USING POETRY IN THE ENGLISH CLASS: OBSERVING SOME OUTCOMES AND CHALLENGES ENCOUNTERED BY LANGUAGE LEARNERS

With its intricacy of word choice and usage, poetry can be challenging for language learners of any level, but at the same time it can be used as an especially valuable instrument of learning that boosts their knowledge on the target language and society, as well as their reading skills. This paper discusses elements of the methodology and strategies employed in the English classroom with learners of English at the University of Tirana, Albania, observing the different learning outcomes in terms of vocabulary and language use upon reading, analyzing, and attempting to write poetry. The paper also focuses on the type of pre-analysis research that students need to conduct in order to be able to work with the poems, an important process that provides multi-level benefits, many of which related to improving language skills