RATE Issues

Keywords: Creative writing, Collaborative writing, Critical thinking, SS’ motivation increase, Creating a writing climate in the class, Self-esteem, Intrapersonal & interpersonal intelligence
Abstract: Our article intends to demonstrate the role writing plays within the economy of the English classes and the benefits it brings to foreign language students. Written communication should be perceived as important as spoken communication. Mastering the ability to write effectively is seen as a key objective for learners. Another key feature of the present article is that creative writing brings a fresh new look upon writing assignments for both the teacher and the students, enabling the latter to widen their horizon as well as discover within themselves resources & abilities they have not been aware of before. In our opinion the reasons for this approach in ELT include: Creative writing implies a curriculum centred on the learners’ acquisitions, it is stimulating, it means playful, but rigorous work with language and, last but not least, it improves self-esteem. It is a motivating force for learning.

Motto:
“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”
Ernest Hemingway

Argument

The social and cultural roots
Nature endows children with a wealth of energy, good health and ambition, and trusts them to use these gifts as their childish souls see fit. And nature gives children something more powerful, more valuable and delicate and sweeter than anything we, adults can ever offer, and it gives them from the very first day of life: nature gives the child an active, searching, creative mind.
As adults in the first place, and teachers in the second, we have the duty to maximise this potential by creating the proper educational climate and learning environment. Teachers have always been interested in having the right materials that will not only help them teach the language but at the same time entertain, stimulate creativity, teach critical thinking, instill in their students the desire to cooperate and learn together. Many sociologists, educational psychologists, linguists looked into this matter bringing useful insights for language teaching.
We find Bonnie Tsai’s opinion on the subject of creativity illustrative and therefore worth mentioning:
A creative person is curious, playful, and intuitive. In our society, we tend to view certain kinds of people, like artists, scientists and inventors as being creative. But we are all born with creativity. It is just a matter of finding ways of using this creativity. All it takes is an inquisitive mind, a willingness to take risks, and the drive to make things work – three qualities that everyone has.
(Tsai, ‘The Land of Smart – How to create a thinking classroom’, 2009)
Why creative writing in ELT
Until recently, language teaching methodology had little time for the more creative and playful uses of language. The structural approaches tended to focus on the form of the language, and the communicative approaches on the pragmatic, utilitarian aspects of language use. Slowly, however, the realization has begun to dawn that language is more than just day-to-day ‘communication’. A great deal of language use is actually playful, with no immediate communicative pay-off.
There are various reasons why creative writing will be a meaningful tool for any English teacher willing to include such activities in his/her classes:

1. The existence of a curriculum that is centered on the learners’ acquisitions. Such a curriculum implies modern strategies where the role of the learner is a dynamic one: to express points of view, to share ideas with the others, to give reasons, to collaborate with others in order to solve different tasks, whereas the role of a teacher is, more often than not, that of a facilitator and of a monitor.
2. From the point of view of language acquisition (linguistic competence and development of language skills), we consider that there are at least three ways in which students at an intermediate level and above can benefit from creative writing within class work:
• Creative writing can be very stimulating and a lot of fun. It involves playful
but rigorous work with language; on the other hand, students express themselves and their own ideas. Although people seem to associate creative writing with an “anything goes” mentality, in order to produce a good text, poem, short story or dramatic scene, the language needs to be correct and it needs to work. Language use is a creative act in itself: we transform thoughts into language that can be seen or heard.
By giving learners creative exercises, we get them to practise an important sub-skill of using the language, namely thinking creatively.
• Creative writing requires greater precision in expression. In order to say precisely what they mean, students have to be very careful in their use of vocabulary and idioms, to give only an example.
• For more advanced students who are exposed to literary texts—as few as they are in present textbooks—creative writing provides alternatives to traditional ways of discussing texts. Writing, say, a dialogue between the protagonists of a novel that does not belong to the text, is not only fun but also requires a good understanding of their motivations and features. To move on, creative writing can lead to a more profound appreciation of a text. Any student who has tried to write a poem, for instance, can appreciate what is involved in a poem discussed in class.
3. From a psychological perspective, creative writing improves self-esteem as learners can look at their own products and see what they are able to achieve. It enables students to develop their personality, to engage in tasks which may ask them to ‘spread their linguistic wings’, to take some chances and use the language they are learning to express more personal or more complex thoughts and images.
This will not be easy because of the limitations many students come up against when writing in L2. Nor will all students respond well to the challenge to be ambitious and to take risks. But for so many it will be a motivating force for learning.
1 Developing Writing Competence.

