Contemporary British-American poets in early English language education

Abstract

Nursery rhymes and children’s poems have always been part of early English language education. In-service preschool teachers sometimes demonstrate incredible resourcefulness, while at other times disconcerting lackadaisicalness, in the use of literary resources from the Internet, which typically appear there without any qualification, often anonymously. Teachers’ main priority in the choice of poems is usually the right topic and the simplicity of the vocabulary, which may overwrite the requirement of literary quality. The lack of British-American authored poetry, more specifically contemporary children’s poetry in the teaching practice of kindergartens, is particularly conspicuous because Hungarian preschool education is deservedly proud of the popularization of quality contemporary children’s poetry in Hungarian. Not that preservice teachers do not encounter any quality children’s poetry inn the course of their bilingual kindergarten teacher training. Apart from my personal teaching experience and that of my colleagues teaching children’s literature, this is evidenced by the existence of several textbooks, , such as the Children’s Literature Handbook (ed. Éva Szűcs Ujlakyné, 1995) for the Kecskemét Teacher Training College, and A Task-Based Reader on Methodology and Children’s Literature (eds. Kovács & Trentinné Benkő, 2003, esp. pp. 112–132) for the ELTE Bilingual Teacher Training Programmes. Experience shows that newly graduated kindergarten teachers are happy to use in their work what they have learnt and obtained during their studies (Trentinné Benkő et al., 2021). Therefore, it is worth the effort of us teacher trainers to keep the British-American literary course materials under continuous review in order to secure a place – beside the Internet rhymes, the classic nursery rhymes and poems by canonized children’s poets – for British-American contemporary children’s poetry in our training courses. In this way, contemporary British-American children’s poetry may find its way into the preschool curriculum as well. A proper methodology and selection procedure can ensure that preschoolers’ typically ”beginner level” of English does not automatically exclude acquaintance with quality British-American children’s poetry. Based on an ongoing research project, this article aims to share a selection of children’s poems by six British and American contemporary poets, together with some suggested methods of instruction.