This article introduces a pedagogical intervention that includes a set of creative activities designed to improve the oral and written production of students in the English classroom, especially those who have shown a lack of interest or attention. It was observed that participants initially seemed careless about studying the language. Eventually…

The purpose of the conference presentation upon which this paper is inspired was to present an innovative approach to motivate students to write in a second language during a first-year Spanish class. Usually, students comply with writing exercises that convey basic thoughts, due to constrained vocabulary and limited knowledge of grammatical…

The author shows how one child's creativity is destroyed in the pursuit of correct capitalization, neat margins, and good punctuation. (BD)

Creative writing helps children to develop the ability to think imaginatively and to express their ideas and feelings effectively and constructively. Properly motivated, it is an enjoyable acitivity that should be carried out more than once a year. (Author)

Designed to encourage sustained independent writing, this book demonstrates ways that children were stimulated to invent their own Utopias, their own religions, new ways of fighting wars, and different schools. Contents include the following: "Traveling to an Imaginary Place; "Religion"; "Question of Continuity in Writing"; "War"; "Moving Toward a…

Assumptions that writers of books about creative writing make about their audiences, as well as assumptions about the purposes, practice, and value of writing, differ noticeably from the assumptions made by people who teach and write about composition. In substance and form, the range of creative writing books includes autobiography, interviews,…

The teacher of creative writing should be willing to begin by making a fool of himself. (JH)

The principles used by Tim Gallwey in his books "The Inner Game of Tennis" and "Inner Tennis" can be applied to the teaching and learning of writing. The objective is to overcome mental obstacles which our conscious ego puts in the way of our creative self. Such obstacles as fear, lack of self-confidence, lack of concentration, trying too hard,…

IN CREATIVE WRITING, UNLIKE IN FORMAL COMPOSITION, STUDENTS CHOOSE THEIR OWN FORMS AND MATERIALS TO EXPRESS THEIR THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS. SUCH AN OBJECTIVE DEMANDS A CLASSROOM ATMOSPHERE IN WHICH STUDENTS CAN EXPRESS THEMSELVES FREELY AND CONFIDENTLY WITHOUT FEAR OF HARSH NEGATIVE CRITICISM. IN ADDITION TO WRITING EXTENSIVELY, STUDENTS CAN BE AIDED…

This book is intended for use by older beginning writers and visual artists. It is not intended to be a comprehensive guide to the complexities of the creative process. The document is a guide to opening and using the creative process in the later years of life. It is arranged in chapters that take the student through a learning process. Exercises…

This article describes one poet/teacher's program to explore and cultivate student creativity, intuition, and imagination through a series of visual, verbal, and psychological exercises. Visualization, free-writing, association, variations on other poets' work, and memory mapping are among the creativity exercises employed prior to actual writing…

English courses should help students recognize the interrelationships among creative and expository writing, literature, and language. By helping students understand literary elements such as point of view, for example, creative writing courses can produce better student narratives. Required composition courses should replace sterile exercises in…

Emerging adolescents should have ample opportunities to present creative ideas in written form. Some generalizations may be helpful in identifying and understanding the creative student. Creative people have been found to possess the following traits (Iris Tiedt, 1983): nonconformity of ideas, egotism and feelings of destiny, great curiosity, a…

This study partially replicated Moss's "A Study of the Effect of Selected Methods of Instruction Designed to Increase Originality in Written Expression," except for the fact that this investigator taught a 5th grade and an 11th grade class for most of a school year. Some of the conclusions of the study were: no particular teaching technique was…

Small children are very imaginative, and teachers should provide varied experiences to encourage continued growth of their imaginations. Classroom instructional settings can be full of discovery and learning if teachers provide many prewriting opportunities that allow children to discover opportunities for writing. These experiences should cut…