The Benefits Of The Memorization Of Poetry

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Speech Professor Emmons Recite poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling Good Morning. My name is ___________, and today I will presenting the argument that states that the memorization of poetry in the childhood educational curriculum is, in fact, very beneficial. Memorized language was a mainstay of almost all of recorded history until about 60 years ago when some misguided educators proclaimed that the idea of memorization was harmful to children’s creativity, understanding, and enjoyment of learning. This is perhaps handicapping a third generation of students who need the linguistic foundation that memorization provides. Reading and remembering anything from an early age will assist a child's development, but poetry, classical verse in particular, has the unique ability to present a child with a wide range of cognitive necessities. As Michael Knox Beran notes in the Summer 2004 article titled "In Defense of Memorization" in the City Journal, "Classic verse teaches children an enormous amount about order, measure, proportion, correspondence, balance, symmetry, agreement, tense, and mood." By this he means that poems present language in more ordered and rhythmical ways than prose. These techniques increase a child's ability to reason, imagine, think, argue and experience the world in sensory and inventive ways. Through memorization of poetry, a child's mental capacity is exercised and thus increases in flexibility and strength. Secondly, when a child spends time memorizing poetry, he or she is unconsciously absorbing the rules and structure of the English language. Learning poems increases a child's vocabulary, grammatical capabilities, and other linguistic skills. When the poem is recited aloud following memorization, a student expands his ability to enunciate, project and otherwise speak the English language with clarity and sophistication.
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