When I wanted to write my first print book, I knew I was going to write a book about education as that's the industry I have been involved in the whole of my working life - teaching, teacher training, and e-learning. I had different ideas, one of which was using rhymes to teach English. So, I had my book published, 61 Mostly Nonsense Rhymes for Malaysian Students (September 2018). But why rhymes?
Why rhymes?
Children grow up on a diet of rhymes and songs in their kindergartens and primary schools and that's something they remember for life. In poetry, various literary devices are employed such as rhyming words, similes, alliteration, onomatopoeia, word repetition, metaphors, and personification. These devices are useful as they appeal to the child's senses - visual, auditory and kinesthetic. Take these two stanzas from Wheels on the Bus:
The horn on the bus goes beep-beep-beep
Beep-beep-beep, beep-beep-beep
The horn on the bus goes beep-beep-beep
All day long
The wipers on the bus go swish-swish-swish
Swish-swish-swish, swish-swish-swish
The wipers on the bus go swish-swish-swish
All day long
There's a preponderance of onomatopoeiac words in this `sound' children's rhyme: the sounds of the horn (beep), wiper (swish), babies (wah-wah), and mothers (shush-shush). The repetition of these word sounds makes it easy for children to learn and remember the words in a fun way. They will also learn the sentence pattern:
The horn on the bus goes...The wipers on the bus go...
The expression `All day long' is also repeated in every stanza. I can almost visualize a teacher going through this rhyme with her brood of kindie kids, voicing and acting out the word-sounds in their classroom.
Rhyme your way to English!
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