Creative writing for language learners (and teachers)

by Alan Maley

Creative writing normally refers to the production of texts which have an aesthetic rather than a purely informative, instrumental or pragmatic purpose. Most often, such texts take the form of poems or stories, though they are not confined to these genres. (Letters, journal entries, blogs, essays, travelogues, etc. can also be more or less creative.) In fact, the line between creative writing (CW) and expository writing (ER) is not carved in stone. In general, however CW texts draw more heavily on intuition, close observation, imagination, and personal memories than ER texts.  

One of the chief distinguishing characteristics of CW texts is a playful engagement with language, stretching and testing its rules to the limit in a guilt-free atmosphere, where risk is encouraged. Such writing combines cognitive with affective modes of thinking. As the poet, R.S. Thomas once wrote, ‘Poetry is that which arrives at the intellect by way of the heart.’ The playful element in CW should not, however be confused with a lax and unregulated use of language. On the contrary, CW requires a willing submission on the part of the writer to the ‘rules’ of the sub-genre being undertaken. If you want to write a Limerick, then you have to follow the rules governing limericks. If not, what you produce will be something other than a limerick: obvious, perhaps, but important too. The interesting thing is that the very constraints which the rules impose seem to foster rather than restrict the creativity of the writer. This apparent paradox is explained partly by the deeper processing of thought and language which the rules require.

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Developing Good Reading Skills

By Prof (Dr) Shefali Bakshi

Reading Comprehension is understanding a written text which means extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible. For example, we apply different reading strategies when looking at a notice board to see if there is an advertisement for a particular type of flat and when carefully reading an article of special interest in a scientific journal. We read various items, which sometimes we do not realize. Here are the main text-types one usually comes across: Novels, short stories, tales; other literary texts and passages (e.g. essays, diaries, anecdotes, biographies), Plays, Poems, limericks, nursery rhymes, Letters, postcards, telegrams, notes, Newspapers and magazines (headlines, articles, editorials, letters to the editor, stop press, classified ads, weather forecast, radio/TV/theatre programmes), Specialized articles, reports, reviews, essays, business letters, summaries, précis, accounts, pamphlets, (political and other), Handbooks, textbooks, guidebooks, Recipes, Advertisements, travel brochures, catalogues, Puzzles, problems, rules for games, Instructions (e.g. warnings), directions (e.g. How to use….), notices, rules and regulations, posters, signs (e.g. road signs), forms (e.g. application forms, landing cards), graffiti, menus, price lists, tickets, etc. One does not use the same sub-skills for reading different type of reading materials. For different materials we need different kind of reading skills. Therefore, listed below find the different forms of reading sub-skills to be developed in our learners.

READING

Reading at the elementary level is initially the process of linking symbol~sound~sense.

The most popular methods used are: The Alphabetical Method, The Phonic Method, The Word (Look-and-say Method), The Sentence Method/ The Story Method.

At the Secondary Level: The reading selections should be of quality, both in terms of human interest and literary value. The texts should have relevance to the pupil’s environment and experience, as well as to foster within the pupil a humane and tolerant world-view. Reading involves a variety of skills: 1.Recognizing the script of a language 2. Deducing the meaning and use of unfamiliar lexical items 3. Understanding explicitly stated information  4. Understanding information when not explicitly stated 5. Understanding conceptual meaning. 6. Understanding the communicative value (function) of sentences and utterances 7. Understanding relations within the sentence 8. Understanding relations between the parts of

text through lexical cohesion devices 9. Understanding cohesion between parts of a text

through grammatical cohesion devices 10. Interpreting text by going outside it. 11. Identifying the main point or important information. Today in modern trends, the learners are trained to read posters, applications, ads, notices, etc so that they can cope with the external world. Below in the task F of Gul Mohar series by Orient Blackswan  the learner is trained to interpret the poster and then write a paragraph as Reading is a receptive skill which takes on to the productive skill of Writing. Also the learner is advised to go to the web site to research more information about the topic, thus keeping in touch with the latest developments f technology used in our teaching-learning process.

In this way if our teaching materials are linked to the relevant situations, materials that our learners will come across in English, relevant age-levels, relevant world problems, etc then we’re in the right direction and our students will definitely reap the fruits of our efforts.

Prof (Dr) Shefali Bakshi is the Deputy Director at Amity School of Languages. She has done a Project on “A Study of Verbal Interaction in Waiting for Godot” for the M.A. degree and has ompleted her PhD thesis on “A Study of Verbal Interaction in the plays of Samuel Beckett” for the Degree of Ph.D. at University of Lucknow, India. She has conducted over 75 workshops on ELT in various parts of India for school teachers and principals.

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