1.1. Writing in the language classroom

For as long as languages have been taught, teachers have asked students to write things in their notebooks and exercise books. Yet sometimes, over the years, it has seemed that writing has been seen as only a support system for learning grammar and vocabulary, rather than as a skill in its own right. Recently, however, trainers and methodologists have looked again at writing in the foreign-language classroom and put forward ways of teaching this skill which acknowledge and emphasise its importance. Once a ‘neglected skill’ or a ‘forgotten’ one, described by so many as the “Cinderella” of the four skills, now writing occupies the prominent role it deserves in foreign language teaching and learning as well as in our textbooks. Our paper will try to show why writing has moved up in the scale of classroom priorities and what benefits it brings in the classroom.
Let us first consider how mentalities and conceptions about writing suffered transformations in time, within the various teaching methods. Grammar-translation teachers, for instance, laid great emphasis on writing: dictation, summarizing, composition were habitual activities, and much writing was done for practicing of the new grammar items (especially transformation exercises and translations). But with the audio-lingual approaches, writing was considered to be of minor importance, the educators of the age estimating that learners needed the foreign language for oral communication so as to cope with the requirements of daily interactions. However, with the permanent development of the world and the growing intricacy of human relations, people gradually understood that the needs of the educated man are much more complex. That is why post-communicative teachers dedicate special interest to teaching writing fully and thoroughly.
Nevertheless, writing – as one of the four skills of language learning: listening, reading, speaking and writing – has always formed part of the syllabus in the teaching of English. It can be used for a variety of purposes, ranging from being merely a “backup” for grammar teaching, as it has been previously stated, to a major syllabus strand in its own right, where mastering the ability to write effectively is seen as a key objective for learners.
Effective writers usually have a purpose in mind and construct their writing with a view to achieving that purpose. Needless to say that writing is a purposeful and meaningful activity where students write in order to communicate with a particular reader or readers (the target reader as it is called by so many specialists): each other, the teacher or a larger audience. Writing is then decontextualized if the written task does not mention the purpose and the audience. Writing to fulfill a communicative purpose and inviting comment from others gives learners feedback on the success or otherwise of their attempts at written communication and successful efforts provide the satisfaction which sustains motivation and strengthens the desire to become an even better writer.
1.2 Motivating students to write
It is a well-known fact that not many students enjoy writing or at least engage in writing activities – no matter what their purposes are – with pleasure, interest or enthusiasm.
First and foremost a good teacher would reflect upon this issue and ask himself/herself questions like the following ones before going into classroom to start writing activities:
- Why do my students feel insecure about writing? Is it because of their handwriting, their spelling? Or is that they feel they have ‘nothing’ to say?
- How often do they write in their mother tongue?
- Is there enough language exposure in class so that they have acquired the necessary “knowledge” – knowledge of the world, knowledge of genres, socio-cultural knowledge- to embark upon writing?
- Are the writing tasks interesting and thought-provoking?
- Are the writing tasks appropriate for the students’ level/ age?
- How much time should I give my students for their writing?
- Have they been given enough models?
- Do they understand who the target reader(s) is/are?
- Is it clear for them what the reason for their writing is?
Obviously the teacher should strive to eliminate students’ anxieties and make them willing to write. In so doing, the teacher must:
• Choose carefully the writing tasks.
These should be appealing to our students and have relevance for them. An engaging writing activity task is one that involves students not just intellectually, but emotionally as well. It amuses them, intrigues them, or makes them feel good. To my mind, it is the teacher’s task to find challenging and rewarding tasks which can support a variety of learning aims and integrate other skills.
• Provide students with what they need.
