiration of his readers. The chaotic state of the social order and the sorry condition of humanity in most African societies coupled with both the subject matter and language use in the poem explain our choice of the text. The paper, as an exploration of both semantic cum philosophical praxes of language use, dwelt richly on the blend of linguistic and persuasive nuances of the stylo-rhetorical characteristics of the text under study. Hence, we had cause to investigate the functional values of the salient linguistic resources employed in enacting the text. The Systemic Functional Grammar as propounded by Halliday (1978) was adopted as the theoretical framework for our analysis. Findings showed that poetry is both a linguistic and a social act, and, should be so viewed as a background to be activated for proper understanding and appreciation of our text. We found that it is not all cases of poetry that come with out-of-reach linguistic choices and usages. However, the philosophical nuances of poetry make its texts to call for special but interesting readings not common with other literary genres. This work has proved that the reservation people may have against the texts of poetry may not be so much of estranged linguistic choices and constructions as it is with the philosophical/imaginative inclinations and condiments with which the linguistic choices and constructions are woven together.
Keywords: Poetry, Stylistics, lenrie peters, rhetoric vs style, the fence
Atia Review of the Critique on Robert Frost’s Poetry and Personality (Published)
Poetry and personality of Robert Frost, a highly-acclaimed 20th century American poet, are still favored topics for debate among literary critics even half a century after his death. While a group of critics call him a modernist poet, another group denounce him just as a rural poet of New England, while another group sets him at a crossroad and finds assorted elements in his poetry. Frost’s personality too lobbed biographers and critics at varied directions. While one group of critics termed him as a quiet, loner gentleman, the other one portrayed him as jealous, mean-spirited and misogynist career-builder. The third group of critics certified him as a complex man who juggled uncommon fame with an uncommonly difficult private life. Jay Parini, a Frost biographer, said, “You see there are so many Frosts”. This paper runs a review of criticism on Robert Frost’s poetry and personality for a deeper insight into the tug of war and tries to locate the real Frost among “so many Frosts”.
Keywords: American Colloquialism, Critique, Modernist Poetry, Personality, Poetry, Sympathetic Humor
Translatability of the Aesthetic Aspect of Rhythm in Qur’anic Verses (Published)
This study attempts to understand how the aesthetic aspects of the Qur’an are translated into or accommodated in English. It clarifies slightly challenges in translating the Qur’an, a text believed by Moslems to be the word of God and as such beautiful beyond imagination. To get a feel of its poetic essence, particularly in its rhythmic verses, and the task that lies ahead for translators, three short “surahs” (verses) and seven well-known translations of each were analysed. The theory of equivalence was used to measure. It was found that all surahs showed rhythmic patterns (sound) that are distinctive, even to the untrained eye/ear. Readers who might not understand its meaning can still appreciate its poetry. None of the translations, however, could reproduce these rhythmic patterns that help memorization of the surahs. In summary, the pervasiveness of rhythmic elements is clear and a real challenge awaits the translator of this text.
Keywords: Aesthetics, Equivalence, Poetry, Qur’an, Rhythmic Patterns