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Dr. Seuss’s oeuvre occupies a distinctive niche in English Language Teaching (ELT), particularly in contexts involving young learners and English Language Learners (ELLs). His texts characterized by rhyme, rhythm, and repetition serve as potent tools for cultivating phonological awareness, listening comprehension, and reading fluency. This review examines how Seuss’s rhyme schemes foster phonemic sensitivity, enabling learners to isolate, identify, and manipulate sound units within words. Rhythmic structures, notably anapestic tetrameter, are shown to promote automaticity in word recognition and syntactic parsing, thereby supporting comprehension and expressive fluency. The pedagogical efficacy of Seuss’s stylistic devices is further contextualized within the Indian Knowledge System (IKS), where oral transmission of knowledge through rhythmic chanting, mnemonic verse forms (e.g., shlokas, doha), and performative recitation has long been foundational to cognitive development. Drawing parallels between Seuss’s linguistic play and IKS traditions, this paper argues for a culturally resonant framework in ELT that integrates Western literary rhythm with indigenous oral pedagogies.A close analysis of five canonical texts The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Horton Hears a Who!, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, and Fox in Socks demonstrates how rhythmic language scaffolds learners from phonemic decoding to advanced fluency. These texts, when read alongside IKS principles, offer a structured yet playful m odality for language acquisition, positioning Seuss’s work as a translinguistic bridge between global ELT practices and local epistemologies
Dr. Seuss, rhyme schemes, anapestic tetrameter, phonological awareness, ELT, Indian Knowledge System, oral pedagogy, mnemonic devices
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