AFFECTIVE ASPECT OF LANGUAGE AND THE TEACHING OF HAUSA POETRY

Abstract

Poetry has been noted (Stones: 1966) as that genre of literature that "derives much of its power from the subtle blending of the intellectual and the affective". In other words, the poetry teacher has got to pay attention to the affective nature of his subject as much as he does to the appeal it makes to the intellect. Unfortunately, it appears that teachers of Hausa Poetry in our secondary schools pay less attention to this very important characteristic of their subject - the affective overtones of poetry. This paper intends to do two things in this regard namely, (i) to demonstrate how deeply ingrained the affective aspects of language are in Hausa Poetry. (ii) to proffer possible techniques through which the affective aspects are transmitted to the pupils in a poetry class.