American Literature / Unit 1 AML 0011 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Scanning a Line: The Procedure
The idea
Marking a line's rhythm is a four-step habit, and the exam rewards it even though the board rarely uses the word for it. Step one: read the line aloud naturally and let the sentence, not the expectation, place the stresses. Step two: mark each syllable stressed or unstressed above the word, working from the words you are surest of, which are usually the two-syllable ones. Step three: divide the marks into repeating groups, taking the group that occurs most often as the poem's foot. Step four: count the groups in the line and name the length, from monometer at one through tetrameter at four to pentameter at five and hexameter at six.
In practice
Read aloud, mark, group, count.
Where people slip
Two cautions. A poem's meter is the pattern most lines keep, not the pattern every line keeps, so a reversed first foot or an extra unstressed syllable at the end does not change the name. And a line that resists all grouping is likely free verse, which has no set pattern at all, so the honest answer is that it has none.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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