In order to counteract potential problems, we have to identify what our students need if they are to be successful in their attempt to write:
- Information & task information – students need to have the necessary information to complete the task. This means that they need to understand clearly what we want them to do and they also need to be absolutely clear about any of the topic detail that we give them. If we ask them to respond to an invitation, for example, they need to have understood the details of the invitation, who they are writing to, and what it is they are trying to achieve. If they are involved in a collaborative writing activity they need to know what they are writing about, who writes what, and how the writing sequence is going to progress.
- Language – if students need specific language to complete a writing task we need to give it to them (or help them to find it).This may involve offering them phrases, parts of sentences, or words.
- Ideas – teachers need to be able to suggest ideas to help students when they get stuck. For some this may be just a word or two, for others we may need to dictate a half sentence or even something more substantial. Some say that a good and skillful teacher is to be able to throw out suggestions, ideas without crowding out the individual students with too much detail. I daresay it’s a matter of personal and professional development- the more experienced a teacher is, the better s/he knows how to handle each of their students.
- Patterns & schemes - one way to help students write, even when they do not have many ideas, is to give them a pattern or a scheme to follow. Thus, students will first study a writing genre and then create their examples of the same genre. The rationale behind this is that it is easier to write when constrained than it is when there is nothing in front of you except for a blank piece of paper.
• Build confidence and enthusiasm in the students
One way of doing that is by putting into practice two techniques mentioned by Harmer (2004: 63):
1. instant writing as their aim is to have students write fluently and
2. collaborative writing enthusiastically.
Another choice would be to make writing easier and more fun by doing group writing activities and group correction for example (Process writing includes such elements and they will be discussed in detail in the next parts). Last but not least, teachers should support writing with reading. Not only does it help learners to develop the sub-skills they need but it also helps them understand that good writing is a powerful communication tool.
• Create an environment that encourages positive feedback, one that should motivate the students to share their work with the teacher and their fellow students.
• Encourage students to write with a clear purpose and for a clear audience, for example in letters to pen friends, to newspapers, to other students.
• Find ways to publish learners’ writings, in the school magazine or on websites.
Even with highly proficient students, writing is a challenging task, so that for the students to learn to write well, they must be encouraged to write frequently. Confidence can be built up gradually, through constant practice. As the students advance and develop as writers, the teacher can provide less and less guidance and encourage their independence and creativity.
To round things off, the key to students’ motivation for writing is the purpose. If students see a reason for writing that is meaningful and relevant both to their learning and to their life, they are more likely to be motivated.
2. Creative writing in ELT classes
2.1 Creativity in the language classroom
Modern education aims at formation rather than information, at the process rather than the product. Maybe this is one reason why aspects such as creativity and creative thinking are valued by modern teaching methodology. Creativity and creative thinking are important in ELT for various reasons:
a)Creative work in the language classroom can lead to genuine communication and co-operation. Learners use the language to do the creative task, so they use it as a tool, in its original function. This prepares learners for using the language instrumentally outside the classroom.
b)Creative tasks enrich classroom work, and they make it more varied and more enjoyable by tapping into individual talents, ideas and thoughts –both the learners’ and the teachers’.
c)Creative thinking is an important skill in real life, so it’s only natural to try and develop our students’ creative thinking during school years.
d)Practical experience has proved that most people become more motivated, inspired or challenged if they can create something of value, if they feel that in some ways what they do and how they do it reflect who they are.

