I've been doing this for 20-odd years, and no student has ever been "defeated" by it in any way. The recitation part is simply practice, and with the right classroom atmosphere you can say, "Do it again, and this time speak it to so-and-so across the room." You can turn the classroom into a rehearsal space where everyone shares in performance and is applauded for the effort. Recitation and performance are a way of planting the poem more firmly in memory and also a way of coming to understand it anew.
I firmly believe that oral performance is good training for written performance, and we're not talking about being an "actor." We're just talking about saying the poem like a person talking to other people, getting it across...
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