Why Is Shakespeare Too Difficult For High School Learners?

Let it be, let it be: let Shakespeare be

Trakhman (2012), Thornsbury (2017) and Coons (2013) identify that some people argue that “Shakespeare” is too difficult for most high school learners due to the dialogue being confusing, and that some of the stories are unnecessarily vulgar. Somersett (2016) identify that others argue that Shakespeare is irrelevant in the 21st century. Some people, especially young learners, consider the study of Shakespearean plays to be an old fashioned, outdated idea that bears little relevance to their own lives. The language can appear almost foreign, and initial readings can leave the learners feeling confused and unsure of what is actually being said (Somersett, 2016). Consequently, many high school English

“It’s Greek to me,” “green-eyed jealousy,” “stood on ceremony,” “tongue-tied,” “hoodwinked” or “in a pickle”). Shakespeare’s influence on the English language runs deep. Shakespeare is often identified in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) — the definitive record of the English language – as the sole user or first user of a word or phrase. The more of Shakespeare’s words one looks up, the more one discovers that, time after time, according to the OED, he turns out to have used language in wholly individual ways or, more often, to have originated usages that subsequently became established in the language (Boston, 2016; Smith, 2015). Furthermore, Thornsbury (2017) and Jamieson (2018) explain that Shakespeare created much of the English language that people know and use today. It is said that Shakespeare can be credited for making over 1,700 common words that people probably unknowingly use every day. He often did this by changing the grammatical form of many words and making them mean something slightly different (he changed nouns into verbs, changed verbs into adjectives, connected words never before used together, and added prefixes and suffixes), but he also is known for devising some original words by himself as well (Thorsbury, 2017; Jamieson, 2018). Thereupon, the plays Shakespeare has written give learners a better understanding of the original English language before it was manipulated by the later centuries (Thornsbury,