2.2 Features of creativity
The four features of creativity are:
• Imaginative
• Purposeful
• Original
• Of value
Creative thinking is imaginative as it brings about something that did not exist or was not known before, so it had to be imagined first. Creative imagination has a purpose, an objective. Originality highlights that creativity has individuality built in. The product or result has to be of value, adds the element of evaluation into creative thinking. When evaluating the creation, we need to see how it serves the purpose.
The next logical step for language teachers would be to see what all this teaches us about creative language learning activities.
First, the activity needs a purpose that is something outside practising a certain language point. This purpose can usually be defined as some kind of outcome or product. In this kind of activity, language is used as a tool, as a means to an end.
Next, the learning process needs to be organized in a way that gives time, space and freedom to learners so that they can use their imagination and originality. This often means being open to many possible answers, solutions and products. Learners need to understand that there is no one right answer, that there are many valuable solutions possible. This calls for tolerance in the classroom. Managing a creative classroom activity also makes it necessary for the teacher to act more like a facilitator or helper.
The last thing to consider is that evaluation is an integral part of the creative process. For evaluating a creative activity, it is very important not to restrict the evaluation to language use, as this would give learners the message that the outcome of the activity is not really important. The more varied the evaluation, the more formative it is for the learners. In other words evaluation must come from different sources: self-evaluation, peer evaluation and teacher evaluation. It also aims at different things: to evaluate the end-product, language use and the process (how learners worked together and contributed individually) using different criteria, which have been previously agreed with the learners.
2.3 Creative writing in ELT
One common problem in the ELT is how to make writing more interesting. Creative writing can be one answer to this problem. Some people might object that creative writing is a waste of time because it appears unfocused and undisciplined. Yet, the interest manifested by so many specialists in this field (J. Spiro, M. Rinvolucri, Ch. Frank, T. Ward, A. Maley, M. Francis, to mention only some of them), the amount of meaningful activities which offer students a structured and non-threatening approach to using language creatively, the personal growth supported by such writing activities which bring students’ own personal experiences into the classroom are all good arguments to contradict this preconceived idea.
Needless to say that each person sees creative writing from a different angle. Yet, the unifying thread seems to be its impact upon students’ motivation: students who are given enough ‘space’ to express themselves and their own ideas, who engage in activities which both stimulate their intellect and ‘feed’ their curiosity are more likely to be active, dynamic learners in class and really get involved in the language classroom activities. For instance, Harmer (2004: 40) sees creative writing as ‘one area (like painting and composing) where the imagination has a chance to run free’. He also considers that the tasks in this case should provoke students to go beyond the everyday, to use the language they are learning to express more personal and complex thoughts and images. In his opinion, creative tasks are nearer the ‘invented’ purpose end of the purpose cline (with the real purpose at one end and the invented purpose at the other). M. Rinvolucri, in his turn, focuses on the importance of creating a writing climate in the language classes:

We believe that in tandem with turning your classroom into an island in the school in which it is normal to speak and listen in English, it makes sense to also create in your classroom a climate of communicative writing.
(M. Rinvolucri, 2007: 7-8)
He suggests a couple of aspects to be taken into account in order to create a writing climate:
- students will write in the knowledge that their classmates will be listening to their content;
- obeying the firm principle that the writer must always have a reader, a reader who is interested in content, not just form;
- teachers should learn something about students’ self-image as writers (this is considered an important step before embarking upon writing creatively); In doing so, teachers should ask students to write short letters explaining how they feel about themselves as writers.

The nature of reader-focused writing
H. Gardner in his seminal book, Frames of Mind (1983), suggests that people have both an intrapersonal and an interpersonal intelligence. Alone in his study, working on a book or writing a letter, the author is working reflectively in an introspective way (this refers to what Gardner would call intrapersonal intelligence). Yet, even in this case the author is aware of the reader’s presence.
So, one of the greatest psychological advantages of addressee –focused writing is that it draws on both the intrapersonal intelligence of students and their interpersonal intelligence.
Whether oral work, in general forces learners into the interpersonal area, writing allows the author to think and be both intrapersonally and interpersonally. It draws therefore on both the introspective and the socially oriented intelligences, as well as the linguistic intelligence.
Much of the creative writing activities to be later presented are strongly interpersonally, for instance.
2.4 Techniques and Methods to Promote Creative Writing
Let us focus on activities which exemplify different techniques and methods that encourage creative writing in the English language class and at home. They are taken from M. Rinvolucry’s book, Creative Writing (2007) and are grouped either according to the stage in the lesson or according to the roles adopted by the writers.

