Creative Writing as a Group Effort

Abstract

Problems that students encounter writing creative essays in their native are compounded they are asked to write in a foreign language. Some students may be convinced that they have nothing to say; others may have ideas but feel at a loss about expressing them. Often students resort to writing the assignment in English and then translating it into the target language. This procedure often leads to over-use of the dictionary, major grammatical or vocabulary errors, and convoluted sentence structure. Instead of encouraging creative involvement with the language, such an exercise can be a frustrating effort for the student as well as the instructor. Thus, some teachers have come to question the value of free-writing assignments in the foreign classroom. Based on a study manipulating the quantity of writing in intermediate German courses, Troyanovich claims that writing is an inefficient and excessively tedious activity. He theorizes that when activities required for speaking and writing are sufficiently similar, we can safely assume that we teach writing adequately in the intermediate course if we continue to cultivate the audiolingual skills.' And yet, we see that students often have considerable difficulty writing even in their native language. This is a serious concern of educators which cuts across the entire curriculum. For this reason, Gaudiani claims that the skills needed for good writing are not language specific and, therefore, should not be the sole responsibility of English departments. She suggests that by incorporating more productive writing activities into the foreign classroom, we can strengthen students' writing ability and enhance the level of general literacy.2 Writing, therefore, is not a skill that we should ignore, but one which deserves our careful attention. Some of the problems associated with free and creative writing arise because students have inadequate experience with writing as a dynamic process of thinking and rethinking, experimenting and revising, no matter which they are using. By devising lively and relevant writing situations, we can help students generate the process and become conscious of its dynamics. A very effective and versatile learning strategy, which is structured to meet this objective, involves students in a group-centered writing activity based on the familiar game of linking sentences together to make a whole paragraph or story.3 Anyone who has sat with a group of people, taking turns writing one sentence after another, knows the delight and spontaneous creativity that this game can inspire. Each person composes only one sentence but that sentence serves as a vital link in the shaping of a longer work. By modifying this practice for the classroom, we can focus students' efforts on composing single, effective sentences and at the same time involve them in the dynamics of composing whole paragraphs.