What happens when students do creative writing?

1. What happens when students do creative writing? Tan Bee Tin Dept of Applied Language Studies and Linguistics The University of Auckland, New Zealand Email: tb.tin@auckland.ac.nz 8th Asian Teacher-Writers conference on creative writing, PPPPTK Bahasa, Jarkata, Indonesia, 6-7 November, 2009 . 

2. Background • A project in Indonesia: • ‘Investigating the language learning opportunities created through creative writing tasks in EFL classrooms’

3. Participants • A group of Indonesian students (with the help of local teachers) • Data • Creative writing tasks (short poems) • Recordings of their performance (discussions, think aloud) • Post-writing interviews

4. Two poetry writing tasks: • Acrostics • Similes

5. Task 1: Acrostics • RICE

6. Task 1: Acrostics • R • I • C • E

7. Really • Important • Crop to • Eat • (Alan)

8. Task for you! • J • O • Y • Rules • 1. every line must start with the letter • 2. the whole poem must be related to the key word ‘Joy’

9. J • O • Y

10. Jump • Out of • Your sorrow

11. Just thinking • Of • You

12. Jar of amazing feeling • Overcoming sadness • You should get it

13. Jingle bells of the ring • Opening the Christmas day and • Your life has begun

14. Jovial and • Outstanding feeling in • Your life

15. Jump for it • Or singing for it • Yet before you lose

16. Just • Open • Your eyes

17. Phase 2- June 2008 • 1. Writing acrostic poems (pair work) • SCHOOL, TEACHER, HOLIDAY, JOY

18. Task 2: similes • Writing similes (pair work) • ‘Our teacher is like ……’ • ‘Our friend is like …….’

19. Task 2: Similes • My little brother is like the pepper flower. • He makes me laugh. • He jumps out at me, in the field, • with a red hat. Spiro (2004: 52)

20. My father is like a rock. • His chin is sharp. • He looks at me from the top of a mountain. • He is very old. Spiro (2004: 52)

21. Our teacher is like ……………… …………………………………………………. …………………………………………………. …………………………………………………. Our friend is like ………………… …………………………………………………. ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… Task for you!

22. Qs for you! • What do you think are the differences between the acrostic task and the simile task in terms of: • the quality of language (product) students produce? • the process students go through?

23. Acrostics Rule-based task Formal constraint Semantic constraint Similes Imagination-foregrounded Fore-grounds the imaginary situation (Imagine A is B) Fore-grounds discourse (give two reasons) Nature of tasks

24. Q1: The quality of language (product)

25. Interpretations: • Which shows more complex language (complexity of language)? • Acrostics or Similes? • Which shows more surprising/novel ideas (transformation of ideas)? • Acrostics or Similes?

26. My interpretations: • Which shows more complex language (complexity of language)? • Acrostics • Which shows more surprising/novel ideas (transformation of ideas)? • Acrostics

27. Different approaches to creativity • The product approach (characteristics of creative products) • The process approach (thinking involved in creative tasks) • The linguistic approach (language play)

28. The product approach • ‘the ability to come up with new ideas that are surprising yet intelligible, and also valuable in some way’ (Boden 2001) • transformation, surprise (Amabile 1996) • Torrance and colleagues: • fluency (quantity of ideas produced), • flexibility (variety or number of different responses), • originality (uniqueness or statistical infrequency of ideas produced), • elaboration (refining or adding details to ideas to make them richer or more complete) (Ball and Torrance 1984).

29. The linguistic approach • Creativity as a form of language play (Carter 2004) • Two levels: form, meaning (Cook 2000).

30. Language play at the formal level • involves manipulating textual features such as words, syntactic patterns • e.g. ‘jar of amazing feeling’ • e.g. ‘Our teacher is like a loud speaker.’

31. Language play at the semantic level • combines different units of meaning in unfamiliar ways to construct an imaginary world (Cook 2000), to transform our current conceptual world.

32. The process approach • Examines the process experienced in a creative task. • Two thinking types (Finke 1996) • Chaotic thinking: • Spontaneous and divergent, focusing mainly on occurrences of the moment and exploring novel alternatives without specific plans or goals. • involves the natural emergence of structure from complexities. • Ordered thinking: • generates new ideas through purposefully analysing and extending existing ideas. • The structure is imposed and complexity is reduced.

33. Language play  language learning • Playful creative language helps to stretch and destabilize learners’ interlanguage (Tarone 2000)

34. Q2: The process (types of thinking) • An acrostic (SCHOOL) written by Susan (female) and Dita (female) in pair. The task takes about 6 minutes. • Study hard and • Competition with other student to get • High grade are our • Obligation to make • Our parents • Love us

35. *S: S ..C .. H ..O .. O .. L … *D: S ... S nya apa ya? {what does ‘S’ stand for?} .. (….) *S: study hard *D: study or study hard? *S: study hard ….study hard …C .. *D: C … *S: competitive …eh…competitive … *D: C nya? {what about the ‘C’} *S: ni coba kompetisi {what about using competition?} ((sound of flipping through pages, checking the word in the dictionary)) *D: kompetisi {competition} …. hmm …ya wis lah kompetisi. {okay, competition is okay} (….) *S: competition .. H .. *D: high ... *S: high grade … *D: high quality or high grade? *S: high quality? … high? ... *D: terserah kamu aja lah {it is all up to you} …ya grade… O

