Words end in -ing in a poem, because of the multiple functional load of the -ing form, are confusing and problematic when activating schema is needed for the grammatical reordering of words and filling in gaps of ellipses to understand the meaning of a poem. This paper investigates the effectiveness of activating EFL learners’ prior grammatical knowledge of -ing form in understanding the meaning of the parts in which they occur in two selected poems. The poems pre-teaching activities that were designed for the purpose of this study revealed that the EFL learners did not succeed in activating the relevant schema autonomously nor did the teacher’s explanation of those grammatical structures with –ing form with some examples not related to the poems bring about the positive desired effect. However, activating prior knowledge about those grammatical structures that contain the -ing form and explaining them by the teacher while teaching the poems as they occur authentically in the contexts of the poems helped the EFL learners effectively in understanding the meanings of the poems.
Keywords: Ing Form – EFL Learners – Intralingual Complexity, Schema, Teaching Poetry
