Image by Very Quiet on Flickr.com is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Just a heads up (or warning) this post is intended for advanced ESL students. If you aren’t an advanced learner, you can give this post a try, and I hope you won’t get frustrated if you have trouble understanding the video this post is based around. If you do find this English too advanced for you, please come back to it again in the future.

I have a video for you today entitled ‘3 ways to speak English.’ This video is rich with culture, linguistic diversity, and spirit. This video also presents a “spoken word” poem. Spoken word is a type of poetry that is performance-based. It is similar to preforming a monologue in a play. Spoken word poetry also often involves word play and story telling. This type of poetry originated in America among African-Americans in Harlem, a neighborhood of New York City.

This poem is about the performer’s (Jamila Lyiscott) experience of speaking English three ways: at home with her family, at school/work, and with friends. It artfully tells the story about how we all have different dialects, words, phrases, and tones of speech that we use depending on the context of who we are speaking to in a given situation. Dr. Lyiscott’s experience of navigating the use of different dialects is one that many Americans and ESL learners experience. In this poem she will also introduce you to a dialect of English you may never have heard before.

In her spoken word essay you will hear Dr. Lyiscott use the word “articulate” a number of times. So, it is important that you know what this means, both literally and in the context of the poem, the poet, and her African-American heritage.

The word “articulate” (an adjective) is defined as “a person with the ability to speak fluently and coherently.” When a person speaks articulately they are said to speak “properly” or “well.”

The context the word “articulate” has in this poem is something that you as an ESL speaker may not be aware of. The United States is still a white-dominant society, in which throughout the history of this country (and present day) people who are not white have been treated as less-than or not as good as white people (often to horrific extremes) in many circumstances. So, when a white person tells a black person that she or he is “articulate” there is a subtle, or not-so-subtle, message that the white person expects the black person to be not articulate. That is, the white person is surprised that the black person speaks so clearly and similar to the white person. In sum, telling this poet that she is articulate is not really a complement, it is an insult.

I hope you enjoy this wonderful piece of spoken word. I highly recommend that you first read through the transcript of this poem. You can find the transcript here. Reading through the transcript first will give you some familiarity with the words before you hear them. Second, when you watch the video, I recommend that you choose to watch the performance with English subtitles. You can choose to have the subtitles present by clicking on the subtitle icon in the lower right hand-corner of the video screen. Lastly, if you want to listen to the poem a second time, you may want to see the subtitles in your native language. But, definitely use the English subtitles first :).

I hope you enjoy this spoken word poetry and all that the performer has to share with you about American culture and speaking English.