An investigation into students’ attitudes towards the value of poetry and their knowledge of poetry analysis

Abstract

Though poetry analysis is a central component of literary studies in higher education, research frequently reports that attitudes of both students and teachers to its incorporation in syllabi are mixed (Weaven & Clark, 2014). Previous research suggests a complex relationship between attitudes to and knowledge of poetry with some studies indicating that negative attitudes might be the result of a lack of competency in analysing such texts (Benton, 1999; Fleming, 1992), and others suggesting the greater the knowledge, the less favourable the attitude (Liao & Roy, 2017; Snapper, 2013). This small-scale quantitative study examines connections between knowledge and attitude in a sample of first-semester Swedish students of English, and investigates potential differences between pre-service teachers, and regular students.