36. *S: O …. • *D: O ((flipping through the dictionary)) …… obligation … kewajiban {obligation}  • *S: obligation itu apa sih? {what is obligation?} • *D: kewajiban ((laugh)) ... • *S: obligation ya ndak papa lah {obligation is okay} ((laugh)) … obligation … study hard … competition ... study hard .. disambungke bisa loh {they can be connected} … study hard and competition with ..each other.. to get high grade.. that is our obligation ((laugh))…eh…bisa nggak sih? {is it possible?}  • *D: mhm nggak papa {yes,it’s okay} • *S: study hard …and competition …with …other students …to get ..high grade … are ..our.. obligation ((reading as writing)) • *S: jadi kalo diartike belajar giat dan berkompetisi dengan murid lain untuk mendapat nilai yang lebih tinggi adalah kewajiban kita, terus O-ne lagi apa? {it can be translated as studying hard and competing with other students is our obligation, what about the other O?} (….) • *S: study hard and competition with other students to get high grade .. are .. our ..obligation ((reading out))…

37. *D: ((flipping through pages)) apa yah? {what is it?} • *S: ini aja, apa namane {this one} hard competition with other students to get high grade are our obligation ((reading out the lines written so far)) …errr… to ..make.. our.. parent ((reading as writing)) … • *D: L e opo? {what about the ‘L’?} ... • *S: mhm happy ((laugh)) happy kok ..L {how can happy start with an L?}  • *D: Lkok {it is L} L…L…L ….. L nya {the L} ….. tak bukakin {let me open the dictionary} ((laugh)) …  • *S: ((laugh)) … ini loh {here it is} ((laugh)) L ... Oh! Oh! ((sounds excited)) to make our parents love … us ((laugh)) …  • *D: ((laugh)) <x> • *S: study hard and competition with other students to get high grade are our obligation to make our parents love us ((reading out)) … terus apa? {what is next?} .. ‘teacher’? ...

38. A simile about ‘our teacher’ written by Susan and Dita in pair. It takes about 3 minutes to write this simile. • Our teacher is like stone • Because they have • Hard heart and • Big soul

39. *S: our teacher…it’s your turn ... giliranmu {your turn} • *D: ((laugh)) our teacher is like … • *S: tree or flower, lake, river, stone, mountain ((reading the list of objects provided)) • *D: mountain • *S: why? … • *D: because … it’s huge ((laugh)) .. • *S: not everyone…not every teacher … • *D: not every teacher … like mountain … mhm … • *S: don’t have idea ((laugh)) … • *D: apa toh? apa toh?{what is it? what is it?}… or any other words related to teacher? … • *S: we can choose another word … • *D: our teacher is like apa {what}…flower? … • *S: why?... flower…flower … • *D: flowers • *S: flowers mhm ….. skip it … our friend first ((the pair skip to the second smile))

40. *D: our teacher is like … • *S: like what? like tree.. flower? … • *D: stone • *S: stone? … because it’s hard ((laugh))… our teacher is like a stone because …  • *D: melambangkan guru itu kaku {symbolizing that teacher is stiff} • *S: our teacher …because…mhm...but it kaku{stiff} ((laugh)) ... • *D: our teacher is like a stone gitu aja lah {just like that} because .. because…every … every teacher …. have ….heart .. apa {what} memiliki hati yang keras {has hard heart} ((laugh)) • *S: ((laugh)) have a hard heart ((laugh)) … it is difficult to say… because they have hard [heart] • *D: [hard heart] • *S: ((laugh)) and .. they are … jiwa {soul} • *D: jiwa {soul} …what the meaning? … • *S: hard soul ….. is like a stone … because .. they have ..hard heart ..and ((reading as writing)) … • *D: jiwa yang besar gitu aja lah {big soul, that’s it} • *S: big soul ..

41. Emergentist perspectives of language learning • Language is dynamic, changing as we use it (Larsen-Freeman 2006). • Linguistic signs are ‘continually created to meet new needs and circumstances’ (Toolan 2003).

42. Interpretations • Which involves more chaotic thinking? • Which involves more language play (playing with words, sentence structure, shaping and transforming L2)? • Which would be more useful for language learning? • Acrostics or similes?

43. My interpretations: • Which involves more chaotic thinking? • Which involves more language play (playing with words, sentence structure, shaping and transforming L2)? • Which would be more useful for language learning? • Acrostics

44. Acrostics vs Similes

45. Acrostics vs Similes

46. Not all play tasks may promote language play and modification and stretching of learner language. • While acrostics (rule-foregrounded tasks) lead students into uncharted waters, shaping and reshaping language in dispreferred, unprecedented ways, similes lead to stepping in well-trodden waters, shaping language in more preferred, predictable ways. • The formal constraints in acrostics contribute to the emergence of more complex language while similes, possessing looser formal rules, result in less complex language.

47. constraints rather than freedom  more chaotic thinking and creativity. • ‘creative thinking is made possible by constraints’ (Boden 2004: 233) • ‘the ‘freedom’ of creative thought is not the absence of constraints, but their imaginative – yet disciplined – development.’ (Boden 2001: 102).

48. Better understanding of the processes learners encounter and the language they produce in different play tasks will help teachers to design more effective play tasks. • More research is needed to understand the nature of affordances offered by various play tasks. • More investigations are needed which analyse the transcripts of learners’ interaction in play tasks and the language they produce.

49. Acknowledgments • The study is part of a project funded by the University of Auckland. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to students who participated in the study. My special thanks to Dra Ristiyanti Prasctijo, Debora Tri Ragawanti, Christine Manara and all the other teachers for their help during my data collection in Indonesia.