• Getting Going
Such activities offer techniques for warming students up, they help creating the ‘writing climate’; they also function as lead-ins to necessary exam skills like composition writing.
General aim: to facilitate writing in an organized form.
1 A Sentence from a Picture
Procedure:
- One student draws a picture on half of the board. The picture must have some kind of action in it.
- Ss then propose words that come to mind when they look at the picture. A ‘secretary’ at the board writes each word on the other half of the board and asks:’ Thumbs up or down?’ so that students can show whether they want the word retained or not; this process goes on until there are 10 words on the board.
- Ss are told to work individually and to write a single sentence using 6 of the 10 words on the board and that they will read/hear their sentences (with large classes the teacher can get the students to stick up their sentences around the classroom walls so everybody can go round and read them.
2 A Trip to Remember
Procedure:
1- Ss are put in groups, and are asked to close their eyes and think of a trip they went on as a child.
2-Ss are given time to think back, and then asked the following questions (they are told not to write the questions down, but to write their answers in note form).
What can you remember seeing on the trip?
What sounds can you remember hearing on the trip?
What smells can you remember?
Can you recall how something felt?
Can you remember the taste of something?
3- Ss are paired and asked to relate their experience to their partner, using the notes that they have made;
4– Each student then writes a one-page account of their partner’s experience, in the first person as if they were their partner; they are also told that the accounts will be read out loud to the group.
5 – The students read the texts to their group members, and comment on them.

3 From My Thoughts to Our Thoughts
Preparation: A sheet of A3 for each student and plenty of coloured pens.
Procedure:
- Ss work in groups of four or five; each student is given one A3 sheet of paper and a selection of pens to each group; each student is asked to draw a vertical line down the middle of the page and a horizontal line across the middle, dividing the space into four equal parts.
- The teacher asks each student to think of an animal, a person, an object, a situation, a book or a film and then draw a picture of it in the top left-hand space (they are told to draw carefully as they will be sharing this with the others in the group); then they write in a title for their picture.
- Ss pass their papers to someone else within the group, that person writes now, in the bottom left-hand space, all they know about the topic/ person/ animal/ object depicted above (as much as possible in 10 minutes)
- Ss pass their papers round again within their own group, without taking back their own picture; first in the bottom left-hand space they add anything extra they know about the topic / person /object etc. then, in the top right-hand space, they write everything they guess, hypothesise about it (10 minutes again).
- They pass the papers around their foursome, without taking a paper they have had before; they add to the drawing and to the written spaces. Then in the last space, they write what they would like to know about the topic / the person/ the animal etc.
- Finally the fours get together, read all four papers and discuss the shared information and their own writing processes.

• Writing From the Partner’s Content
The activities are strongly interpersonal. The student writes from ideas and information proposed by their partner, and they know that their partner will be the main reader of the text. It is through these activities that the actual production of texts is achieved.
General aim: to write creatively.
1 A Younger You – a highly interpersonal activity in which students write their pages drawing on a complex mixture of information, deduction, empathy and projection.
Preparation: - The teacher prepares cards, each one with an antonym on it, such as: high low thin thick easy difficult cheap expensive (one card per student).
- Copy the instruction text below to give to each student:
- Copy the instruction text below to give to each student:
First, get up and move around the room looking for a partner who has the word which is the opposite of yours. You should show your card, but you should not speak. When you have found your partner, sit down with him/her in silence for 30 seconds.
Then go back to your own seat and write not more than one page about how your partner was when he /she was a young child (it is up to you to choose the age).
Exchange sheets with your original partner and respond to what he/she has written. Do not write more than a half page response. When your partner is ready, move over to him/her and discuss the texts.
Procedure: -The teacher starts the lesson silently, by simply giving out the cards and the written instructions above.
- At the end of the paired discussions, the teacher allows time for spoken interaction.
• Writing in Role
This time the activities are especially enjoyable for those students who love the ‘masks’ they ‘wear’ in oral role-play. Writing in role is an escape from self, a kind of freeing.
General aims: to write creatively; to act out

