Page 39 - FINAL RESEARCH PAPER THESIS 2020

understanding of linguistics terms in the poems. This situation had been made worse by a shortage

of resources. Some student teachers find it difficult to access other means, generally known as
teaching aids to teach poetry lessons. The student teacher further expressed that teaching aids in

poetry would help learners understand the poems and would help teachers to explain the elements
of poetry to the learners and it would add to assess their understanding.

Boredom and lack of participation

The result from figure 17 the two respondents (25%) identified lack of interest in participating in

poetry lessons among the learners as a key challenge that made poetry lesson difficulty to teach.

The respondents also expressed that English is a second language in most schools in Namibia. This
made it a challenge for most learners to understand subject contents, particularly in poetry. Student

teachers expressed that another key challenge was that of interpreting poems from old English

makes the lesson boring and learners lose interest. The response was supported by Killander (2011)
where he stated that teachers and students (learners) should have extra thinking to get the meaning

of poems that they read, teachers and students have difficulty because of linguistic aspects, some
students felt bored in reading poetry because they could not get the benefits from the activity,

teachers do not have the confidence to struggle, bare all or take such chances in teaching. Teachers
sometimes do not know the level of their students.

Lack of teaching materials

The findings from figure 17 depicts that two (25%) student teacher respondents explained that lack
of accessing teaching resources for poetry lesson was another major challenge that hindered

learning and teaching poetry. Some student teacher respondents expressed that they always
struggled in acquiring enough teaching materials for poetry lessons and insufficient information

affected the learners’ learning progress.

This points back to lack of teaching resources and aids in Namibian schools. In other words,
teachers did not have enough access to teaching and learning materials.

Poor understanding among learners

The result from figure 17 one (12.5%) Student teacher observed a challenge of lack of basic poetry

knowledge among learners which led to learners having poor understanding of poetry content.

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