Test Review

I personaly have a difficult time labeling words as stressed, unstressed, and counting the feet per line. I went online and found some STEPS that can be used to help learn how to do these things.

Steps

·        1

·         Determine whether your poem is a sonnet: if it has fourteen lines and some recognizable rhyme scheme. Assume it is iambic pentameter, and then do these steps with that mindset. If it's not, it still may very well be in iambic meter, which is the most popular meter for closed-form poems.

·        2

·         Read the poem out loud and see if you notice a particular rhythm in your first reading.

·        3

·         Count the number of syllables in each line, and write that number at the end of the line. Do you see a pattern in the number of syllables?

·        4

·         Put an accent mark (/) over any syllables that absolutely have to be stressed. The way you can figure this out is by trying to say the word several times, each time exaggerating a different syllable. ("AR-tist" or "ar-TIST") (One way will sound much better). You can look words up in the dictionary if you need to.

·        5

·         Put a "u" over the unstressed syllables.

·        6

·         See if the poem is iambic (u/), or sets of one unstressed syllable with one stressed ("ta-DAH!"). If it is, see if you can put in all of the other stress and unstressed marks.

·        7

·         Once you see a pattern (for example, unstressed, unstressed, stressed; unstressed, unstressed, stressed . . .), mark a vertical line between each unit of the pattern. Those are your "feet."

·        8

·         Read the poem aloud again, this time really accentuating the words you have marked as "stressed." Does it sound right?

·        9

·         Once you're finished with that, see whether each foot in the poem is a(n): iamb (unstressed-stressed u/), trochee (stressed-unstressed /u), anapest (unstressed-unstressed-stressed uu/), dactyl (stressed-unstressed-unstressed /uu), spondee (stressed-stressed //) or pyrrhic (unstressed-unstressed uu).

·        10

·         Count how many feet each line has. It will probably be one of these: Monometer (one foot), Dimeter (two feet), Trimeter (three feet), Tetrameter (four feet), Pentameter (five feet), or Hexameter (six feet).

·        11

·         Put the foot name as an adjective first and the number of feet as a noun second, and there you go! ("iambic pentameter," "dactylic hexameter," "trochaic tetrameter," etc.)