“Even I Can Do It”:Chinese Ethnolinguistic Minority Learners’Investment in Creative Writing and Its Impact

Although much is known about the benefits of providing creative writing courses to English learners, little research is available on Chinese ethnolinguistic minority learners’ creative writing in formal education. In response, this ethnographic study explored three ethnolinguistic minority learners’ engagement with a three-month elective English creative writing course at a Chinese university. Data(drafts, interviews, and reflection) were analyzed to reveal the three learners’ investment in creative writing and its impact. It was found that creative writing helped the learners to develop more confident writer identities, that they became more proficient in writing, and that their language proficiency also grew. The study suggests creative writing can serve as identity texts,which reflect back on their emergent creative writer identity, and can be a beneficial pedagogical option for ethnolinguistic minority learners.

Creative Writing as a Best Way to Improve Writing Skills of Students

The present paper discusses the notion of creative writing skills. Its purpose is to present a study on the survey about the importance of using creative writing tasks in the academic environment. The paper is divided into two sections. In the first part some aspects of teaching of writing skills are discussed. The second part contains a practical study of the survey. A detailed discussion of the characteristics of creative writing skills are presented and analyzed in terms of the theoretical assumptions put forward in the paper

Assessing Creative Writing in a Postmodem Era

How to teach creative writing at school？ If the procedures inherited from writing workshops have undoubtedly proved efficient as regards text production, it is also clear that in Switzerland, as elsewhere in Europe and in the Anglo-Saxon world, the present use of evaluation grids with their numerous items prevents secondary school pupils from adopting the stance of an author. Why？ Simply because the most innovative and ＂literary＂ texts are always surprising： They are ＂different＂, and could not possibly result from writing guidelines devised only to facilitate a mechanical evaluation itself conceived for the sake of some illusory objectivity... Now, in our postmodern age with its rejection of models, what is more difficult than assessing the quality of creative writing？ In our approach, we suggest restoring confidence in the teacher, an expert reader if any, who, acting as a publisher, dramaturge, or mere aesthete, knows how to take his pupils＇ texts seriously, acknowledge their aesthetic value, and look at apparent clumsiness as a possible promise of innovation. The teaching of creative writing lies both in this specific reception of budding works and in the teacher＇s performative utterances that, then and there, make the pupil a writer.

Extracts of Children’s Books as a Basis for Creative Writing Activities Within the Framework of Distance Learning:An Elementary School Case Study

Literature can be used in education as basis for creative writing activities not only in traditional classroom learning but also in distance learning.The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a four-month online creative writing program on the utilization of literary texts in elementary school through collaborative activities.The research sample consisted of 15 students of the 5th grade of elementary school.Evaluation of program activities was performed by completing a structured improvised questionnaire on the asynchronous education platform“e-class”of the Panhellenic School Network,where students were asked to fill in fields regarding(a)literary excerpts,(b)creative writing activities,and(c)online groups.Based on the results,students responded in a positive manner to the use of literature in the context of online collaborative writing groups.The majority of students expressed their satisfaction both with regard to the creative writing activities,having literary excerpts as a stimulus,but also with regard to the effectiveness of online groups.In conclusion,it seems that literature can be used creatively through playful group creative writing activities and distance learning.

Reform and Innovation of Creative Writing Teaching——Modular Teaching Design and Personalized Process Evaluation

In recent years,creative writing courses have attracted much attention in China,but there is a lack of relevant research on the practice of creative writing courses at present.Teachers are faced with such problems as vague teaching objectives,complex teaching contents,and lack of practical schemes.Moreover,it is difficult to evaluate the results of creative writing courses comprehensively and truly.Through the modularized combing of the course content and the establishment of personalized process evaluation scheme,we have realized the creative inspiration and creative practice guidance for students in creative writing course teaching,and enhanced the students’participation in the course and practical ability.

Writing as Painting： Creative Scholarly Writing From H616ne Cixous＇ Post-structuralism and Maurice Merleau-Ponty＇s Body Phenomenology

This paper deals with scholarly writing and a testing and experimental review of its related conventions. The author applies to her review of the subject a theoretical stimulus that returns to the starting point of H616ne Cixous＇ （2008） post-structuralism and Maurice Merleau-Ponty＇s （2012） phenomenology of the body. The author becomes open to meditation on the topic as a bodily soothsayer redeeming permission for creative scholarly writing using the intuitively associative method and style of writing which she has developed. The author suggests that a theoretical starting point located in post-structuralism and the phenomenology of the body offers the possibility to equate creative scholarly writing with painting. The aim of this paper is to start from post-structuralism and the phenomenology of the body and to conceive a new method of understanding and adapting creative scholarly writing, while the author allows herself to perceive and write in her intuitively associative style.

Between the Heaven and Human Beings: On the Idea of the Heaven and the Transformation of Poetry in the Mid-Tang Dynasty

The relationship between the Heaven and human beings is a central issue in the transformation of Confucianism in the Mid-Tang Dynasty.The discourses on the Heaven by Han Yu,Liu Zongyuan,and Liu Yuxi helped to promote the transformation and greatly influenced the transformation in literature.The differences in the poetry among the three authors may also be interpreted from the perspective of their perceptions of the Heaven—Han Yu’s discourse on the Heaven focused on the enemy-relationship between the Heaven and human beings,so his poems always showed tension and loss.Liu Zongyuan was interested in the alienation between the heaven and human beings,so his poems were more rational and placid than Han Yu’s.However,Liu Yuxi’s discourse on the Heaven paid attention to the positive influence of the Heaven on human beings,and most of his poems were filled with reason.The changes in the relationship between the Heaven and human beings lead to the broadened themes,innovated vocabulary,diversified styles,and varied fresh imageries.Likewise,the relationship between the Heaven and human beings established in the Song Dynasty led accordingly to a new type of literature different from the Tang literature.