Gazing in the Mirror
Procedure:
Lesson one- Ask Ss to find a mirror at home, take a good look at themselves and then write a very objective, scientific description of their own face. Tell them that this will be seen in class by other class members.
Lesson two – Ss pair up with a classmate they get on with, and sit facing each other. Each student writes a half-page description of the other’s face. Tell them that this and the other writings will be seen by the others and make it clear that you can help with the language only if invited.
- Ask them, working alone now, to look in their hand mirror, and write a really flattering self-portrait (about half a page from the point of view of someone who really likes them).
- Ask each student now to imagine they belong to another race or are aliens and to write three very negative descriptive sentences about their face.
- Bring the pairs together into fours to compare the four texts each has written.
Final remarks
It can be finally stated that if students are engaged into varied writing activities with clear purposes, if they are shown that writing doesn’t have to be a solitary activity which requires a lot of physical and mental effort, if taught properly even from earlier stages of learning different writing skills, if they are motivated to write, then English classes will benefit from the teaching and learning of writing and writing will contribute to the holistic development of the individuals.
We started this article from the premise that writing humanizes the learning process in the context of a highly technological, impersonal kind of world; we would like to conclude by pointing out that whenever we get our students engaged in creative writing activities, we let them use language as effectively and naturally as they can. Just give it a try.

References

Methodology Bibliography
1. Brown, H. Douglas. , Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. Prentice Hall, 1994.
2. Carter, Ronald, Long, N. Michael, The Web of Words, Exploring literature through language, Cambridge University Press, 1987.
3. Duff, Alan & Maley, Alan, Literature, OUP, 1990.
4. Harmer, J., The Practice of English Language Teaching, Longman, 1983.
5. Harmer, J., How to Teach Writing, Longman, 2004.
6. Jennings,C. ,Children as Story-tellers, developing language skills in the classroom , OUP Australia , 1991.
7. Johnson, K., & K.,Morrow, (eds),Communication in the Classroom , Longman, 1981.
8. Kramsch, C., Context and Culture in Language Teaching , OUP , 1990.
9. Moran, P., Teaching Culture – Perspectives in Practice , Heinle & Heinle , 2001.
10. Nunan, D., Language Teaching Methodology, Longman, 1991.
11. Scrivener, J., Learning Teaching, Macmillan, Heinemann, 1994.

Writing Bibliography
12. Frank, Christine, Rinvolucri, Mario, Creative Writing, Helbling Languages , 2007.
13. Frances, M. Creative Writing, Publishing House, 2001.
14. Gardner, Howard, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, New York, 1983
15. Jenkins, Hillary, Creative Ways – Starting to Teach Creative Writing in the English Language Classroom, The British Council, 2001.
16. Ward, Tim, Creative Writing Workshop 1, National Conference Romania, September 2008.

Biodata
Monica Mortu has been teaching English for 19 years and has an experience in teaching Bilingual English classes at ,,Gh.M.Murgoci” National College, Braila for 10 years.
As a teacher she has always been interested in professional development, therefore she took different courses organized by The Romanian Ministry of Education & The British Council in Romania, such as:Young Teachers’Development, Resita, 1998; The METTEXT Assistant Teacher Trainer Course for Lower Secondary Level-Brasov, 2000; Drama Techniques In Teaching English, Calimanesti,2001; ,,PreparingStudents for FCE, CAE” courses offered by the British Council Bucharest and Univeristy of Cambridge ESOL Examinations. She also participated to the National Conference For English Teachers in 2016, 2015,2014,2012 organized by Fischer.
She has also been a member of two international projects which took place in our school: A Regio Project -,,New Approaches to Foreign Language Teaching in Turkey and Romania” (2012-2014) and The Erasmus+ Project ,,Successful Communication-The Future Of Europe” (2015-2017).
Since 2016 she has been running the Foreign Languages Department (English, French, German and Russian) in the County Inspectorate of Braila.