Creative Writing as Part and Parcel of Developing Communicative - Intellectual FL Learners’ Powers

Abstract

For many years in ELT methodology the questions of teaching writing in ELT coursebooks have been given much attention in terms of its nature, differences between written and spoken speech, ELT objectives and approaches to teaching writing, types of writing genres, writing assessment. But one rather neglected area in that regard is a graded teaching of creative writing to FL learners. The fifteen-year experience with organizing language-and-culture competitions launched by the Research Centre “Euroschool” for foreign language /FL/ students across Russia have proved that even intermediate FL learners, not to speak about advanced students are quite capable of writing in a FL: a) poems and songs expressing their ideas about teenagers’ lifestyle - visions of contemporary world; b) short stories describing family and school life experiences of their own or their peers; c) essays based on their comparative study of native and foreign cultures; d) presentations of Russian culture - other cultures of the Russian Federation in an English environment while being on exchange visits; e) translations of English poetry, short stories, excerpts from humours books, stripes of comics. The paper compares teaching creative writing in Russian and English, discusses the questions arisen from the outcomes of the language-and-culture competitions, arguing that effective teaching of creative writing presupposes: 1) teaching a FL in the context of the dialogue of cultures and civilizations, 2) introducing creative writing into a FL curriculum, 3) designing a package of thought-provoking teaching materials aiming at developing communicative, intellectual - mediating learners’ powers, 4) applying appropriate assessment scales for observing the dynamics of learners’ development as creative writers, 5) marrying students’ bilingual and cross-cultural/pluricultural classroom activities stimulating their participation in language-and-culture competitions.