Teaching English: How can we develop creative writing in our FL classroom?

As we all know, writing is one of the four skills necessaries to achieve Communicative Competence, which is the main aim of teaching English. Some people think that it is the most difficult to work on, because our students are young and they are not as able as an adult when it comes to write an essay or a summary. Moreover, writing is the most boring part of an English class: lots of repetitions, working on your own predictable things…

However, it shouldn’t be like that. What could we do to develop writing in our classroom? Let’s see… What is the main characteristic of children? CREATIVITY.

Kids are creative by nature: they live in a world of fantasy, imagination, playfulness and freedom. So, why don’t we take advantage of their strongest point, and use it to develop writing skills? By working on creativity, we stimulate the students’ imagination, helping them to express their own ideas in forms that are different from the usual writing tasks.

Before starting with creative writing, it would be good to get our students used to write, so here you’ve got some examples of activities to develop writing:

Freewrite: Students write on a given topic for 2-5 minutes without stopping. They are not allowed to lift their pen or pencil from the paper or make corrections. The intention is just to write anything. Freewrites can be used at the beginning of a class session to focus attention on the topic or at the end of a class session to help students process what they learned. Initially some students might be insecure about freewriting, but it wouldn’t be a problem once they become accustomed to this exercise.

- Example 1: At the first-year level, freewrites can be used to generate vocabulary on basic topics such as describing one’s self, family…

- Example 2: To prepare the class to discuss cultural topics, students can write about their own experiences.

- Example 3: The students can be asked to write on their reactions to character in a story they have read or to predict unfinished story.

Word fields: —Students are asked to write associations to a given word or topic either individually or in groups. Example 1: Students in small groups generate word fields around sub-topics associated with the chapter being reviewed for a test. For example, in a chapter on life in the city, groups might be assigned sub-topics such as: in the train station, asking directions, lodging, restaurants, etc.
List making: Students create a list of words, ideas, tasks or priorities:

- Example 1: Students can create lists around any topic, for example, grocery lists, lists of what needs to be done before leaving on a trip, packing lists, etc.

Now, I am going to explain some activities made to develop creative writing:

Change lyrics: Students can create new song from another one. Of course, it should be easy, especially if we want to do it with young kids.

- Example 1: They have to change words in a traditional and easy song, for instance: ‘London Bridge is falling down’ -> ‘teacher Laura is having fun, having fun, having fun’. They can also use ‘one little finger’, ‘neck, shoulders knees and toes’… Anyway, songs whose rhythm is already known.

Poems: Writing poetry at the beginning levels allows students to realize that they can function imaginatively and express sophisticated thoughts with a limited vocabulary. Writing poetry also encourages students to think about the sounds of words. It looks like a difficult task, but it isn’t. As in the previous one, students can start removing some words. For instance, in this poem, the italics words are the ones which will be missing:

To London I have been

The Tower I have seen,

Postcards I have sent,

To all of my friends.

Picture story: Students are given a set of pictures into a sequence, and they have to order them and tell what happens and why, organizing the story into a narrative. It can be done in groups.
Comic strips: A comic strip is handed, but the contents of the bubble are removed. Students have to write the dialogues and the narrative of what happens.

Snowball: One student starts a story, writing one or two sentences. Then, he covers the story, leaving only three words. The next one should continue the narrative, and do the same. Finally, we will have a non-sense creative crazy story.
Mixing two stories: We can ask our students to mix to fairy tales, or two characters, such as Aladdin and Cinderella, Pocahontas and the Little Mermaid or Rapunzel and Belle.

Finally, I would like to add a project to develop creative writing: a newspaper. A picture will be given to every group of students, and they have to invent a story, a new, and write about it as if they were journalist. Then, we will collect every story and create a newspaper. This should be done with the higher levels, like 6^th grade of Primary.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.tefl.net/esl-articles/creative-writing.htm

http://writing.umn.edu/isw/assets/pdf/publications/Homstad_Thorson96.pdf