ERIC Number: ED031484
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1967
Pages: 295
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Characteristics of Poetry Associated with Preferences of a Panel of Tenth Grade Students.
Nelms, Benny Frank
To determine what characteristics of poetry are preferred by high school students, researchers asked 16 sophomores to use a semantic differential rating scale to evaluate 120 poems selected from high school textbooks and current publications. Seven sophisticated poetry readers numerically assessed 10 technical characteristics of the poems to establish a means of comparison between professional and student evaluations and to clarify the relationship between the students' descriptive and evaluative scales. Analysis of the data revealed that students preferred (1) narrative poetry of topical interest, particularly poems about unusual people, moments of crisis, humor, war, history, and social problems to the exclusion of poems dealing with lyric expression of mood, emotion, and sensory impression, (2) poetry which is easy to comprehend, (3) poems dealing with realistic, masculine, unusual, and youthful subject matters, (4) competent but controversial modern poems rated high by the sophisticated readers, (5) poems that vary considerably from those judged high in poetic merit by sophisticated readers, and (6) no particular rhyme scheme. (Author/MP)
Descriptors: Content Analysis, Educational Research, English Instruction, Grade 10, Literary Criticism, Literary Discrimination, Literature, Lyric Poetry, Poetry, Secondary Education, Student Attitudes, Student Interests, Twentieth Century Literature
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Note: Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Iowa.
