“No Subject is ever well understood and no art is intelligently practiced if the light which the other studies are to throw upon is deliberately shut out”-Ramont
Correlation is a word which signifies the reciprocal relationship with various subjects in the curriculum. Correlation can be broadly classified into two types: internal correlation and external correlation.
Internal Correlation
A sort of mutual relationship among and between the parts of the same subject is called internal correlation. This principle gives birth to the ‘Whole to Part’ method.
Poetry, composition, grammar and prose are the integrated parts of the English language. Thus the correlation between them is internal. There are many examples in prose as well as poetry where we find that we correlate grammar incidentally. In poetries we have figures of speech which make poetry beautiful.
For e.g. in the poem ‘The Race of Flowers’, in the very first stanza,
The ending words, grace-disgrace gives a beautiful rhythm to the poem, similarly, many rhyming words are used to give poetic effect. There are also many figures of speech included in most of the poetries such as simile, personification, repetition, etc. Thus while teaching poetry, the teacher takes the help of grammar to make the lesson interesting.
For e.g. in the Std 8 poem ‘Daffodils’ the lines,
‘I wander’d lonely as a cloud’, the poet uses a simile, a figure of speech used for comparison to bring out the speakers solitariness to that of a cloud.
Sometimes prose and poetry starts with the pattern of storytelling. The Std 7 prose lesson ‘Two old men’ starts with the sentence “Long, long ago there were two old men who lives in Russia.” The pattern of storytelling is also used in the 9th, in the poem ‘Once upon a time’ the first line starts like this:
Once upon a time, Son
They used to laugh with their heart,
And laugh with their eyes
In this we can observe, a poem written in the form of a story. So
References: Methods of Teaching English – Bhatia English Balbharati – Std V, Std VI, Std VII, Std VIII English Sulabharati – Std IX