Have you ever used Cinquan Poetry in your EFL class? I did the other day and was pleasantly surprised by the results. My adult EFL students wrote beautiful and evocative poems that moved me. Writing Cinquan Poetry doesn't take up much class time and as I have discovered, it's a fun and novel way to introduce poetry and review grammar points such as nouns, adjectives, and action verbs.
Cinquan poetry is made up of five lines. Here's the breakdown:
1st line: a noun, your subject (1 word)
2nd line: 2 adjectives to describe the subject (2 words)
3rd line: an action statement to describe the noun (3 words)
4th line: how the subject makes you feel (4 words)
5th line: a noun, restating the subject in a new way (1 word)
Here are two examples:
Toronto
vibrant dynamic
bustling with energy
makes me feel alive
home
Komagane
beautiful romantic
straddling the alps
makes me feel inspired
town
I walked my students through it line by line. I had my students focus on an aspect of a country they would be visiting in the near future but any subject would do.
Perhaps, you might give it a try and be pleasantly surprised as I was with the results.
Copyright (c) 2005 Stefan Chiarantano- All rights reserved
I have seen both cinquain poems and cinquan poems used for this kind of poem. Are they both correct spellings for this kind of poetry?
Cinquain/Cinquan was invented by Adelaide Crapsey. It is a poem of five lines. This poetry was introduced to me under the spelling of 'Cinquan'. Cinquan refers to Cinquain.
Great idea! Thanks!
how was cinpuan poetry invented?
who invented cinquain poetry
I loved it so much that I added it to my book to show my teacher