Talk delivered by Dr Anil PrasadIntegrating the Indigenous Poetic Culture for Language Development [Archives:2003/639/Education]

By Dr Ayid Sharyan
Department of English
Sana'a University

Under the aegis of the Department of English, Faculty of Education, Sana'a University Dr Anil Prasad, Ibb University, Faculty of Arts presented an extension lecture on 20 April 2003.
The topic of his talk was 'Integrating the poetic culture of Yemen to facilitate language development at the college/university level'. He highlighted the ways of exploiting the Yemeni/Arabic poetic culture in facilitating learning of English. Drawing on his field experience, Dr Prasad underscored the importance of Arabic poetry in explaining the sound and sense of English poetry.
To illustrate his point, Dr. Prasad copiously quoted from Arabic poets such as Al-Baradoni, Al-Mutanibi, Shaoqi and compared them to English poets such as Shelley and Wordsworth. Many students expressed their keenness to have copies of the talk and the poems that have been translated by Dr Prasad himself with the help of his friends. The audience who were from all levels in the Department of English as well as from other places were thoroughly impressed by the extensive knowledge of Dr Prasad about Arabic writers and Arabic literature. His authentic texts and first-hand exposure to Arabic gave a unique luster to the talk. He concluded by giving examples of how students can be involved in the target culture. He gave several examples of poetry in English and Arabic written by his students. His reading of those examples evoked a great appreciation among the members of the audience.

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